Book Club Boutique: SPACE INVADERS AT STANDON:

With Reference to TOP SECRET MISSION: CODE NAME /BCB SPACE INVADERS AT STANDON: Roger roger. for reading eyes of Boutique control only. destroy upon reading. over. top secret mission accomplished...book club boutique space invading invaded with gusto....world order of books back on... boutique newspapers delivered in dawn raid to camp sites....over...poetry and paper and trees may reside together again in peace once more halleluiah! for now we may sleep safely in our bunks... Hurrah for Standon and Book Club Boutique Space invaders!!!! It is a magnificent blur of gunfire and rockets and starlight and FEMI KUTI and SUN RA and PALOMA FAITH and BARBARELLA and SWIMMING POOL...and GALILEO and BIG RED BALL IN THE SKY...and TUNING FORKS....and BONFIRES and stop that kid singing OASIS aound the camp fire someone PLEASE...and the pumping Tipi...always pump up the volume...pump up the voume...pump...pump...Good work Captain Kelly Davitt for the backdrop and Sargent Sally Dunbar for the visuals and of course Field Marshall General Captain Dan Carrier and his troops for pump up the jam was pumping. clearly. The Tipi looked like a sack of cats tap dancing in a bag of mice from the outside. Brothers and sisters, i can tell you this much and this little, already the trenches where we once fought have been powdered over with seeds and poppies have been planted there...there where you did laugh and dance and raise your hands in the air like you just dont care and cartwheel and handstand and wee... and put boys in an inflatable ball and push them down a hill ha ha... Alex and Juliet and all at Standon we LOVE and salute you and all that fought so valiantly, there where we once rose together from the left bank and charged and where ponies raced and cavorted and jaegermeisters were slugged...already poppies grow there...and innocent children jump on skipping ropes singing your names as though you were folklore. We raise a salute to the BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE heroes and heroines who fought so hard and long: Corporal Kiss and Tell glitterball Paula Varjack, Ground control to Major Murray Lachlen Young, Officer silver bum Annie Brechin, Captain Cockney Tim Wells, Irish Leiutenant Aoife Mannix, Field Marshall Nicholas Hogg, General Gold lame Karen Hayley, The Marquis Andreas Grant, lunatic leftenant Roddy McDevitt, Brigadier Colonel Rachel rock-solid Rayner and not ever forgetting to be thankful to Australia’s lesbian vegan army, who provided transport and cover during a raid of rain at oh one hundred hours when gin and lime was administered by Australias finest, Major Melania Jack and Private Patty Bom. Major Max Doray, your kiss of life kept up troops morale like no other and we salute you too Max, good work soldier, good kissing keeps a good army fighting fit, warming up the lips and tongues so good poems may come forth. On Sunday the sun came out and we were about to drop parachutes with more poet bombs when the Czech’s came on board and sent in allied troops with Captain Katus. Good work solider and thanks for introducing us to the wicked Jamaican man who sang our sunny afternoon away with such beautiful songs. Throughout our campaign we had valiant back up from our very own Janis Joplin, lady laughing trousers, with a machine gun laugh that could be heard most anytime and anywhere, Colonel Claire Nicolson. For highest security reasons and passport control our in-house Oliver Reed, Marcus Downe was on board for general chaoic crowd control, terrorist attacks of saxophone solos should the need arise and it did, often, very very often. This is a letter, written from my private bunker, this is a letter of thanks and gratitude for all who partied so bravely at Standon Calling...such a glorious festival, utterly unforgettable...i give thanks to those who gave the lives of their brain cells and ear drums for the sake of boutique and book and club...thanks to all at Standon Calling.... Next mission the banks of The Big Chill, to campaign the stages of the Words in Motion tent and The Crap Stage...i have a fist full of poems and a truck full of BCB newspapers to deliver.... i will see you there, bring your words mightier than the swords and let us have it, have it, have it...i say anyone seen my other welly? over and out roger roger in out in out shake it all about General Godden beep.beep...

BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE NEWSPAPER OUT NOW PICK UP A FREE COPY IN THE FOYER & BAR OF OUR BASE CAMP DICKS BAR. 23 ROMILLY STREET. SOHO. During the summer of 2009 THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE left the safety of cocktails and Dicks Bar on planet Soho to take books, booze and boogie-woogie to party and perform in England's green and lush fields of Albion and to rock and roll in hay bales at music festivals, and kick ass in Tipis and on literary stages at Kimberly, Latitude, Camp Bestival, Port Eliot, Standon Calling and The Big Chill. This film features magic not-to-be-missed moments such as Salena Godden's 'Imagine If You Had To Lick It' live at Latitude Festival and 'Keith Richards' live at Standon Calling by the fantastic Murray Lachlen Young...among a great many other golden captured snaps of summer carefree bliss for all the family to enjoy! Why go to a festival at all when you can have the essence of festival spirit here and in your very home and all for free! Starring: Paula Varjack, The Marquis Andreas Grant, Murray Lachlen Young, Roddy McDevitt, Annie Brechin, Claire Nicolson, Melania Jack, Patty Bom, Salena Godden, Max Doray, Cobalt Stargazer, Karen Hayley, Tim Wells, Aoife Mannix, DJ Dan Carrier, Sally Dunbar, Kelly Davitt......and many more...and most probably you! Woop! Now show us your wrist band and sit back and relax. Perhaps drink a warm cider out of the tin in your wellington boots with the shower head sprinkling all the family. Then take a sly wee wee up against your neighbours car wheel and slip in a puddle of sick in your flip flop as you enjoy a front row seat at the main stage of...

THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE...GOES CAMPING! CLICK HERE

Camp Bestival to Port Eliot to here....

SOS...sos...SOS...more Bloody Mary's to be administered immeadiately...

For sexcurity reasons i must not divulge my exact coordinates but needless to say i am alive and i made it over the wall and am in a safe house in Kernow...luckily and ironically and excellently...the house is also a pub...TALK ABOUT LANDING ON YOUR ARSE...what luck!...and so to keep in disguise i have gone native and i am forced to drink rum and vodka and cider and sherry and whiskey and beer and cocktail after bloody cocktail like i like it...or something. I am forced to steal sleep. behind my comrades backs. Yesterday i was caught though - apparently i had a power nap in a toilet and i had 40 winks in a graveyard on my favourite tombstone and a delicious little dream on the beach - but even sillier was that then in the middle of a game of pool i literally swept the yellow and red balls away with my sleeve and climbed on the billiards table to sleep, quick cat nap between courses of more fun, sand all over the green felt falling out of my pockets and eyes..mister sandman tap-dancing all over my head. i remind myself of the lion in the wizard of oz and the dormouse at the mad hatters tea party... Oh my darling, then this is one of 'those' summers.

Do you remember 1988 and the invention of ecstacy...liquid acid...timothy leary...1994 and the 25th anniversary of Woodstock? Oh and 2001 and that USA poetry tour and the summer we blew up the twin towers and brought New York to a stand still.....Then the great late ate 8 years and now we are...here the summer of sleep thieves. On the day of our father calls it Friday and at the hour of midnight the LVV army came and busted me out of the concentration camp of Arvon. With papers and passports and passes all ready...we doused the guards with wine and once sedated we made our escape and drove all night, as the song goes...woke up on a beach in Dorset heavily disguised with body odeour and entered the rinse of Camp Bestival. i sang for my supper though and had an awesome gig with the almighty DOCKERS MC and PATRICK NEATE...i love them two i do i do...i love Book Slam...lets have a massive huge mega party... Book Club Boutique V's BookSlam...an orgy of excellent poets and writers and music and baby oil and champagne..oh what a night that would be!!! watch this space that's so got to happen... My life, my life, my life, my life in the sunshine, everybody loves the sunshine...ahhh love love love ROY AYRES...and PJ HARVEY wearing white but that was one dark thundery set , polly was all dark but genius...hey and THE CUBAN BROTHERS gotta love them pants... The next thing i knew we had made it into Portus Eliotus. The PORT ELIOT the true safe haven of lovelies...and across the border into the Cornwall and just in time to catch the beautiful JOE DUNTHORNE, ROSS SUTHERLAND and TIM CLARE. I could be wrong but i do believe we drinked something they call rum and tequila and wine in coca cola but i could be mistaken. One thing i do know is that THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE BAND first ever all-girl line-up rocked the house. i lost my voice entirely and could only hoarsely croak for a whole 9 minutes and MURRAY LACHLEN YOUNG stepped up to give us a kick ass rendition of Keith Richards and the coconut tree poem................help.....losing signal.... ............sorry about that we got cut off.... In Kernow and the electricity is scarce...water is running out too...just turned on the tap and copper coloured whisky came out...i wouldn't normally mind but it makes the booze look funny...so yes Book Club Boutique Band played Port Eliot, first ever all-girl line-up...thank you to all our lovely Port Eliot mates and OF COURSE the LVV army...Private Patty, General Jack and Major Max you fill my life with light and sun and warmth and joy and laughter - i am eterally grateful for all your hard work and efforts...oh shucks...round of applause... That was called Sunday night and now tis the day they incessantly call Tuesday...have read smoke signals that the BCB in SOHO last night, the fantastic NII PARKES gig, the FLIPPED EYE party rocked last night. The next BCB is SEPTEMBER 14TH 'Bak 2 Skool Nite' conker fights, harvest festival, our headline act i reckon DOCKERS MC and a whole load of newcomers and fresher upstarts and new bloods...lets flush them heads down the toilet and nick their dinner money.


NEXT BCB GOES NATIVE...BCB GOES CAMPING...THE BOOK CLUB BOUTIQUE SPACE INVADERS...AT THE ALMIGHTY STANDON CALLING....STANDON IS NEXT WEEKEND...NO WAY? YES WAY? YES WAY...SHIIIIIIIIT!!! That's 5 shows and 2 dozen BCBers all in one killer Tipi and the weather is going to be scorchio, bring your swimming kit, and them wheatfields all golden and lush and a million top cainer buddies too...massive woop! times ten! I really do have to go now before they see me in here. I had to kill someone in order to write this. like really kill them. dead. BRUTAL cornish pasty attack, i bludgeoned the man with a Cornish pasty...there is blood all over the computer and splattererrrrd on the screen...oh no its not blood..its bloody...bloody mary...quick lick it off before they see it...urghhh...imagine if you had to lick it...imagine...right now if you lick your keyboards as you read this it will be like lick licking all universally and licky and all together...lets lick the computer keys...the letter L...lick the letter L...NOW...come on LETS ALL LICK IT...LICK... LICK the letter L....L!!! Lliiiiiiiickkkkkkk it! love.life.live.long.time.alive-o woop woop the s and the g and the b, c, b! xxx

blip blip...Message from Arvon...sos sos...roger roger!

are you recieving me...blip...blip...s.o.s.....blip...hello? is anyone there? a salute to all boutiquers - writing to you from HQ office...Arvon...logging in to say hello to you all at once...to let you know i am still alive...those of you that have been to Arvon will be able to picture me right now...appauling conditions...mess in my pants...in a muddy cell with dry bread and water and broken bleeding nails from clawing at the walls to escape...and it is raining of course....on the border of Wales and the troops are awesome and bright...they have been programmed to be very good writers...i have decided to be like some kind of poetry spy...breaking rules by sneaking poetry through the bars and into young minds... i may be beaten for it, i may be beaten within inches of my life...but i gave the work of Jean Binta Breeze to a young Jamaican girl to make her smile, Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon to a budding war poet and Baudeliare and Richard Brautigan to a great young prose writer and so on it goes and word soead amongst the troops and now they all want specially picked out books. its dangerous and a huge risk to fill young people heads with work from the other side...writing from Dannie Abse, Lorca, Brian Patten or Alice Walker...but i see i have no choice...i have no fear for my own life just the safety of books. The poetry library here is well hidden and stocked with black market and forbidden writing like Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg and even one by Andrew Motion...its unbearable...i am forced to spend almost all day there, reading, writing and teaching.

You'll be pleased to know my dear poetry friends, I have great news...i have seen lots of your books there too, they are safe and intact and they send their love, and i must also tell you that i have quoted your work to these young minds - For example yesterday Patience Agbabi proved very popular with a young lyrical writer who wanted his words to be punctuated and slick as her work is. There are also 20th century copies of Gargoyle and Apples and Snakes anthologies too...we were so young then my dears, so young and free... A long time ago i remember i was free at Latitude and it was a glorious lark. It was a lifetime ago it seems and it rained but that was all part of the show. I remember dancing on stage with Grace Jones kind of...i remember dancing backstage drinking mojitos...i remember performing 'imagine if you had to lick it' jumping on the white sofa in the poetry tent whilst the rain poured outside...Yes, Latitude is a purple haze of laughing and wellingtons and tents and wee wee and nameless bands and DJ's...sheep...cider...woods...yes i remember the dark and light in the woods...and and and...i remember Thom Yorke singing chirpy happy Sunday morning-song...and the last night when Keith Allen was rapped apart, quite literally rapped to pieces by the razor tongued MC Angel. Terrific fun. Eternally grateful and big thanks to the lovely Luke Wright and all the crew for yet another storming Latitudals...long may they reign! Ok i must not stay here too long in this dank communications bunker before the authorities come and check my papers and see i am a poetry affilitator co-operative and not a guard. incidentally i had to kill a guard and steal his uniform to get into this room to type this missive. its important you know this much and this little... they let another writer in last night to read to us ...he said his name was MARK HADDON...author of THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT TIME. He tells me you are still all there in The London and that not much has changed - but i find this hard to believe or fathom - not now i am here in this strange place where trees are trees and books are books. so many trees and so many books and neither one knowing that one needs the other to be...chilling thought. if you do see one of the BCB's tell them i am alive and i always loved them and i always will...

i just have to tunnel out of here towards the great CAMP BESTIVAL on the day they insist on calling Saturday..then there is a tent and a gig and microphone for me like the old free days...apparently there is also fake passes and disguised transport from the LVV army to get me further south to the great PORT ELIOT and where there will be shelter, top buddies and acid rocking blues. i managed to get some signal down in the cow-shed yesterday and broke the code that: PATRICK NEATE'S Jerusalem was launched last Monday to great laughs and joys and drinky's and Nii Parkes and Fliiped Eye are taking over the Boutique next Monday for the last party before we break up for the summer festivals. BACK SEPT 14TH!!!!! aND HOORAHhhhh.... i just managed to unscramble news that The Book Club Boutique representative for the LDM - AMBER MARK's won the LONDON LITERARY DEATH MATCH on Tuesday...SHE WON THE CROWN...BCB WIN THE LDM.....THE BCB RULE...WOOP WOOP WOOP!!!! Do you know what this means in real terms comrades? Why it could mean freedom, it could mean trees and books living together in perfect harmony, it could be the end of paper rationing, it could mean ink for all and pens we can chew again... andi have a dream that one day we will set the books free from these prisons and make them into boats and sail into the sunset... love.life.live.long.alive-o sha-boom this is your captain speaking good work soliders fall in over and out put your left leg in and your right leg out in out in out shake it all about woop woop!

sgx

WAITING AND WANTING

I WAIT AND WANT AND I WISH... it would go faster or at least go as fast as me. I am constantly in a state of frustration. I remind myself of a hot air balloon, full of the gases of expectation and potential but waiting, always waiting, never quite leaving the ground. I would like to examine my relationship with want. I want things. It is this wanting that drives me and can make me distracted, agitated and itchy. It can make me bad tempered. All good things come to those who wait. I must somehow learn to go limp on wanting, on hope and expectation, expect the worst, because wanting, expecting the best, seems to equal waiting and waiting seems to equal an irritability, a boredom and frustration and wishing the time away and then ultimately disappointment. This hunger, I want to let it go, it makes me miserable sometimes. Surely, if you are full of desires you wish to fulfil you cannot be happy here in the present. You are constantly moving the goal posts and never content. I wish I would learn to smell the roses on the way more, to enjoy the journey but I just want to get to the juicy ending. I want to devour the thing, suck out the pips, sink my teeth into the meat and chew on the bones. I wish everyone took all this as seriously as I seem to do. It is not that I am in a rush exactly, but rather I have been wanting for a long, long time and when I want something, I want it now, I want to have it. At night I grind my teeth and I pace my flat in the witching hours, in the dark dawn I lie awake and feed the want with worrying about it. I wind myself up and the gas seeps out of my lungs mixed with cigarette smoke and an air of desperation. It can be exhausting being positive, keeping the belief and faith, keeping buoyant, keeping your head above water. Always chasing things, following things up and following things through and struggling, always the struggling. Pushing and pulling, pushing and pulling, pushing and pulling. Keeping promises, chasing promises. I sometimes feel like an ant trying to drag an elephant to the nest. Or a cheerleader leaping up and down in treacle with chewing gum shoes and pom-pom’s made of glue. I know that this was never going to be that easy or flowing, there is always some hold up, some more waiting to do. Hang on in there! No I don’t want to hang on in there, hanging on in there is just like more waiting to do. And on the telephone don’t you hate the way they always say, bare with me, bear with me? I have never felt like there was plenty of time. In fact I am convinced that there isn’t plenty of time, that we are running out of time. I have always felt like I am running out of time. I wish the world would stop taking its sweet time, time is ticking away inside my head like a bomb. I hate to waste time. Some people would call this impatience, but inside here and underneath me it doesn’t feel like impatience, it feels like a fury and like I spent the years rocking on the same spot, hitting the same piece of wall with my forehead and it kinda hurts now. Do you ever feel like this? Like you are waiting in a cold lonely train station observing everyone else getting their trains, watching them all happily come and go along their merry journeys through life. Do you ever feel stuck? There are days when I feel like I live in a cold train station waiting room. It is OK there, I make friends, I wave hello and goodbye, I wish people bon voyage! I hear peoples stories and I try to learn their lessons. I know some people who have been waiting for the train for as long as me and there is comfort in that too, we swig wine from the bottle and give each other lights. We drink and talk about the ones who are not waiting, the ones on the other side. We tell each other horror stories of how it is to be a-non-waiting-person. People who have stopped waiting and wanting, this really is a nightmare, to have stopped waiting, wanting, waiting, wanting. Deep down, I know there is a train for me one day, but it is taking so long. I sometimes worry that I might fall asleep and miss it, that I already missed it. I worry I might take the wrong train, I worry that I might have to change trains too. In fact, to tell you the truth, I have taken the wrong train before and I had to come back to square root of one so many times. I have listened to bad advice and been told the wrong train times. I have swallowed my pride and accepted these defeats and failures and changed my route all over again. No this isn’t impatience - but more a fear of making those mistakes again - the ones where you know you should have listened to your gut instincts and protected yourself more and waited for the train you dream of, the destination you have in the heart of your mind. I carry my wanting like a full bucket of water. I must carry it myself. I cannot trust anyone else to carry my bucket of water without them spilling some. I carry my wanting for myself. It concerns me that some people just don’t seem to have the same panic or any sense of urgency. Surely, they have their own buckets of want, buckets of weighty water to carry. It feels like crawling in slow motion in a long queue to the moon sometimes. I must learn to let go of all the things I want and stop confusing them with the things I need or would like, or the things I deserve or think I deserve and then I might actually get somewhere. I might get some sleep and cure these insomniac years, these nights crawling the walls and chain smoking. I’m hungry, empty and dissatisfied. Everything, everywhere could do with tweaking and more work, nothing is perfect, nothing is really good enough. It is all quite ordinary, mediocre, at best an eight out of ten. It could all use more love and careful attention. It could all use more passion and dedication. It would be so good if everyone made an effort and pulled together in the same direction for once. The world seems like a slap dash and sloppy effort. It’s half-cooked with lame excuses, we are getting away with it and with as little effort as possible. The world feels shabby like it could use a wipe with clean cloth and some fresh air. My work needs some work and I should work harder, could I work harder? Probably. Maybe if I pretend I want nothing, perhaps if I pretend I never wanted anyone or anything or to be anywhere then something will shift and something will happen. Maybe my train will come, something has got to give, its maths, its science, things cannot remain frozen. Nothing is happening here folks, but more waiting. Waiting for the cheque to clear, waiting for the phone call, waiting for the break and waiting for the storm to pass, waiting to stop being hungry, waiting to feel more and to feel less, waiting to find the way to quench this awful thirst - waiting, waiting, waiting. There is an art to it, you have to go limp, think about something else, then let the waiting do the waiting somehow. Keep busy, keep swimming, keep breathing. What are you doing? Waiting. What are you waiting for? The waiting to stop. But I know when the waiting stops there will be fresh chunk of waiting to do, something else that’s taking longer than it should, someone else that has to catch up, somewhere else to want to go and another train to want to wait for. There is always something or somebody to wait for, to hope for, to long for, to want and desire. How to kill desire? How to dissolve wanting? Am I waiting to wait for nothing, wanting to want for nothing? Like waiting for the dead space, wanting the end of waiting - but to wake up and want nothing, no things, must be the beginning of death, to want for nothing is then maybe another state of yet more wanting and yet more waiting, after all. © 2009. Salena Godden

WALKING HOME FROM SOHO

I had something on my mind, a question begged answering and I was scratching at it. I knew if I caught the bus and got home fast, I’d only lie in my bed staring at the ceiling itching at these ideas - so I decided to walk home. I was striding from Soho, it would take a good hour to get home, but I’d tire myself out, sober up and hopefully find some resolve and solution. I marched stridently and thought hard, conflict in a mental war zone, my brain was firing bullets, rockets of pros and cons. It was 3am and it was then, it was then when I met death. Death wasn’t in a black cloak and pointing a skeletel finger. Death wasn’t old or crippled. Death wasn’t bloody and screaming. Death wasn’t feuding and angry or making a sound. Death was still and cold. Death was a silent girl. She lay in the middle of the pavement on Tottenham Court Road. You couldn’t miss her but no-one else stopped or was stopping. There wasn’t any blood, nothing as colourful as that, no vomit or urine, there was nothing to see. Just the chalky blue of her white lips. Cold, ice cold concrete against her cheek, bitter night air whipped around us both. I bent down and felt her cheek and her face was stone, stone cold. She looked like she had fallen out of a plane. Had she fallen from the roof above? She was bent wrong, her arm was twisted, her legs were bare, her awkward bluish ankles were exposed. She was well-heeled, manicured, mid-thirties, with a blonde expensive haircut and designer spectacles. I was kneeling down, the chill seeped through my jeans and skin beneath. I saw the pavement flat against her cheek, the freezing filthy concrete, so I took my scarf off and put it gently under her head and then I covered her with my coat. I put my fingers under her nose, a pale luke-warm nearly breath, perhaps a breath, it was impossible to tell, my fingers were numb. I felt inside her collar, on her neck and throat and I couldn’t find a pulse or feel any warmth or movement or life. It was then that a man approached in an orange vest from the nearby underground station, Goodge St. Call an ambulance, I told him and as I said that her mobile phone started ringing. It made us both jump. I should answer that? I said, and the tube man nodded yes with his own phone pressed to his ear calling 999. I followed the sound and found it came from her coat pocket. The tone was an actual ring-ringing, not a download of a song and the screen flashed the name Dad over a picture of a child. It was a perfect white-haired boy with chocolate smeared around his grinning mouth, he was smiling out at me with the word Dad flashing. This must be her son, I thought, she must be somebody's mum. I pressed the flashing green button and a voice asked, Where are you?....