That's to write about it but not to write it. Over the years I have had a love-hate relationship with poetry - mainly hate.
To be honest I haven't written a poem for decades. I used to write lots of them in what could be described as my youth. I used to force write them i.e sit down, decide I was going to write a poem and sit there until I had written one. And of course that was all wrong. They came not from inspiration but from obsession.
And of course that ultimately led to a drying up of poetry for me. A kind of poetry writer's block. 99% of my poetry is absolute rubbish. Attempts to be clever that just backfired in a very embarrassing way. I cringe now when I read them and the only poem I'm even vaguely happy about was one called London which I occasionally read when I give talks about writing.
I always tell the story about myself and my English teacher (I've probably bored you with this one before). His name was Peter Mackintosh and he was a lovely lovely man, loved and respected by all. Peter (or Mac as we called him) decided the sixth formers should publish a poetry anthology and he asked us to submit poems. I don't know why I submitted "The Little Yellow God" but I did. It was and still is cringingly dreadful. For some strange reason Mac liked it. I argued that it shouldn't go into the book because it was rubbish but he refused to leave it out. I suppose it was a reverse argument. Usually it would be a case of having something left out that you wanted included, but not on this occasion. The Little Yellow God made the anthology. I no longer have a copy of that book.
So why am I talking about poetry? Well it comes from a very happy reunion on Saturday. Norwich were playing West Bromwich Albion and I use the word playing advisedly as Norwich's display was awful. Everyone I have spoken to about the match says the same.
But the great thing about this match was I saw a very good friend I was at college with over 50 years ago and who I haven't seen for 20 years. There are some people you just have an invisible bond with.
I hope Bob forgives me for writing about our reunion which was all too brief. He came up from the Midlands for the match, being a Baggies fan (that's the nickname of WBA). We met after the match and, along with wives and my eldest son and his partner we went to the Giggling Squid in Tombland.
It had been very difficult booking a restaurant for our meal. Our first choice is always Saporita - a lovely small Italian restaurant. Despite numerous attempts I couldn't get through. I later found there was a happy reason for this. Owner Veronica has had a baby and so the restaurant is shut until later in the month. She later replied to my Facebook message to give me the reason for the restaurant being shut. They have named the baby Marc. I told them (tongue in cheek) that it should have been named Peter in my honour and she said she would consider that if there is a second one!!!! (smiley face here).
Then we tried the Goulash House which gets very good reviews and somewhere we have wanted to visit for some time but never got round to it (does anyone have a round tuit?). I remember many years ago a local rector in Worlingham in Suffolk writing an article about Round Tuits. It was amusing and he even drew a picture of something that looked very like a 50p piece. He said you could cut this out and use it when you needed to put something off. But I digress as I so often do.
The phone at the Goulash House rang and rang and I eventually hung up and sent them a message. Back came the reply that they have stopped trading. I then tried a number of other restaurants which couldn't accommodate six people at 5.30 pm. Eventually found that the Giggling Squid could.
We first went to a Giggling Squid in Windsor earlier this year. I made a big mistake in ordering a main course that had two peppers by its side. This indicated that it was very hot. I thought it meant it was Vegetarian. It blew my mouth off. I swapped with my other threequarters halfway through.
So I was determined not to make that mistake again. So what has this got to do with poetry I hear you ask? In the words of the immortal magician Paul Daniels "not a lot" but hang on in there.
Paul Daniels was responsible for a sleepless night on one occasion. He had done a numbers' trick on television. It was a good trick. I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about it (isn't it strange what you think about in the middle of the night?). After a while I worked out how it had been done. It was all a matter of mathematics. Can't remember what the trick was now, but I can remember solving it.
This time at the Giggling Squid I had a prawn dish that wasn't spicy.
But back to poetry. My friend Bob is, amongst many other things, a performance poet. He used to run a poetry publishing company. Bob has also written numerous books on boxing. To me the two things don't really go together. Or do they? Wasn't it that great poet Muhammad Ali who wrote the immortal words.
Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee
And didn't he invent the idea of rope a dope which is kind of poetical?
So Bob mixes poetry and boxing and proves that they can go hand in hand. He told me a lovely story about visiting the City Lights bookshop in San Francisco in order to walk in the footsteps of Beat Poets Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Alan Ginsberg. When he got there he found one of his books in the window. That must have been a very special moment. I have spoken at length about my book on the Le Paradis Massacre which I will shortly be sending to the publishers. I don't know when it will be published but when it is I will circle regularly any shop that has it stocked, vaguely pointing and smiling at it in a "I wrote that" kind of way.
I once asked best selling author R.J Ellory (seek his books out if you have never read any of them) whether he takes pride when he walks into a book shop and finds a display of his latest book and whether he doesn't want to say to people "I wrote that" and he said "No I don't."
All I can say is "well I would." But back to my friend Bob who writes poetry and books about boxing. We shouldn't be friends. We were very different characters at college but, somehow, we hit it off. Yes we both loved football and sport, but otherwise we came from different backgrounds. But I would say that over the years Bob has been an inspirational presence for me despite the fact that we rarely meet up (until now).
Over the years I have occasionally turned to his poetry blog and read some of his writings which don't surprise me a bit. They are complex and the kind of thing I would be absolutely honoured to have written.
There's one anecdote I always trot out about me and Bob. An anecdote that probably should have ended our friendship but didn't. Every Wednesday morning at college we went down to Harlow Sports Centre to play football. On this particular day, we couldn't play football as the pitch was waterlogged. So we were told we could play an indoor sport if we fancied. Bob asked me if I played table tennis. I said "yes a bit".
"Can you explain the rules and help me then," he inquired.
"ok," I replied.
So I explained the rules and tried to show him vaguely how to hit the ball. I think you know what's coming. His first three or four shots missed the table rather badly.
"Let's have a game," he said.
"That's a waste of time. He can't even hit the ball onto the table," I thought to myself.
So I served and the first one slammed back onto my side of the table.
"Beginner's luck," he said. The second went the same way. I lost the game something like 21-2. After about four points I realised that I had been (to use a phrase I always like) "hung like a kipper".
Bob admitted that he was a Leicestershire county player. On Saturday I reminded him of this. He apologised 20 years ago and apologised again referring to his 18-year-old self in a rather derogatory way.
Bob said that at college "you were just nice." referring to me.
Now that's a really appreciated comment. I was just being myself and never thought about being nice. The word nice was also used when I resigned from a job in the Midlands working for a news agency. I hated the job and was more than glad to move onto a more suitable one. One of the staff at head office said something along the lines of:
"I'm not surprised you are going. You were too nice for that job."
Anyway a reunion with Bob is a special thing for me (even though it's 20 years since the last one). Over 50 years there has been an unspoken bond between us - one that needs no explaining although I've probably used over 1,000 words to describe it in this blog.
And I must say that whatever he was like in the past, I think my mate Bob is a nice man.
* * *
I have been corrected in the amount it takes to run the East Anglian Air Ambulance which I featured yesterday. The actual cost per year is £15 million which is still a heck of a lot of money to have to raise.