If you’re serious about knocking out a book, or anything, really. A mag, a journal, a poem, a song, a Post-It. Whatever it is, you can’t expect to be able to do it if the conditions aren’t up to snuff. I demand the right temperature, the right music, the right biscuits, the right time of day. I sometimes lie awake at night wondering how that old-school bell-end Hitler managed to get his book done in prison. I just can’t wrap my head round that one. If I’m sat in my own excrement in a titchy cell, wearing some kind of dowdy boiler suit, I’m getting fuck all done. I need to be in a comfortable jumper and I need to be able to come and go as I please. Which is precisely why I’ve forked out X amount of money, slapped my fat arse on a train for two hours and squeezed myself into this Airbnb. And believe me. It ticks the boxes.
It really is bliss being here. Just to give you an idea of the kind of place we’re dealing with, it is absolutely riddled with beams. They are low and quaint and have the effect of making me plunge my fist into my hand and whisper the word ‘nice’ every time I become aware of one. The fire is roaring away. The owner – a Charles Moore – must have come up here over the weekend and stooped over his chopping block because there are something in the region of 500 chunks of wood balanced temptingly on either side of the fire, ready to be incinerated for my pleasure. And that is exactly what I’m doing. No sooner have I shat out a paragraph than I plod across to the fireplace and clumsily sling another gnarled log on. And then whoosh! The whole place lights up. And back I go, back to my laptop. Back to my wine.
Whenever you use an Airbnb I think you should feel at liberty to tuck into anything they’ve not locked away. I started by helping myself to a cheeky pinchful of salt last night as I boiled up some pasta for my tea. I firmly believe he’d left that salt out for that exact purpose. But today I’ve made myself much more at home. I’ve lit the bastard’s candles, I’ve infiltrated his wardrobe, I’ve wrapped one or two ornaments in tea towels and squirreled them away into my overnight holdall. I have, as per his welcome pack, ‘made myself at home’. And now here I sit, reclining deep, deep in his sofa, relaxing in a huge pair of his cords, and writing.
Writing, writing, writing. Once or twice I will pause to glug this rich stiff-neck’s wine from a tankard I found hanging above the hearth. Occasionally I will sling another log on or take a dump in the ornate upstairs bog, but primarily I write. Unchallenged, without distractions. I am laying into my intros like a man possessed. I am getting the job done. I am transforming, updating, revolutionising the top and tail of my book. And I thank the advent of Airbnb and the dope they’ve hooked me up with for providing me with the perfect conditions in which to do it.
INTRODUCTION
Writing isn’t easy. People sometimes make the mistake of thinking it is. They make the mistake of thinking any old Tom, Dick or Harry can do it. They look at a book or a text message and they think: ‘I could do that.’ In actual fact they are wrong. Throw these twats a pen and a ream of paper and they’d go pale, a lot of them. Because writing is tough as hell.
Being a writer is, if anything, a curse. Sometimes I’ll spend maybe half an hour, forty-five minutes staring at a blank sheet of paper, my Mitsubishi Uniball Pencil swinging gently above it, clueless as to what I should write. Sometimes, after maybe two hours, perhaps longer, I will rise from my seat and sling my cushion hard against the wall of my study. That’s what it can do to you. It can tear you right up. Then I’ll pick up my swivel chair and smash it down repeatedly on the step next to my French windows. I’ll shout as I do this. Each time I bring it down I’ll yell some kind of grubby obscenity. My hands will be bleeding by this point, like that little twerp from the movie Whiplash, but I won’t care, I’ll just keep smashing my damn chair down with great force until all I’m basically left with is the stem and the wheels. Then I’ll throw that against the French windows. If they smash, they smash. If they don’t, I’ll pick up the stem and the wheels and I’ll go again. If we’re still not making any inroads into the french windows, I’ll take a break. I’ll go and fix myself a coffee, calm down a bit, maybe have a dark chocolate biscuit or some Red Leicester. Then I’ll put on a gardening glove, come back into my study, pick up the stem and the wheels of my swivel chair again, take a huge breath, and then I will make sure it goes through those french windows by any means possible. And when it does I’ll collapse back onto my reindeer-skin rug and I’ll groan.
Writing is hard. I know there are other jobs that are hard. You probably have one. You’re probably standing there in your fire-fighter’s kit right now, leafing through this with your huge heatproof gloves. A cup of coffee on the go, sucking up some verse in between the blazes. I have the utmost respect for your kind. I wouldn’t run into a burning house for all the tea in China. In fact, the merest whiff of smoke and I’m out, off running the other way. Stood in the street in my dressing gown, cheering you brave boys on from the sidelines. And it’s not just you. I could name ten jobs which are universally accepted as being harder than what I do for a living. Paramedic springs to mind. Top chefs constantly tell us about the stress they go through. ‘It’s not all about dunking our fingers in sauces and checking they’re salty enough,’ they say. Then there are things like teachers, trawlermen and florists. Farmers even like to get involved in the debate. The early mornings. The squeeze they feel from the supermarkets. The challenge of staying on top of personal hygiene. Everyone has it tough, I appreciate. But as tough as me? Mmm, that I doubt.
To conjure words from the ether. To lay them down in the right order. To ensure they are original. That they make sense. The constant worry that what you are writing down might be gobbledygook. It’s a huge weight we bear on our shoulders. It’s a measure of how stressful our job is that a lot of us writers have a stress ball on our desk. I’ve had mine for years. I prod it when I’m looking for an adjective. In my darker times I have been known to squeeze it so hard that whatever gloop is contained within has dripped onto my parchment. When I have a deadline, I draw out my craft knife and I stab the stress ball with one hand whilst I type frantically with the other. Show me the equivalent of that sorry little tale within the fire-fighting world. In truth, you won’t be able to.
Not that I am complaining. I wouldn’t have it any other way. I am happy to be a poet. I know that in spite of the difficulties, in spite of the bruises, the sorrow, if I was to jettison this life and set out on a different calling I would fall at the first hurdle. I wouldn’t last five minutes in a bakery, an aquarium, a war zone, a circus or any other workplace you care to throw into the hat. Because I am a poet. For all the horseshit that comes with it, that is the truth of it and something which I cannot, will not, deny. I am a poet, and a bloody important one. And I know I must plough on. And hope that at some stage it monetises.
INTRODUCTION
If you’ve ever put together an anthology of your poems, you’ll know that one of the main things that comes up in meetings and emails is this phrase: ‘Which poems will go into the anthology, anyway?’
That was certainly my experience. From the outset there were long discussions as to which of my poems should go into this book. And, more sadly, which shouldn’t.
I should clarify, nice and early, that the problem with me has never been that it is difficult to scratch together ‘enough’ poems. No, quite the reverse. When it comes to quantity, I have an embarrassment of riches. In fact, I’ve heard it argued that I do better for quantity than I do for quality. Who knows? May be a grain of truth in that. I think there’s a debate to be had, though. One thing that is beyond question is this: I’ve got over 2,000 of the sods. And in other news, I’ve never had any complaints about the quality of any of them.
So where do you start? I remember at the first full English breakfast I had with Nick – the editor of the original hardback, way back in 2011 – he arrived armed with a wad of my poems. I remember him dealing them onto the table and saying words to the effect of ‘These: I like.’ I was piercing my fried egg with the corner of my fried bread at the time and barely concentrating on his activities, but that I do remember. These poems spread across the red and white chequered tablecloth, Nick prodding them with a teaspoon. One