an era ends, and another begins

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Okay well it isn’t very poetic but your correspondent here has been very busy the past few days and will continue be so for the next few. Today I begin my new job, a new period of employment, muffled under the protection of an immense bureaucratic machine; the helicopter arrives in an hour. (Editing in: now half an hour.) I have had about four different kinds of paperwork to do in the past week; five if you count the entire day I spent researching a layer of bureaucracy I turned out not to need. The negotiations were hair-raising, nailbiting, touch-&-go. Truly, not having a job is much, much harder than having one. There was one day, in the period I had designated as “my remaining week off [sic]“, which I spent collating two big folders of documentation for this ‘n’ that, plus copies and signatures and other things to be sent elsewhere – I’m sure I’ve lost some of my bits & pieces over the past few months, you know. Proof of name etc. (That’s no joke; I’ve had a few in my time and even, for example, Customs and Excise has just weirdly reverted to a long-defunct one. Now, because their computer has done this, it is down to me to make them a written request in writing and find and envelope and a stamp and their address and my NI number, and ask them to change it back. Why could they not have just used the right one in the first place?)

In happier news, I’ve just sent in corrections on the proof of Oscar & Henry. The pamphlet will be out, as regular readers cannot have failed to notice, on January 14th. There are plans growing now for an Oscar Wilde evening at the Lemon Monkey Café in February – details in due course -  featuring drama, poetry, Ernest Dowson, Tim Turnbull as Oscar Wilde, and (I hope) some green carnations. I hope we’ll all be laughing through our tears… sugar cubes all round. Not sure if Lemon Monkey’s licence stretches to the green fairy liquid.

I’ve also been planning the reading series for the New Year – booking in everything, so it’s done – and it’s going to be cracking. Highlights so far include John Stammers (with his new book out in April), Heather Phillipson, and Matt Haydock, whose video I gave you just the other day. Plus our Oscar night. As it were. Yes, it’s going to be good. The readings are going to be every six weeks, as being more manageable for me and also, I feel, for the poetry-going public.

This past Saturday we had three marvellous readers (Henrietta Cullinan, Martina Evans and Patrick Brandon) and an atmosphere of almost crazed conviviality; then I read at the Magma magazine launch on Monday night. (They are wonderful people, and I’m very sorry to hear that David Boll is stepping down. But the Troubadour, I’ll come out and say it, is probably my least favourite venue ever. I just don’t care if Hendrix played there in the sixties. So what. Make it cheaper, easier to get to, and make the lights less obnoxious – my poor old glaucoma-riddled eyes can’t hack it.)

I’ve been reading scripts, planning poetry workshops, having lots of dreams, and gazing fondly at the Complete Letters of Wilde, which is very beautiful indeed in purple cloth but far too heavy to lift. I’m worried that Oscar doesn’t come over very well in the pamphlet. It’s true he was troublesome; and the pamphlet is hardly the final word. Last week I was having nightmares almost every night, though not about Wilde. Anxiety setting in. Time, time, time, is the refrain (the other one is bills, bills, bills, & there’s the rub), but paradoxically I think the more one does, the easier it is to do more; up to a point. I mean, sitting home looking for work and pitching for freelance jobs you never hear back about again just saps you. That is why I have suddenly found myself offering to write reviews again; and I’ll also be writing something short for Frances Leviston’s new website this month. Maybe there is actually ore poetry in running for a bus;. I tend to think so, though maybe not the 277 I broke my foot running for in 2001. (I never actually run for a bus these days, especially not with the ankle.)

Anyway. Should probably get up and get ready. There is clean washing, there is food, some of it already in tupperware containers. My phone is charged. I have shoes. There are invoices I should have written when I had the time. You know who you are.There are two people I needed to email but haven’t – apologies – though I did manage to email lots of people yesterday.  The plumber never made it so the sink is still blocked. I haven’t got my travelcard yet. But I have prepared my workshop for tonight, and now all I need to do is get access to a photocopier. It is four months since I last absolutely had to be anywhere before 11am.

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Filed under Ernest Dowson, Life, Living With Words, oscar wilde