Getting down with the Southend Cru

[23daves]

In another off-the-cuff last-minute decision, I went to Poetry Unplugged at the Poetry Café last night to try out some new material. PU has never been one of my favourite nights - the Poetry Café is a small, cramped and stuffy space right next door to Dave Stewart’s “Hospital”. More to the point, the sheer volume of writers wishing to air their

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[prosepina]

Hrmmm. I had to stay in Southend once for work. It was in all, a bizarre and surreal experience, not helped by the fact that we managed to get hopelessly lost amidst the suburban streets. It felt like a featureless, lifeless version of Portsmouth. It also housed possibly the coldest B&B I have ever slept at in my life.

Nothing but nothing matched the horror of Stoke-on-Trent though.

[23daves]

Actually, when I moved to Portsmouth as a student I was genuinely excited by how lively and full of character it was! Southend is utterly dead in comparison.

I also manage to get lost in the suburban streets even where I grew up - to make them interesting, town planners decided to build them so that they all curved around, backed on to each other, ran in loops, etc. They felt this would be a "psychologically stimulating" environment. Said idiots failed to realise it's also damn confusing, and some cultural outlets might have been psychologically stimulating as well, unless you're a curvy backstreet fetishist.

Nice to see that it's now the second best place for pensioners to settle in the UK, though (according to the Daily Mail). I'd rather slash my wrists and get it over with than spend my last days waiting for Mr Death in Southend. Hell, I'd rather retire to Portsmouth, but it takes all sorts I suppose.

[cloggedthought]

Nah, weren't me. You should post some poems sometime soze we could read 'em.

[23daves]

At the moment, even getting around to posting a livejournal entry seems to be a challenge enough.

It's something I'll think about, but to be honest I'm determined to put up some sort of proper website at some point in the next six months... or year... or whenever. The poetry doesn't always work very well in text form, and it's much more likely that I'll put some MP3s up. I know someone who has bootlegged (for his own personal use) two of my readings with some very expensive equipment, so I'll be trying to track him down soon.