SO last evening I was in the attic recording studio of wee man Mini-Marvin’s flat in Egremont, putting a music track to a poem I plan to perform publicly later this week.
The poem’s called ‘Islington Rap’, and it refers to my time living in Islington, north London, i.e. not Islington, Liverpool.
The poem is plenty bitter and twisted, my dears, so if any of you are a planning to come and hear me perform (at the little Nelson, off King St, Egremont, some time after 9pm on Thu Aug 3) be prepared … as my verses are definitely not hearts and flowers stuff.

While on stage I might also read my poem about New Brighton, especially as it states just how useless Wirral Council has been over the years in getting regeneration for New Brighton.
The resort’s last chance of revival (the Neptune redevelopment plan for the seafront) has been rejected by the Government inspector, thanks largely to the council being so inept at promoting this vital scheme and seeing it through to fruition.
All the council had to do is see off a few trifling objections from: pathetic posh people living in faded gentility in decaying merchants’ houses; the proprietors of the town’s few remaining crap shops; the owners of a few horrible greasy spoon cafes; and the people who own Britain’s crummiest tourist attraction, Fort Perch Rock.
Instead, these voices of decline have won the battle, and so once again New Brighton has been massively let down by the Wirral Council, who couldn’t organise a piss-up in a brewery if they were promised free beer all night.
Now that the opponents of the Neptune scheme have got their way there will be no new swimming pool for the seafront, no new restaurants or bars, and no refurbished Floral Pavilion. We’ve lost out on all that. Thanks a lot.
What we are staring at now is decay piled upon decay and even more local businesses closing down.
For this lost opportunity, we have to thank, in addition to the useless Wirral Council, a load of stick-in-the-muds who are afraid of change – the sort of people who get up petitions and wear beige cardigans covered in gravy stains.
These sorts of people are absolutely not typical of New Brighton residents, which is why it is a sin crying out to heaven for vengeance that they have got their way.

STILL, by way of compensation, Tuesday was a brilliant night in the music bar of Hell’s Waiting Room.
Singer Corky was in fine fettle along with a good few members of his band, Recklessly Hellbent, including Johnny No-Legs.
And Tezza attempted the ‘Mountains of Mourne’, for my benefit, because he knows I love that song.
The trouble is he wasn’t too sure of the words, and, come to that, I certainly don’t know them off by heart, and neither does Barman Burly.
All three of us together tried to get through the song to the end,but we made a bit of a faltering mess of it.
To those who don’t know the song, you can find its lyrics easily by Googling ‘Mountains of Mourne’.
It famously begins with the line ‘Oh, Mary, this London's a wonderful sight /
with people here working by day and by night’.
The song’s about an Irishman working in London some 100 years ago and writing home to his squeeze, Mary Macree, back in Mourne in the North of Ireland.
He tells his girl all about the wonders of London, including what the ‘fine ladies’ of the city wear … ‘Faith, they don’t wear no top to their dresses at all’. Very true, these days, too, that is.
Interestingly, the lyrics I found on the internet include the following verse that most singers of a republican sympathy (that’s most of ‘em round here) leave out …
‘I’ve seen England’s king from the top of a bus
And I’ve never known him, but he means to know us.
And tho’ by the Saxon we once were oppressed,
Still I cheered, God forgive me, I cheered with the rest.
And now that he’s visited Erin’s green shore
We’ll be much better friends than we’ve been heretofore
When we’ve got all we want, we’re as quiet as can be
Where the mountains of Mourne sweep down to the sea.’

Anyway, we must all learn the words to the song properly as they are both funny and warm and very touching.
At the end of the evening, Blondie Fantail tried to sing it, and she stumbled over the words too.
It was a cracking evening, though, and that makes a change after all the bad atmosphere the pub has seen recently.
For instance, we’ve had bad vibes from the lesbian uber-vixens and from the embittered bingo biddies, led by Elvira Bittergob, Old Ma Milosevic and Bertha ‘Belter’ Brezhnev (who used to be in charge of corporal punishment in Wirral orphanages in the 1950s).
If you see that lot in the pub, don’t leave grocery bags containing dairy products anywhere near them. There is a grave danger of your milk, butter etc., curdling in the proximity of such sourness.
Tuesday night was just lovely, though. I sat near Alberre, his wife, Tallulah Swells and her friend the Birmingham Belle (the latter being the least dizzy blonde I’ve ever met).
Also in the house, and singing and swaying along to Recklessly Hellbent, were: Stella Faintail and her former (and maybe ‘on again’) boyfriend, Radar; the Archangel MacDennis, who is a bus driver from Egremont; Billy Bustimes; and Dixie the Jazzman.
I even saw Celeste, the mother of one of those blasted Wirral councillors, her face all lit up with joy (or whiskey), singing along to ‘The Fields of Athenry’.
That is another fantastic song of course, and doesn’t it contain just the greatest line … “Nothing matters, Mary, when you’re FREE!”
Quite right. Freedom lives in the heart, not in the wreckage of council-sponsored planning, for instance.
Viva New Brighton!

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