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