BONUS EPISODE: This week, I invited Liverpool based poet Colin Watts to chat about his background, and experience of helping to set up the Dead Good Poets Society of Liverpool. The Dead Goods meet on the third Thursday of the month (except for August) in the MerseyMade Cafe, Paradise Street.
The theme music for this episode is my song "Where the Old Folk Go", my version and Mark Bunyan's orchestrated version.
Thanks for listening. Stay safe
BONUS EPISODE: This week, I invited Liverpool based poet Colin Watts to chat about his background, and experience of helping to set up the Dead Good Poets Society of Liverpool. The Dead Goods meet on the third Thursday of the month (except for August) in the MerseyMade Cafe, Paradise Street.
The theme music for this episode is my song "Where the Old Folk Go", my version and Mark Bunyan's orchestrated version.
Thanks for listening. Stay safe
Flloyd
Thunder's Mouth Theatre presents am I old yet? Except that I'm still presenting this new occasional series of interviews with friends and colleagues of mine, and I'm calling it Are You Old Yet? Hence I've also changed the theme music. I suddenly remembered this song of mine. Never mind. My guest this week is Colin Watt, a stalwart of the poetry scene here in Liverpool. Colin has semi adopted me, I think. He and his wife, Ingrid, they've been very kind to me and really, really supported me and my poetry over the last few years. Colin has had a most really interesting life and we got to chat about it and tell me a little bit about how he and Ingrid met, their journeys overseas and his writing experience of writing.
I'm going to kick off with a snippet of the poem that he's going to read, the full thing of it at the end. It's called The Hang of It. It's typical Colin.
Colin
Maybe one day I shall get the hang of it/The mild and bitter, sweet and sour tang of it,/ the cupid's bow and arrow boomerang of it, /the why you never wrote, never rang of it.
Flloyd
Okay, let's have a natter.
Colin
Okay.
Flloyd
You up for a natter, Colin?
Colin
Yeah, let's go for a natter.
Flloyd
I do remember us having a natter a couple of weeks ago about how neither of us do small talk and then realized we were doing small talk. So, Colin, I've only known you about, what, three years or so? It's just before Lockdown I started going.
Colin
o it's probably more than three now anyway, but not many more than three.
Flloyd
Time keeps passing, even though it doesn't exist. I have to keep reminding myself of that. Right, so, Colin, you've passed your 60th, 70th birthday,
Colin
80th
Flloyd
and your 80th. You're well in with this podcast. Just ridiculous for an idea, but nevertheless, we're doing it anyway. It's an excuse for me to sit down and chat with some mates, all of whom somebody said, but are they all creative? I thought, I don't know anyone who isn't creative. So, Colin, tell us about yourself. Who are you? Where do you come from?
Colin
I come from quite an interesting background in the sense that we were quite well off. People come down in one sense. My dad was, I suppose you'd call him, a small businessman because his mother, who lived in Twickenham, had something like six tea shops and a bakery around that area. And during the Second World War, all but one closed, so she kept that one going, which was next to the bakery. My dad left school at 14 and started work in the bakery and took over the bakery and ran that for a good while. He was obviously quite a good businessman and he bought us a house in a place called Ashford, although that was a little bit later on because I was actually born in place called Staines, where the linoleum used to come from and is now better known, or likes to be known as Staines upon Thames.
But when I was five we moved to this place, Ashford. My dad bought a house there that was like one plot away from a corner and there was another plot down the adjacent, the right ankle road, so over the years he sold as. As we got older and needed less garden space to run around in, he sold one and then the other and so that kept going. I grew up obviously being reasonably comfortable and I got into grammar school first at eleven and then at the age of 13 when my parents decided that I needed to lose my Middlesex accent, I got a scholarship to a public school on the outskirts of London called Mill Hill.
Flloyd
And for our Australian listeners that means private school.
Colin
Private school, yes, exactly. And all that went with that. I think I was fairly lucky there because I certainly wasn't coming from posh background, so I had to of course I didn't have to fight my way physically because I had quite a good tongue in my head and I could make people laugh so I survived that way.
Flloyd
A way with words.
Colin
A way with words, which I still have. Yeah, that's what got me through, really, because I think me and my mate Dave Brown, we were the only two in our year to not be given any positions of responsibility at all, like monitors or prefects or whatever they used to call them, so we were very proud of that
Flloyd
So you should be.
Colin
I've carried that on ever since.
Flloyd
I think I had a slightly similar experience in that I ended up going to boarding school at the age of nine, because where we were, family had moved up to Papua New Guinea and there were no secondary schools there. So my sister had been sent off to boarding school and it was decided that I should join her. So I went. And it was a church school run by Anglican nuns, but it was largely middle class, upper middle class 'gels' who were there, and I just felt completely out of place and also, I suspect, got through being the clown.
I also was never made a prefect because I was always getting into trouble, I was always getting blamed for things I wasn't involved in, which I thought was fascinating. Why did these people, the teachers and the nuns, think that I was capable of leading? They told me I was a leader.
Colin
Nothing to do with class at all.
Flloyd
Nothing to do with class, no. And I had been nowhere near these nefarious activities that these girls have been getting up to, leaping over the fence at midnight. But anyway, so, yeah, that was my boarding school story so let's talk about this way with words that you have. What did you do when you left school?
Colin
I signed up for what was called a thick sandwich course
Flloyd
Wow!
Colin
In electrical engineering, which meant you did a year with a company, basically as an apprentice, actually, and then the three year university, college, three year university course, then another year with the firm, and then over to whatever happened after that. I decided there was one of those moments when I'd done the first year. And that was great. I really enjoyed it. I mean, so stupid. I don't do stuff like that now. We actually we spent a year as an apprentice learning how to weld, working with old guys on these massive pieces of electrical equipment, making stuff by hand.
It was great. But then I got to university and I was in the halls of residence and I had a broken table lamp, which I thought I'll be able to mend this. So I borrowed another person's table lamp that they weren't actually using and got a bit from that and tried to mend the other one. And I realized I ended up with two broken table lamps and decided at that moment that the career in electrical engineering was not for me.
Flloyd
Right.
Colin
So I changed to civil engineering.
Flloyd
Yeah.
Colin
So obviously then I didn't do the final year with the company because I wasn't doing electrical engineering anymore. So that all changed. And I can't believe it. In those days when this must have been 1960, 1968, something like that, nobody that I knew who was leaving university at that time had less than two—fewer than two jobs to go to.
Flloyd
Wow.
Colin
I decided I'd like to work in a planning office. So I contacted Newcastle upon Tyne and got offered, I think, a trainee planner or something. So I spent a couple of years there and that was again great, because I'd a really good boss who was an architect. And he said, you don't learn about planning sitting in the office planning things. You learn about planning by going out, walking the streets of Newcastle, seeing what it's like, seeing what's happening, seeing what's right, seeing what's wrong. Then you can come back and now, start doing planning.
Flloyd
How insightful.
Colin
Brilliant. That was just great. Lots and lots of tramping through the streets of Newcastle was wonderful. And that's where I met Ingrid. Not on the streets in Newcastle. One of the things I did when I was there was amateur dramatics and I was, I joined this thing called People's Theatre, it was very well known. And I got a part in a play called Little Malcolm and his struggle against the Eunuchs.
Flloyd
Yes.
Colin
And I had the role of Dennis Nipple, the failed poet.
Flloyd
Right.
Colin
And at the After play party, I met Ingrid, she was there with somebody else.
Flloyd
Yeah.
Colin
And we just sort of took off from there, really. But then I decided that as I was working as a planner, I ought to be one.
Flloyd
Fair enough.
Colin
I applied for a master's in University College London, moved down and actually, they obviously couldn't decide whether town planning was an art or a science. So I got an M. Phil, which is a Master's in Philosophy. So presumably they decided it was more philosophical than either artistic or scientific.
Flloyd
But anyway, that's why I think philosophy is very artistic.
Colin
Anyway, and then we decided that—I can't believe that pretty well every weekend I went back up to Newcastle by getting the train out to North Circular and standing at the bottom of the M1 with the thumb out, and I could guarantee to get to Newcastle within a few hours.
Flloyd
Wow.
Colin
Nobody hitchhikes anymore.
Flloyd
No. We're so afraid.
Colin
Maybe it was a daft thing to do, but nothing dangerous ever happened, apart from one driver that I had to talk at in order to stay awake. We decided we're going to stay together. So Ingrid moved back down to London. We stayed in various places, got married, and when I finished the town planning course, we decided we'd like to go abroad. So I wrote to various planning consultants and I got a letter back saying, if you phone this guy such and such a time, we'll see what's possible. So from a phone box somewhere near where we lived in South London, I phoned this guy up and he said, "how would you like to go to Kuwait?"
Flloyd
Right.
Colin
Yeah, fine. Okay, we'll do that. I kind of vaguely knew where it was and, yeah, it was in the Gulf of the Middle East, but nothing at all. So we went to Kuwait for a year.
Flloyd
A year?
Colin
Yeah. And it was just one of those—well, that whole time, like it is for so many people, was really formative. Not so much in the sense of the work, although that was really interesting because what the Kuwait government was asking was for us, as town planning consultants, to make them a plan for Kuwait in the best Western tradition.
Flloyd
Right.
Colin
So we did that, and that finished shortly after I'd arrived and we got a contract to do a new town further down the coast. And so, ironically, what we tried to do was actually take all the best of Arab ways of doing stuff that respond to the climate. So it had wind towers and all sorts of things.
Flloyd
Great. So, I mean, what I'm getting from your early life experience Colin, is I'm getting some kind of an insight into why your poetry is so broad reaching. It's not about the subjects, but the attitudes and the ideas that you bring to it. So rich, rich in obviously, in human experience...[PAUSE] I thought it was my hearing aid squeaking, but no, it's the bin men. Okay.
Colin
Binman creaking.
Flloyd
Bin men creaking. Well, this is life as she is lived. We are here in Liverpool, very close to the city centre, and life goes on. And, yes, the bin men come on a Wednesday. Got to love it. So there you are in Kuwait a year, doing all the right things, by my book, anyway.
Colin
Yeah, what we did, what we decided to do, and I probably got paid about the same as I would have got paid in the UK, but we paid no tax, so actually we were pretty well off.
Flloyd
Yeah.
Colin
And after the twelve months, we decided we're going to take another year off and travel. So we must have been—must have been one of the few people to actually travel the Hippie trail when we were actually married.
Flloyd
I know what you mean.
Colin
So we bought a second hand four wheel drive vehicle off a Bedouin in the market. Fortunately, we knew someone really good thinking, Yemeni, I can't remember who, was a mechanic, so he advised us on, and it was brilliant because he'd been using it in the desert, so he'd had extra fuel tanks put it in the back, so it had a massive range of tunnels. Because, of course, what we ended up doing, we took off. We went through Iraq and Syria, through the middle of Afghanistan, and through the whole of Iraq, from Harat through to Kabul in the northeast.
There was one petrol station.
Flloyd
Wow.
Colin
Through the whole country.
Flloyd
We're talking about oil countries.
Colin
We're talking about oil countries. Of course, Afghanistan is not an oil country.
Flloyd
No.
Colin
And everyone said you're mad. You can't possibly do that, it's dangerous. There's robbers, there's pirates, there's bandits. But we made a point of wherever we saw anybody waiting on the side of the road, we'd give them a lift. So I don't know whether that helped, but certainly we never saw any bandits, or if we did, they were very friendly.
Flloyd
It kept you in contact. That's a case of yet another year.
Colin
Yeah, another year. And moved on, we went to Nepal, and that was an interesting time, because that was when the first Pakista-India War started. While we were there, we planned to go to what was then Calcutta, but couldn't go because of the war. But nobody knew about it. Apparently, when the announcement was made, the Crown Prince of Nepal was going through the middle of Kathmandu on an elephant, so they had to take the power lines down in order because of the height of the elephant, and nobody knew. I'm sure that's apocryphal, but it's still great. It's a good story, isn't it?
We carried on through India, we saw troop movements on the main roads, and then got a boat back to Kuwait. After that. After the year Ingrid came back to England for her brother's wedding, I stayed on to sort our affairs out, and again came back overland most of the way.
Flloyd
Yeah.
Colin
And so we were back in the UK.
Flloyd
Oh, wow. What a change.
Colin
What a change. And I'm sure that—I'm sure you're right. It's that breadth of experience.
Flloyd
Yes, absolutely. Formative question that pops into my mind, because I'm doing a lot of this thinking back at the moment, comes and goes, but how do you feel about going back and revisiting life before whatever your childhood memories and that kind of thing.
Colin
I don't know. I don't do it very much.
Flloyd
No.
Colin
Interestingly. Physically, there's one thing I would like to do, because the town that we designed in Kuwait never got built. Oh. Until I heard I don't even know how I heard about ten years ago that they went ahead with it. So goodness, 30 or so years after the original plans.
Flloyd
Yeah.
Colin
They've actually built it.
Flloyd
They've built it.
Colin
The Writing on the Wall event that I went to last night, the poet Sean Street there. And for purposes of people, it was a really interesting event because it was poetry mixed well, poetry supported by a really good musician on the guitar, on work that he'd written beforehand in order to—when he'd been reading the poems. But many of the poems were about Sean's childhood experiences, but formed, made into a poetic form and very moving. A lot of it. Occasionally I've written things about what happened, but not a lot.
Flloyd
No. You always strike me as someone who's very much in the present.
Colin
Yeah. And I don't know how much I suspect that this simple thing about having studied town planning, you're always thinking about how do you get from here to there?
Flloyd
Right.
Colin
I think about that a lot. And maybe too much, actually. I mean, you think I live in the present, but I'm also all the time I'm thinking what I've got to do next? What I've got to do next? Think I'm a bit hyperactive. Anyway.
Flloyd
Yes. I've got a sticky that I put up on my screen, but it's a quotation from some famous thinker who says, oh, no, it's Lao Tsu. He says, if you're unhappy, you're living in the past, if you're anxious, you're living in the future. Why not just live in the present?
Colin
Absolutely. Because I do think I have low levels of anxiety. But they are there. I think that's about that thing about 'what have I got to do? What's going to happen?'
Flloyd
That's interesting. And have I said? This is probably an appropriate time for me to hit you with the big question, are you old yet?
Colin
Yeah, it's the 'yet'. That's a funny word isn't it? It's as though I have some control over that.
Flloyd
Yeah, I know, it's a stupid question.
Colin
And of course, it measures the measurement of what is old. The cultural measurement of what is old changes anyway.
Flloyd
Yes.
Colin
So culturally, I'm at an age now where 50 years ago, there's no question I would have reached this age. If I'd been 80, 5000 years ago, I would be one of the very few miraculous people who managed to survive to that age. Now, being 80 is almost normal. Almost normal. Although, interestingly, in this country, because of things that we all know about, the life expectancy has actually dropped slightly.
Flloyd
Yes. And statistically, the last time the figures that I was looking at was the age expectancy average for men is 80. And women is about 85 so in that sense we are technically old but this is my point: no one will allow us to say that about ourselves. No, you say, oh, no, you're not old oh, you're so good for your age and I just find it deeply patronizing. What is your attitude to this whole thing about age and aging?
Colin
I'm not stupid enough to think that you can ignore and fight off what you might call the ravages of aging, but you can do a lot. You can exercise, you can eat properly. You can think positively. You can relax. You can do a load of things that doesn't stop your body aging, because that's a physical thing that happens. But it does delay the process, I think, and it does allow you to accommodate. There are things to do with hearing aids, arthritis. I'm less, less manual fortunately, one of the best things I ever did I learned to touch type. I went to Sight and Sound. There was me and about 50 young women in a hall with music in the background and I can still do it.
And the good thing about touch type and this is interesting I don't know it's a similar side but apparently keyboards were designed, typewriter keyboards were designed and they just slowed people down so that's been great and great for the writing absolutely.
Flloyd
So when did you start writing poetry in particular? Or was there other stuff that you were writing before?
Colin
Yes, in my forty's, I think, I can't even remember why, I started writing short stories for one form another. I sent some off to the BBC and didn't get them accepted, but I think it was this way around. Yeah, they said they "really liked that one. It really sounds more like a play than a story." So I joined up with this theatre group in Liverpool. We were in Liverpool by this time. They were called Network Theatre and I did some writing for them, had a few plays on. I met a few people who also wrote poetry. And I think I sort of got into poetry.
Flloyd
Right. Have you published some poetry?
Colin
Yeah, a couple of pamphlets and two collections but nothing for ten or more years now. I decided, rightly or wrongly, that I would get back into writing short stories about about ten years ago.
Flloyd
Okay.
Colin
And I did and it was fairly successful. I got quite a few. Didn't have a book published, but I had a lot of stories published online in magazines. And then I turned back to Poetry about four years ago and it didn't really happen. So I did some courses with this organization called Life Canon, which is a poetryreally good poetry organization in London. They run different courses. That got me going again. But I thought, I've got to do this on my own. I can't just go— carry on going on courses. Even though they were very reasonable, very good.
But now I'm sitting here thinking, and I don't know how much it was to do with the pandemic. But some people found they could write, then some people found they couldn't. Yes, I couldn't. I've been really tied up with the climate crisis and been trying to write about that, and I just wonder whether I've been too intellectual about it to make decent poetry. And I've got some good poetry out of it.
Flloyd
Yes, you certainly have. I've heard it,
Colin
and it's where do I go from here now. I don't know.
Flloyd
All right, well, let's just backtrack a little bit again.
Colin
Yeah, go on.
Flloyd
How did you get involved with the Dead Good Poets Society of Liverpool?
Colin
Right. When I started writing poetry, I went to poetry events. There was one with Pilgrim Pub in Liverpool. I went there and met a load of people. It was a good evening, but it kind of didn't quite work, we thought. So a bunch of us decided we'd try and set up something on our own. David Bateman, who's still around, wanted to call it the Evil Dead Good Poets. In the end, I think we made the right decision and just said, it's going to be the Dead Good Poets after the film The Dead Good Poetry. And so we set up and I think we actually might have started at the Pilgrim, but we went all over the place.
The dining room upstairs at the Philadelphia was good for a while. At the Trade Union Centre on Hardman Street. We ended up after jumping around different places in the Everyman Bistro as it was before they refurbished. It was all closed down so we needed a place. And Leslie, who managed the catering of the old Everyman Bistro, took over catering at Blackbourne House Cafe downstairs. So we went with her.
Flloyd
Right.
Colin
And we were there for probably ten years until very recently, when, for various reasons, they they closed in the evenings. Except for major events.
Flloyd
Yeah.
Colin
And we're not really a major event. No, we are in our terms, but not in there.
Flloyd
Yes, exactly.
Colin
So we had to find somewhere else. And fortunately, Greg was one of the stalwarts, along with Flloyd here, discovered this arts craft center cafe called MerseyMade on Paradise Street. Just on the edge of Liverpool One.
Flloyd
Absolutely, yeah.
Colin
Very comfortable. We were trying various places, I won't mention, but they were trying to charge us hundreds of pounds for an evening.
Flloyd
Oh, I know.
Colin
MerseyMade offered us for free on the understanding that the cafe would stay open and we'd buy drinks and snacks.
Flloyd
Terrific. And it's on the third Thursday of the month, every month except for August. And it kicks off at 7:30. All you have to do is rock up, say if you want to read some poetry of your own, or if you just want to listen. We love it. Now, I had another something that popped into my head that I thought would be useful for us to talk about and I can't remember what it was. Why? What— I know! Do you have a poem of your own that's in your head that you could simply pour out for us? I never bother learning them.
Colin
I've never been into learning them. I've a bit of one, of a poem called Getting the Hang of It, which is, maybe one day I shall get the hang of it. Mild, bitter, sweet and sour tang of it. Sweet and sour tang of it. The dum de dum de dum the why you never wrote and never rang of it.
Flloyd
Oh, now I want to hear it.
Colin
Okay. So I'm gonna— I've got it! You want me to read it?
Flloyd
Yeah.
Colin
Think it's in my backpack.
Flloyd
Okay, good.
Colin
Can't believe yeah.
Flloyd
Pause. Where's the pause button?... [PAUSE] I'm going to ask if you'd read us one of your poems from your —you call that a pamphlet?
Colin
Yeah.
Flloyd
Because it's quite small and neat and beautifully contained. Okay. Over to you.
Colin
Right. This is the title poem of the pamphlet. It's called "Getting the Hang of It". Maybe one day I should get the hang of it./ The mild and bitter, sweet and sour tang of it, /the Cupid's bow and arrow boomerang of it. /The way you never wrote, never rang of it. /The chalk and cheese, the hard, soft yin and yang of it./The Ego, Id, the Sigmund Freud and R.D. Lang of it. /The Adam evolution and orangutang of it./ The lock, stock, barrel and big bang of it. /I hope to say before I die, despite the pang of it,/ I've held it in my arms and not just sang of it.
Flloyd
That's just beautiful. And I'll tell you what, when you got to about halfway through, I thought, I want orangutang of it. And there it was. Fantastic.
Colin
And there's one of those stupid things that it took me half an hour to write that.
Flloyd
Yeah.
Colin
I just got the phrase getting the hang of it. And I thought, Right. What rhymes with getting the hang of it? Now, it took a long time to shape it.
Flloyd
Yes.
Colin
But as a Boom, yeah, it just came.
Flloyd
And that is what the human brain does, and that is what so called artificial intelligence will never be able to do. But we won't go there.
Colin
And I think I've lost the confidence of that.
Flloyd
Yeah.
Colin
Which is a shame.
Flloyd
It is a shame. I want you to have it back.
Colin
Yeah, so do I. Yeah.
Flloyd
Long walks. I find I have to do several long walks before the brain actually goes. Oh, why don't I just say that? All right? I'll just say that and then it starts to come. Yeah.
Colin
I think I'm going— I know this sounds strange— for my birthday, Bill, who does used to do the Radio Merseyside, but I've known him, for a long time, gave me a book, Pocket Haiku and Ingrid and I read one every morning at breakfast.
Flloyd
Oh, wow.
Colin
And I think I'm going to write now. Maybe that's good to say this publicly. I'm going to write a haiku every day.
Flloyd
Wow. Now that's ambitious.
Colin
At least one a week.
Flloyd
Yeah.
Colin
Or one before Christmas.
Flloyd
Yes. I do find, as you know, I hate it when you say the theme of next week's meeting.
Colin
Oh, I know. Yeah.
Flloyd
I don't want to write to a theme, but actually, when I force myself to just get on with it and have a go, something always happens.
Colin
Yeah. Well, when we said, right, the theme for next time, it must have been at the end of 2022 would have been Limericks for the year.
Flloyd
Yes.
Colin
And so I did three. You did three. You did at least 3 turned it into a song
Flloyd
I'm going to be performing it tonight up. I've done another three for 2023, which I had to warp, because, as you know, my gripe with having to start with the line "In the year of 2022", as it was 23, it doesn't scan properly.
Colin
No, it doesn't.
Flloyd
So you just have to live with the inconsistency.
Colin
Absolutely.
Flloyd
Fabulous. I love it. Yeah. Okay, Colin, thank you so much. It's been great. There's a whole gap now in your life story that I still want to get to some other time. But in the meantime, thank you so much for being part of this.
Colin
Well, thanks for the invitation. I made no preparation at all. I thought we'll just see what happens.
Flloyd
Well, neither did I!
Colin
Good. Well, that's spontaneous combustion.
Flloyd
Absolutely. That's what it's all about.
Colin
Well, thank you.
Flloyd
Cool. My pleasure.
Flloyd
Well, there we are. I hope you've enjoyed that little tramp down memory lane with myself and Colin. A little bit of insight into poetry life here in Liverpool. Next week, quite possibly, we'll have something different again. Who knows? We've got a—variety is the spice of life, so they say. In the meantime, do think about, if you're enjoying the podcast, how you can support me in my lonely crone cottage here by first and foremost, spreading the word, telling your friends about the podcast, see if you can persuade them to have a listen. Secondly, funding is always a problem, so if you can donate the price of a cup of coffee at buymeacoffee.com/amIoldyet, or you may like to become a patron over at patreon.com/AmIoldyet, all sorts of extra benefits for patrons.
Okay, that's it for now. Stay safe and thanks for listening.
Flloyd
[SONG] Should I go? Where? /I don't know. There / has to be some place I'll never outgrow. / Maybe it's nearby, / Maybe in time I'll / Understand why it's so / That I'll never compliantly go / Where the old folk go.