The Japanese lady seated in front of me on the 9.45 out of Lime Street has blonde wavy hair. Unusual, that, in a Japanese lady. As she turns to look out of the window I notice, too, that she has blue eyes. Large, quite rounded. When the inspector arrives to examine her ticket, she asks what time the train will arrive at Newcastle. Her accent is unmistakably Geordie. Perhaps she is not Japanese after all? That’s the mysterious north-east for you, things are never quite what they seem.
On 27 November 1972 I took the train from Liverpool up to Sunderland, changing at Darlington, to read in a jolly venue above a pub. The Londonderry Hotel was heaving with students from the local art college and afterwards half of them came back to the house where I was staying and partied until the sun rose above the Wear. The next morning I stepped over the bodies huddled on the floor and made my way to the station.
(I want you to give the following paragraph your fullest attention, because although the detail may seem wearisome and irrelevant, there may be questions later.)
At the ticket office, as well as my single to Newcastle, I was given two travel vouchers worth 5p each to travel on Tynerail, as well as a programme of events for Tynerail’s forthcoming ‘Festival of Music 1972’. On arrival at Newcastle I was handed an orange-and-white plastic bag with a metro map printed on each side and the slogan ‘Come shopping on a Tynerider train’. Having time to spare before my connection to London, where I had a meeting later in the afternoon with my publisher in Bedford Square, I wandered around the concourse and bought the Daily Express (price threepence) and a packet of Wrigley’s spearmint chewing gum. At 10.12 I boarded the train for King’s Cross.
Whenever I’m performing out of London I will stay in a decent hotel and I look forward to it, the chance to relax as best I can before going along to the theatre for the sound and lighting check. Perhaps I will have a swim. After the show I’ll go back and unwind with a light supper and a glass of wine in my lonely but luxurious room. It’s partly because I don’t drive that I usually stay over after a gig rather than rushing back home, but it’s mainly because I find it more relaxing.
Not all poets do, and most musicians will have the gear loaded in the transit van and be on the motorway before the audience have reached the foyer. But of course, I’m older now and can afford to take some of the pain out of being on the road. But ’twas not ever thus.
People who organise readings in small venues will often invite the visiting poet to stay overnight with them, not only as a way of keeping costs down, but for the chance to spend a little time getting to know someone whose work they probably admire. For the poet though, it can be a minefield. One series of readings I made in the seventies I still refer to as the ‘Bathroom Tour’ because when the lady who was showing me around her neat, suburban house came to the bathroom she said:
‘We’ve had them all staying here, you know. All the poets. Good ones like that G***** ******. Do you know, he left this bathroom spotless, you wouldn’t know he’d been here. A really good poet he is. Mind you, we had that er, whatsisname? T** ****** staying. He’s a very bad poet. Do you know, he left the bathroom in a terrible state. Sick everywhere and left it for me to clean up. No I’m sorry, but I don’t call that poetry!’
Consequently, I spent most of the next morning polishing the bathroom tiles and cleaning out the showerhead. ‘Ooh, we had that Walter McGough here last month. Clean as a whistle he was. Good poet.’
The other problem is the sheaf of poems that will appear just as the poet is about to retire. ‘I bet you get fed up with people giving you their poems to look at, especially as you must be tired after the reading, but I thought as you’re here, you might …’
Food is another. The organiser will usually prefer you to fit in with the normal family routine (your first mistake, of course, was to say, ‘Don’t go to any trouble’) and you’ll eat with Mum, Dad, Grandma and the twins at half past six. Now a pair of Barnsley chops with carrots, peas and mash, followed by spotted dick and custard, washed down with a couple of bottles of Theakston’s Old Peculier may set you up for a night sprawled in front of the telly, but does little for the digestion half an hour later when the buttocks are clenched and you’re standing in front of an audience trying to control the leg wobble.
Worse, perhaps, is the assumption that poets don’t eat. After the reading in a local village hall, the organiser apologised for having to stay behind and help clear up, so he rang his wife who drove over and gave me a lift back to the house. We sat facing each other in the living room. The clock drummed its fingers on the mantelpiece. Eventually she said, ‘Would you like a drink?’
‘A drink? Mmm, not half.’
‘Tea or Coffee?’
‘Oh …’ The clock missed a beat.
‘Or would you like something stronger?’
‘Yes, please.’
‘Whisky all right?’
‘Whisky would be fine.’ A large whisky in hand, the conversation went as follows:
‘By the way, are you peckish? I never thought of asking.’
‘I could make you a sandwich?’
‘Thank you.’ She disappears into the kitchen.
‘There’s cheese, or tuna if you prefer?’
‘Tuna would be fine, thank you.’
‘Actually, there’s a nice piece of steak here, would you rather have that in a sandwich?’
‘If it’s not too much trouble?’
‘No trouble at all, in fact, shall I fry some chips with it?’
And so it went on, until by the time the organiser arrived back home, I was sitting at the kitchen table, tucking into a sirloin steak, with fried onions, chips and petits pois, and sharing a decent bottle of Châteauneuf du Pape with Laura.
On 27 November 1973 a parcel arrived for me at my house in Liverpool. I opened it to find an orange-and-white plastic bag with a metro map printed on each side and the slogan ‘Come shopping on a Tynerider train’. Inside the bag was a single train ticket from Sunderland to Newcastle, two 5p travel vouchers, a ‘Festival of Music’ programme, a packet of Wrigley’s spearmint chewing gum and the Daily Express dated 27 November 1972. Nothing else. No letter, no address.
Even though I prefer hotels for the privacy and anonymity they afford, I’ve always been well looked after in people’s homes. (Sunderland scored nine out of ten in the bedroom department, incidentally, but the curtains remain firmly drawn on that one.) Just occasionally, however, I have been made to feel like the ghost at the banquet. Like the time I was invited to give a reading at a university in Yorkshire in aid of Amnesty International. I was met at the station by the organiser, who was a consultant at the local hospital, and on the drive to the venue he twittered on about how grateful the committee were to me for travelling such a long way and giving my services free in aid of this good cause. I concurred modestly. On arrival he showed me to the dressing room and told me that he’d arranged for me to stay overnight with a couple of students, would that be all right? He then left me alone with my running order, a packet of crisps and a pint of lager.
The hall was packed and I was pleased to reckon that Amnesty would be a grand or two better off by the end of the evening. During the interval the students who had kindly offered to put me up for the night popped in to say hello. ‘Have you brought a sleeping bag?’ asked the hippie with the beard.
‘Er, no,’ was my straight and honest answer.
‘Oh, dear,’ said the hippie with the breasts, ‘it can be freezing in the attic. But never mind, we’ve got a stash of good dope and the dog’s got a spare blanket.’
My performance in the second half was fired by a sense of injustice and the prospect of a night spent hallucinating on wooden boards beneath a dog blanket, so when it was over I went in search of the organiser. I spotted him in the foyer about to leave with a group of well-heeled friends. ‘Oh, Roger, I’m glad you caught me before I left, and may I just say on behalf of …’
I cut him off mid-twitter and explained that I wasn’t happy about the sleeping arrangements.
He looked slightly miffed and went into a huddle with his friends. There were mumblings of ‘poets in garrets’ and ‘enough canapés to go round’ before he came back to me. ‘I’ve got an idea, why don’t you come back with us to my house? Caroline’s up at Oxford and I’m sure she wouldn’t mind you using her room for the night. I’ll ring Fiona, that’s my wife, and tell her to expect one more guest. Jolly good, why didn’t I think of it before?’
The reason he didn’t think of it before may have been that I wasn’t seen as an equal, but as a poet from Liverpool who’d feel more at home with a party can of Watney’s ale and a bag of fish and chips. His grand house was already full when we arrived, all the hard-working committee members and their partners tucking into poached salmon, coronation chicken and the rest. To be fair, I was warmly received and, basking in the warmth of their embarrassment, made short work of the salmon and a bottle of Sancerre before retiring to Caroline’s room. There was a sexy photograph of her on the bedside table and I must say she was a beautiful girl and I often wonder, when she came home at the end of term, if she noticed anything different about the teddy bear.
On the morning of 27 November 1974 a parcel arrived for me at my home in Liverpool and inside it was … yes, you’ve guessed, an orange-and-white plastic bag advertising the Tynerider metro system, containing chewing gum, a rail ticket and a newspaper, two years out of date, etc. It was a dislocating experience on the edge of being scary. But this time there was an envelope containing a written note that said, ‘Are you sure you are really Roger McGough?’ My identity was to be questioned again a year later when another parcel arrived, and inside the spookily familiar plastic bag was another newspaper, rail ticket, music festival leaflet, chewing gum and an envelope. Written on the note was, ‘Are you still sure you are really Roger McGough?’ But this time, pinned to the bag was a card which said, ‘Reproduction of “An Incident Regarding Identity” accompanied by relevant articles.’ As I had suspected all along, I was a work of art.
Although I had always suspected that art students from Sunderland were involved, I never followed it up, but many years later, after a lunchtime reading at the Edinburgh Festival I met a teacher who confessed all. There was this female lecturer, she explained, who devised the plan to have me stalked by a small group of students with instructions to copy where I went, what I did and what I bought on a particular day, with a view to creating an ongoing and unsettling work of art. What became of her? I asked, but she had no idea. When I came out of the theatre I walked along George Street and considered buying a sandwich and a copy of the Scotsman, but with a nervous look over my shoulder thought better of it.