Britain's Got Poetry

If you had gone down to the woods today, you might have got a big surprise. Well, not the woods exactly, beside the woods...in the Walled Garden at Culzean Castle. Sheila, Rowena and myself were performing at the Poetry Picnic as part of the Burns an a’ that Festival. What’s more, Sheila was on time. Kinda. She was at the castle gates, Gillian, dead on 12. The afternoon turned out really well. All in all we had around 40 people sitting around us with their munchies as we read poems to them.
Again it was a pleasure to read to an appreciative audience, a good few of whom were new to such an event. One guy approached Sheila after we had finished and I heard him say, ‘I hated poetry when I was at school.’ Then he continued by saying that he didn’t know poetry could be so interesting and such fun and we had given him a whole new perspective on it.

Job done.

For the record, I shouldn’t single out Sheila as the late one. Yes, she was late for the same event last year, but the week before that we were performing at the Whisky Festival in the town hall...and I slept in. I didn’t even have the excuse that I was out the night before.
I heard a knock at the door that morning. I flung on my dressing gown, knuckled the sleep from my eyes as I stumbled down the stairs and opened the door. I expecting the postie to be delivering a book, instead I opened to door to a shiny, bright Rowena. Dear reader I swore. I think my words were along the lines of, ‘What the f ...?’

She had the good grace to laugh, and she told me it was 11:30. She left and I ran upstairs to shower and shave. Apparently, and I find it hard to believe that she would behave in such a manner, Sheila whooped with laughter all the way into town.

Comeuppance, is a word with a lot of vowels, dear reader, but that’s what happened when the very next week, the divine Miss T (Sheila) was late for the Culzean picnic. I was gracious when she arrived. I only pointed and laughed for like thirty seconds.

Today wasn’t the best day for a reading in these parts as it was the last day of the football season. Mind you, given the way it turned out I was glad I hadn’t watched any of it. Gutted. Never mind. There’s always next year.

I finished the day off by watching Britain’s Got Talent. I blame Hughie Green. Growing up watching Opportunity Knocks has made me a sucker for all these talent shows. In any case, I felt the right two got through to the final. The dance group Diversity were fantastic, great fun and a credit to their families (god, I sound like an old fart) and a big two-fingered salute to all of those people who complain about teenagers being useless. They were an absolute pleasure to view and I could have watched them for hours. Susan Boyle gave me goosebumps. I had this horrible feeling that she was going to fall flat on her face – how could she live up to all that hype - but after a “pitchy” start – well that’s what Randy The Dawg Jackson calls it on American Idol – she got into her stride and the bumpy skin stuff happened.

(photo from Brian Craig)