National Poetry Day Diary

Hilary Alaric MacFaddean Spume’s National Poetry Day Diary.

By

Hilary Alaric MacFaddean Spume.

5am. I’ve been up and down all night like a bride’s nightie, and it’s not just the effects of a National Poetry Day Eve party in Ledbury. Mother has been bad again, and was calling out in her sleep for Sir Stafford Cripps, with whom she had a brief walkout in her far distant youth. My Father didn’t like her to speak of it when he was alive, as he felt Cripps to be a fellow traveller.

5.45am. Awake. Always awake at this time now, watching the dawn bruise my curtains. Awake; and thinking of Larkin, and our long ago bus ride to Goole. Especially on this, our special day. He always made a great thing of it, though Monica dreaded it because of all the cooking.

8.30am Great excitement as the postman delivers a bundle of National Poetry Day cards. There’s one from old Les Murray in Balarat, with sheep on, and the dearest verse inside. My old friend E G Pugh did not forget me, and has sent a privately produced volume of his erotic verse. And dear Ritchie Edwards from the Manic Street Preachers went to the trouble of dropping me a note. A nice boy; I well remember the night in the library here at Botolph Hall when he lay in front of the fire, sucking a pencil, and asking for my help with an early draft of ‘Motorcycle Emptiness’

One rather unpleasant note; Alvarez seems to have snubbed me again. Perhaps his card will come in the next post.

12.30pm As is well known, I’m poet in residence with the Potato Marketing Board, and today is the honorary lunch thrown by the Board on behalf of the resident muse. These things always take place in Potato House, just off The Strand, where they tend to do quite well by yours truly. I think its to make up for the paucity of my stipend, which is not impressive. Still, I’m always grateful for lunch in the West End, and was more than happy to deliver the annual poem, which I have the consent of the Board to reproduce in full here.

‘What kind of jacket does my jacket potato come with?’

I asked the girl.

‘Is it

Leather jackets

Wax jackets

Flax jackets

Flak jackets

Jack flackets

Jax flackets

Jax wackets

Jeather lackets?’

‘No. It’s,’

the girl replied,

‘the kind of jacket that all jacket potatoes come with.’

This was received with a deep, profound silence. I settled back with my cognac and cigar, content in the knowledge that there is still a serious audience for formal sound poetry in this country.

(Incidentally, please do not see the reproduction of this poem as a come hither for aspiring versifiers; poems submitted unsolicited will go unread. I am a professional poet, so that’s different. How would you like it if you were a dentist, say, and I set up on your lawn and said I fancied a go at drilling peoples teeth? Poetry is a dangerous business, my friend! Stay away!)

4pm Tea with the Laureate and a few select contemporaries, though I can’t touch the stuff myself. I always insist on a drop of the malmsey, of which there is a butt, hidden in the depths of the Laureate’s modest home. Cecil Day Lewis drank a great deal of tea, of course, as did dear old Sir John. But Ted liked coffee thick like mud, which put him in mind of the waters of the River Calder.

I suppose it’s fairly well known that I was in line for the Laureateship after Ted Hughes, and that the Prime Minister couldn’t decide between me and Pam Ayres, so he went for the present incumbent, who is, nonetheless, a splendid fellow and a superb ambassador for poetry. That said, it cannot be denied that a certain froideur exists between us, and I think we were both relieved when over excited poetry boy band Aisle 16 let off the fire extinguishers.

7.30pm A private dinner for a few friends, marred somewhat by my Mother insisting that she be present. A great beauty in her day, National Poetry Day has always been one of her favourite times of the year. As a child, my mother played petanque with Lady Ottoline Morrel and Bertrand Russell (with whom she had a brief run in, or so my Father always insisted). Lady Ottoline always gave the Garsington downstairs staff the day off, so that poetry could be more naturally expressed. My Father was a Naturist of course, as I remember with a great deal of distaste.

10.30pm Supper, then dancing till dawn at the Poetry Café. A truly memorable evening, and one which live long in memory. So long as evenings are remembered, this is one which will be. Remembered that is. I met this bloke at the bar who told me this joke about something or other. Ha ha! No wait, I’ll get it. It’s very funny. I told it to John Cooper Clarke, then he told it to Ursula Fanthorpe, and she laughed so much she had to sit down. Not so Spume. I like to strut my funky stuff. I find that my work with young people has kept me very much in touch with the streets, and it wasn’t long before I found myself in the moshpit next to Salman Rushdie, our greatest rock writer. Laudi, the first Scandinavian Death Metal band to win the Eurovision Song Contest gave us a set based, not entirely successfully in my view, on Ezra Pound’s Cantos. God, he was an awful man. My father visited him in Rome on occasion. Rushdie and I leapt about with great abandon, until, most unfortunately, I was unwell over the great man’s shoes; a rerun of the occasion when I was similarly so indisposed over Steven Spender in the Green Room at Hay. Then it was a pie; this time it was probably the Laureate’s malmsey.

3-ish. Back in Botolph Hall. Feel dreadful. Mother is restless once more, and is calling for Cripps. Must try and grab a few hours of sleep before the dawn bruises again my curtains; ( and how many more dawns can there be for Spume?)

And again I think of Larkin, and the day we went to Goole together on the bus.

Hilary Spume By Firelight

What is more wonderful at this time of year, than sitting by a crackling fire in the library of ones ancestral Cotswolds home, licking crumpetty butter from ones fingers, and casting ones eye over a few recent volumes? Well, a run up to Town for one thing, but Mrs Cutler our fearsome housekeeper has confiscated my wallet after an admittedly ill-judged Skittles night at The Turks Head in the village last Thursday week. Until my brother Sir Leslie gets back from his annual reading party in Tunis, I am terribly low on funds, and yours truly is forced once more to turn in a few book reviews in order to earn an honest crust.

The lovely thing about reviewing is that you get paid twice, once when your piece appears, and then again when you flog your review copies. We’re still lucky enough to have a proper second-hand bookshop here in Botolph St Otto, run by a parsimonious old skinflint called Arnold Hamble, but even he might cough up decent money for my copy of Phillip Larkin; On The Buses, edited by Fred Dibnah. It really is hard to think of a more comprehensive account of Larkin’s travels by bus and I doubt that Dibnah’s book will be superseded for many years.

Using a collection of tickets saved at Larkin’s death by his ‘loaf-haired secretary’ Betty, Dibnah shows that the omnibus was second only in importance to the sit-up-and-beg bicycle in Larkin’s life. There are bus tickets which chart Larkin’s rides to school in Coventry, tickets from the Oxford Corporation which reflect his growing intimacy with dear old Kingsley, and tickets from the years when Larkin was working on his novels and commuting by bus into Wellington. Sadly, Dibnah has been unable to find many of the Belfast tickets, so the bulk of the book is based on tickets which record Larkin’s bus journeys in and around Hull.

I was touched to see two eight penny returns from Hull to Goole, dated from 1965, a poignant reminder of a delightful day out which Larkin and I shared. After our bus ride, we walked around Goole, (not a terribly attractive town, if memory serves aright), before sharing a fish tea; I had the haddock, while Larkin nibbled at a piece of rock salmon, as it was known then. Huss, they call it now, but it's dogfish, really. In the war we had much worse, and Larkin told the story of how he hid a piece of snoek inside his knickerbockers. I never had it, as Bedales was vegetarian

I’ll tell you who I never much liked, and that was old Crispin Tolby, whose Bulgarian Water Colourists of The 19th Century has just been reissued by the University of Sofia Press. He was my brother Sir Leslie Spume’s fag at Gordonstoun, and Leslie always insisted that the little puss stole a postal order of five shillings value from his pocket book. This was the inciting incident behind Rattigan’s ‘Winslow Boy’, or so Sir Leslie claims. Rattigan had a ‘thing’ about Tolby, but so did the whole Secret Service quite frankly, including my late wife Mimsy, who had a bit of a run in with him when she was working on the switchboard at Cambridge Circus between shifts at The Windmill. There were a few raised eyebrows when Tolby was revealed as Twelfth Man; not from me, I can tell you. I always knew he was a wrong ‘un.

Still, you have to admit that this present volume is the final word on the subject of Bulgarian Water Colourists, and must be good for a bob or two at the second-hand bookshop. It comes in a slip case, and retails for two hundred quid, for God’s sake! It must be worth more than a tenner! Look at the quality of the reproductions! Come on Arnold! A couple of pints, at least!

One more volume of note before I hasten to the Public Bar of The Turk’s Head, is EG Pugh’s History of the Bedfordshire Brickfields. It sounds a bit dull, I know, and it is, quite frankly, but old EG’s been working on it for donkeys years, and he’s a pal of mine from Coach and Horses days. And what, after all, are book reviews if not a chance to put in a good word for ones cronies?

Good reading!

Hmmm?

Wazzat? Wake up? Why? What's happening? Why have my legs gone numb? Sid? Is that you? Sid! Dear God my head hurts. As though I've been asleep for years. Jesus. What have I been drinking?

Spring in Botolph St Otto

Few things lift the Spume spirit more than the return of Spring to these exalting hills. Winter is not my favourite time of year. It’s alright for my brother Sir Leslie Spume and his companion Eric. The minute the Botolph St Otto Plough Monday Mummers play is out of the way, old Eric shuts up his antique shop and they join a reading party in Tangiers, so Leslie can work on his translation of ‘The Loom of Youth’ into Arabic, or so he claims. They stay away until Easter, when the visitors come back to the village, and Eric needs to open up and sell a few bibelots. I would like to have gone away myself for a few weeks, but funds, alas, are as low as ever. When is the arts establishment in this country going to wake up to the plight of the gentlemen poet? Before her mysterious disappearance five years ago, my wife Mimsy and I used always to enjoy spending a few weeks after Christmas with dear old Robert Graves and his ménage in Majorca. We were great friends. I’ll always remember Robert’s habitual greeting as the donkey train delivered us to his bodega, ‘Quick, hide, it’s the bloody Spumes again!’; his characteristic foul temper masking a deep affection. One thing people forget about Graves is that he was an excellent performer on the blues harmonica. He loved to play ‘Una Paloma Blanca’ and other traditional Majorcan airs for Mimsy to dance along with. Now, alas, Graves has bade adieu to all this, Mimsy is Lord only knows where, and I can’t help wondering how long can old Spume be for the world? George in The Turks Head said I have Seasonally Affected Disorder, and I need to get under an electric sunbed like that Kilroy-Silk man. I said I’d rather feel a bit under the weather than look like the desiccated stool of some nightmarish denizen of Hades. Our father was a Mosleyite, of course, so we know all about that.
But Sir Leslie and Eric’s return from Tangiers presages the return of life to Botolph St. Otto, and as the primroses peep shyly from the tangled banks, I feel the old sap rising, and am to be found wandering the lanes around the village most afternoons, my only companion a hazel switch plucked from the hedgerow. Hares gambol in the fields. Songbirds rise in the newly washed sky, melodies of love tumbling from their throats. On one such perambulation, Mrs Caroline Peach, headmistress of the Botolph St Otto Church of England Primary School swished past me on her sit up and beg bicycle. And, O Joy of Joys, between the top of her Wellington boots and the edge of her skirt, I caught a glimpse of bare knee! And was that the promise of a dimpled thigh? I hugged my cape around me, transported. Could this spring hold the ecstasies of passion for Hilary Alaric MacFaddean Spume and Mrs. Caroline Peach? Dare I hope? In the library after dinner, I started a sestina, entitled ‘How bare your legs against the sky’. I shall send it to Mrs Peach when it is finished. Anonymously I think might be best, in view of the sharpish letter I received from her solicitor last time I sent her a poem.
One of the joys of country living as spring arrives is that ones pals feel the call of nature, and can be lured from the city for a weekend away. I was greatly cheered recently by a visit from one of my young friends, Ritchie Edwards of the pop group Manic Street Preachers. It is a little known fact that several ‘pop’ lyricists have found their way to Spume’s door over the years. Although my input to their work has been but rarely acknowledged, many of today’s tunesmiths will admit in private to a helping tweak here and there from my experienced hands. Both ‘Motor Cycle Emptiness’ and ‘Motown Junk’ were worked up one wet afternoon in front of the fire at Botolph Hall, more years ago now than I care to recall. Ritchie being very much in funds, I suggested that we enter the quiz at the Turks Head. Leslie had given our redoubtable housekeeper Mrs Cutler the night off, and she joined our team; not for nothing am I described as ‘A Man of the People.’ Old George at the pub keeps a bottle of Wincarnis behind the bar for her, but you have to try and keep her to just the two glasses, or she can get flashbacks. I do like to have her on the team, however, as she is an expert on the television. I do not watch it myself, of course, except for the news, documentaries, nature programmes, films, soaps, reality shows and quizzes.
To my horror, the second round of the quiz was on cricket, but young Ritchie surprised me by revealing that he is a Member of Glamorgan Cricket Club; you never can tell what pop musicians get up to after they have faked their deaths. Ritchie told me that Kurt Cobain keeps rare breeds of poultry, and that Sid Vicious has just published a monograph on Norwegian lichens. With Ritchie’s knowledge of county cricket, Mrs Cutler handling questions on politics, history and science as well as the dreaded gogglebox, and yours truly covering the literary arts, we held our end up most respectably, and came third. We won a fiver; since young Ritchie is alright for a few bob, and Mrs Cutler has no need for cash, they were kind enough to insist that the fiver should find its way into Spume’s somewhat depleted coffers. I shall invest it wisely; a chap in the pub has given me a sure thing in the 3.15 at Lingfield next Tuesday.
The end of May will find me packing my trunks once more for the annual Festival of Literature in Hay-On-Wye. Last year I somewhat disgraced myself. Invited to talk on the subject of socialist poetry with dear old Harry Pinter, I arrived a little early for the talk, and found myself in the saloon bar of The Blue Boar, where I spent a most pleasant late morning, afternoon and evening in the company of some roofers from Chepstow, who had just been paid on completion of a job of work, and whose free-spending habits reconfirmed my commitment to the working class.
Unfortunately, a pork pie I took for my lunch must have disagreed with me, because by the time of the talk, at 8 'o' clock, I was most unwell. In fact, I was sick over Pinter's brogues, and had to be helped from the Festival site.
This year I shall avoid taking solids before my appearance. I look forward to reporting in full from Hay in the next issue of ‘The Cotswold Review.’

Rather an odd thing has happened.

Rather an odd thing has happened. All the circumstances of my existence have shifted. It as though Presteigne were a figment of my imagination. Of course, I now realise, all this time I've really lived in the Cotswold village of Botolph St Otto. Our house is not called Phuckwhitt. I made that up.
Its time I stopped living in a dream world. No more lies. Here is a statement of the facts of my life.
You could think of it as a relaunch.
Which it is.
My name is Hilary Alaric MacFaddean Spume, FRSL. I am, as I’m sure you are quite aware, a poet. I am 72 years young. Modesty prevents me from listing my many and various achievements and publications. It was between me, Larkin and Ted Hughes for the laureateship a few years back, but I must say I was relieved when it went to old Ted. Still, every dog will have his day, and it is reward enough for me that I have been described as ‘Britain’s Best Loved Poet’, though the butt of malmsey would not have gone amiss. My most well known poem is still, I suppose, ‘On The Opening Of The Scunthorpe Power Station’, which I’m sure many of you remember from school, as it has been heavily anthologised.
I have been asked to say a few words about my life here in Botolph St. Otto. I live in Botolph Hall with my brother, Sir Leslie Spume, his companion Eric, and our housekeeper, Mrs Cutler. I was born in the Hall, which has been in the possesion of the Spume family since 1543, but for many years I lived in Soho with my dear wife Mimsy. Following her tragic death in a bizarre water-skiing accident off Gozo five years ago, Leslie suggested that I come home to Botolph Hall, a suggestion with which I was pleased to go along. Those of my former companions at ‘The Coach and Horses’ who felt that this return to the country marked some form of retirement have been proved sadly mistaken, as life in the village is an endless whirl of social, familial and cultural excitement. And, of course, I still have my work. I have been a consultant on the film of my life, ‘Hilary and Mimsy’, somewhat in the vein of ‘Iris’ and ‘Sylvia’, which is currently being filmed on location in Torquay. My forthcoming collection of nature poems, ‘Mumbles’ is much anticipated. Botolph St. Otto, far from being a backwater, has revivified me.
Perhaps I should say something about the village, though God only knows from the amount of motor cars and charabancs that clog up the High Street from May till October, it is well known enough already. It nestles in a little valley between Moreton-in-Marsh and Chipping Campden. We have a wonderful 14th century church, St. Otto’s, highly thought of by Pevsner. Of particular note are the magnificent reredos, a fine hagioscope, an unusual piscina, and, of course, the tombs of the Spume family. We have a village hall, built by my grandfather after the First War. We have a 17th century coaching inn (The Spume Arms), and a disreputable ale house, The Turk’s Head. We have two tea rooms, Bumbles and The Old Dairy. We have three antique shops (the best of which, Old Forge Antiques, is run by my brother’s companion, Eric). There is a post office, where I collect the small pension granted me by a grateful nation every Monday, which I use to pay off my slate at The Turk’s Head. The village school, St. Otto’s Church of England Primary, is a hive of activity, presided over by the excellent Mrs. Peach, with whom I am a little in love. On the outskirts of the village, you will find a small supermarket, run by the redoubtable Mr Singh and his family, and also Hancock’s Garage, long established. Most of the houses are built in the characteristic Cotswold honey coloured stone, though there is an unfortunate rash of social housing beyond Hancock’s, on the Moreton road.
Our own modest pile, Botolph Hall, was also much admired by Pevsner. Largely rebuilt in the eighteenth century, it stands in 25 acres of parkland, and is a convenient ten minute walk from the centre of the village. Old Leslie opens it to the hoi-polloi on alternative Wednesdays during the summer. On these days, I usually catch the train from Moreton up to London for the day, to revisit old haunts in Soho. We also host an annual Garden Fete, which I cannot say I enjoy overmuch. Mrs Cutler, our housekeeper, poor old thing, agrees with me, but old Leslie enjoys it, as it gives him and Eric a chance to dress up.
What with jumble sales, beetle drives, safari suppers and quiz night at The Turk’s Head, we stay terribly busy in the village, and I look forward to sharing some of our doings with you over the coming months. I may also, if the mood strikes, take this oppurtunity to publish a few selections from ‘Mumbles’, which I feel confident that you will enjoy!

Still Alive

I'm very much still alive, but for the past fortnight, I have been unable to post, as the power and all lines of communication to the house were cut by the worlds press, in an attempt to smoke Leslie out, so that he would say something about his friendship with Peter. We remained steadfast, (we have a generator in the outhouse, and enough grub to last a year) and yesterday evening the last of the paparazzi left. This morning the gentleman from the telephone company came and re-connected the lines, and bingo! here I am back 'on-line'.
Three weeks worth of newspapers got delivered this morning, and hardly a dickie bird about Peter, Leslie or Michael Jackson, so it looks as though it might have blown over. But I see the Booker shortlist has been published. Leslie was delighted to see Alan Hollingshurst on the list of course, but followers of this blog will be feeling terribly chuffed at seeing David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas make the cut. Some weeks ago, I said that you could get eights about him at Hills; now he's come into evens. I had a pop at that price; even if he doesn't win (which I suspect he will), then at least I (and those of you who took my tip) will have managed to get a bit of value. He's not worth backing at even money, of course, but Sarah Hall is at ten to one for The Electric Michaelangelo, and for my money is the most fancied of this outsiders. I'll have a little hedging bet on her at that price. Most fancied in every sense; she was at Phuckwhitt in the summer, and is a little corker; thinking mans crumpet, if ever there was.

Richard and Judy fiasco.

Well, Richard and Judy have been and gone, and their little film on Phuckwhitt Hall was shown last night. I still think it was a good idea to have them here, despite everything. If only I had drunk a little less at dinner, perhaps I would have managed to resist sliding my hand up Judy's thigh under the table. Perhaps even more pertinently, in view of the current situation re the Leslie/Peter Mandelson/Michael Jackson photographs, it would have helped if Leslie could have resisted sliding his hand up Richards shapely leg. Neither of our overtures were at all welcome, and the couple stormed out, taking the film crew with them. Mrs Evans was most upset, as she had cooked a splendid meal, and had been promised a line of charlie by the cameraman by way of a thank you. Their piece, 'Pervert Hall' did not cast us at all in the light we had hoped for. Far from it. In fact, we are now besieged by the world's press, who are camped around the perimeter. We can't get out to the town for supplies without being asked about Peter. A few of our friends are rallying round, and trying to get fags etc into us. Protest singer Tom Robinson is one such; the darling man turned up this morning with milk bread and gaspers, and says that he's going to stay with us as long as the siege lasts. He is a dear and good man.