“I wouldn’t normally pick up this type of book, but just fancied something amusing to read. I personally hate public transport, so thought I’d give it a go. I was not disappointed. Beautifully observed, anyone who travels on public transport will recognise these characters! From stroppy teenagers, to fractious children, drunks and people who squash you to death in your seat – all human life is here. If you are from Nottingham, even better, as most of the book is based there. Phil’s observations and ability to make sense out of the absurd is very clever, and he has a real talent for description. I’m actually there, on the bus with him, wiping at the steamed up window and listening to such bizarre comments as: “White dog poo? Haven’t seen any in years. I wonder if it is to do with Brexit?” If you fancy a lovely, light-heated book to pick up and read – maybe on your own bus journey – this is for you.”
Natalia Wieczorek. London
Review
Anyone who has the ‘pleasure’ of public transport, needs to pick this book up! Witty, and cleverly observed, Phil Lowe takes us on a journey, literally a journey! Trains, trams, buses…. the foibles and idiosyncrasies of the human-being laid bare, as Phil takes up his back seat on the bus and takes stocks of the British public. Read it on the bus, read it on the loo, but read it you must.
This red chair is part of the furniture at the Broadway Cinema in Nottingham and seeing it the other day brought back memories of the 1970s when I was a big cinema goer and often got myself all romantic and shyly asked a few girls out on dates. Like many young men I found myself stood outside the ABC cinema or the Odeon cinema in Derby all alone on a winter evening, constantly looking at my Timex watch to see how late my date was. Of course I had my more than my unfair share of being stood up i.e. dateless and mortally embarrassed. So in this poem I got to thinking of a fantasy of myself standing or sitting waiting for decades and years for the one date I hoped would lead to a snog on the back row or even a young romance.
This poem could equally have been called Stage Fright as it alludes to an actor finding themselves in the toilet practically glued to the seat with tricky bowels. Their show is about to begin but they daren’t leave the safety of the dressing room toilet. Phil Lowe
This is an ongoing and current writing project of mine that I am hoping to get published by early October this year. It is mostly a humorous look at my experiences travelling on busses and trams in and around Nottingham. Like anyone these days I have encountered a whole mix of amusing, annoying and downright odd people and circumstances whilst travelling. Like any good writer I have, over six plus years, documented these experiences and now I feel it is time to unleash them! The excerpt below is probably one of the longer sections and a bit risqué, but I hope you will all have a read and I hope to read your comment/s whether my quirky humour comes across on the page. Phil Lowe
‘Now we come to the subject of
overhearing about other people’s expensive holidays whilst on public
transport. When you happen to be in a poor financial position and
can’t afford to live too well and paying bills is a daily problem,
then any considerations of anything as crazy frivolous as paying for
and taking a holiday flies out of the proverbial window. I don’t
begrudge anyone a short break and even longer holiday, perhaps
abroad. These things are part of our pleasures of being alive and I
don’t have a jealous bone in my body about such matters. It is only
when a person broadcasts their ongoing lifestyle as being on an
endless succession of exotic and super expensive holidays month after
month, year after year that my smile starts to crinkle at the edges
and my eyes become more glazed over than a plate of sticky Chinese
spare ribs. People often use the phrase ‘Don’t these people have jobs
to go to like most other people? How can they possibly afford it? How
indeed.’
“Hey
listen up everyone! The wife and I are holidaying in the Seychelles
for the third time this year!” they brag. These folk love to show
off through pictures and grinning emoticon riddled statements on
Facebook and also, in very fine detail, and loudly, on public
transport. Boorish isn’t, by any means, moreish.
One evening, on the Nottingham to
Loughborough bus I overheard a man and a woman, at the rear of me, in
conversation. It amused me despite the fact that I was very skint at
the time. He was telling her all about his life spanning the last
ten years travelling the world with his wife. I have recreated the
conversation below with a smattering of actual fact and a lot of fun
fiction. Believe it or not he actually started to sound more and more
like a travel brochure as well as being terribly privileged and rich.
His voice sounded cultured without sounding snobby and her
interjections were along the lines of “Oh that’s sounds marvellous!
You two are soo lucky! I wish we could afford that! You were there
for six months? Gosh how wonderful!”
Woman: Hello! I haven’t seen you
for years. Where have you been?
Now pause in your reading and go
and make a giant mug of tea and stock your plate up with plenty of
biscuits and cake. You will need them. You are in for a long haul as
they say in the world of trans-Atlantic flights. Fasten your seat
belt and enjoy the ride! It may get dippy.
Man: Yes. My. It must be ten years. Time flies. You look pale. You look like you need a holiday like us. We’ve practically been all around the world, twice over. Never stopped. We’ve been to Japan, America, Peru, Australia, New Zealand, Egypt, Greece, Liechtenstein, The Philippines, Greenland, South America, Nova Scotia and up and down the fjords so often we are practically Vikings! You know what? Sometimes I even forget where we were last on holiday, but I do know it wasn’t Skegness. Can you believe that? It all blends into one enormous trip. We enjoy it but I guess it is not for everybody.
Woman: So where have you just
been?
Man: We’ve just been on a Grand Tour of Europe actually. It was a twenty-one days trip originally but we extended it to three months. There is no point going if you are just going for twenty-one days, don’t you think? We went by Eurostar, car and plane and took in Paris, Amsterdam, Munich, Bratwurst, Baden Baden, Campania, and we caught every one of the 160 varieties of fish as we explored (by coracle) the Danube delta in Romania. That was interesting. Leaky but interesting. The wife paddled. She’s got stronger wrists than me. Near to Dubrovnik we fought off wild bears with our bare hands, a teaspoon and a sharpened credit card, just for fun. Then we went all naturist for a week in the snow capped Carpathian mountains and practised our extreme nude skiing skills. In Florence we had our pockets picked by rogue street urchin hamsters. Then we went to a place called Mount Zebedee where we met up with Brian and Dougal, a gay farming couple we know. They let us fuss over their cows Ermintrude and Daisy until it was time to go to bed. Sienna was hot, Tuscany was baking, Venice was wet and full of common tourists falling into canals and a strange small person in a red duffle coat who kept disappearing around corners and scuttling over bridges. Barcelona was dirty, rowdy and full of Gaudi, We got ill in Seville and roamed around the rugged Roman ruins in Rome. In Paris we got plastered.
Woman: Oh how lovely…
Man:
I mean Paris is always very nice. Having been twenty-three times
before we are almost like native Parisians. You should see the way I
carry my baguette. You have to have it at just the right angle under
your arm or the French police fine you. This time though, the wife
had French diarrhoea. That’s like normal diarrhoea except you can opt
for it to be gift wrapped with silvery toilet paper with a fleur
de lis
pattern. Don’t laugh. It’s true. The local doctor also supplies a big
bow to tie around your bottom. It makes you feel so much better as
you squat and squirt. Sorry, that’s my wife’s expression. So that day
I explored the Louvre whilst she explored the loo. Another day we
spent a lovely afternoon sampling cheese at a high brow specialist
cheesemongers. Spent a bloody fortune. Of course we only eat orgasmic
now so the selection was fairly limited. If the wife doesn’t actually
come whilst she is eating the cheese she spits it out disdainfully.
The cheesemakers’ Le
Pavé
was parfait.
Have you tasted Le
Pavé?
Non?
Oh you should. The goats have worked so hard to produce it and love
it when you stroke their beards. My wife had one mouthful of Le
Pavé
and she got so aroused it was like the famous scene from When Harry
Met Sally. We paid for the repairs to the table after her fists had
smashed a piece off the corner in ecstatic fervour. This time we
slummed it and just stayed in a five star hotel, set in its own
thirty acres yet close enough to casually sit in nearby cosy and chic
boutique cafes and enjoy a coffee and a dizzying selection of gold
plated – hand wanked patisserie.
Woman: That sounds expensive.
Man:
Not really. You do get a little change out of a hundred euros. It’s
what we normally pay. Did I tell you about Florence and Tuscany?
Stunning landscape. Stunning. Very romantic, if you like that kind of
nonsense, and we met the actresses Dame Maggie Smith and Helena
Bonham – Casserole. They were just lovely. Of course they
recognised us straight away. We had supper with them at St Regis. It
has gorgeous chandeliers and custom made frescos. If a place doesn’t
make the effort to provide custom made frescos we avoid it like the
plague. Really. You should go there sometime. It’s just a simple no
fuss Michelin four starred restaurant but we didn’t want to embarrass
Dame Maggie and Helena by splitting the bill so we paid for it all
including the five bottles of wine they had each, and their triple
brandies. Between you and me Dame Maggie gets a bit greedy with the
thousand year old olives stuffed with Basque chillies and hand dusted
with rare white truffles. She wolfs them down like sweets from a jar.
It’s obscene but she’s a dame so what can you do? Helena BC ate her
linguine tossed, claws delicately massaged, fussed over within and
inch of its life, king lobster with such gluttonous rapidity that
most of it ended up in her hair. Not a pretty sight.
Woman: That’s funny. Did you put
this on Facebook?
Man:
We’ve stopped with Facebook because it would be a full time job for
us putting up all those holiday declarations with Google maps showing
that we are at Heathrow soon to be departing the UK for another three
month vacation. It just encourages burglar types breaking into one’s
abode. We’ve been lucky but some dear friends of ours – the
Ashgrove Hobnobs’s – you may know them – they had burglars steal
all their priceless Monet’s, Piccaso’s and an original Art Deco
dining set and a treasured packet of milk chocolate digestives. The
burglars even had the temerity to make themselves a pot of Imperial
Qing Lapsang Souchong tea using our friend’s invaluable Yung Cheng
period 18th
Century porcelain. They broke the handle off the sugar bowl and they
never even washed the cups properly.
Woman: That’s not nice.
Man: No it isn’t. The least those oiks could have done is wash up properly after themselves. Anyway, my stop is soon. Let me just name drop a bit more because I know you will be utterly fascinated. Michael Palin. There we go. Name duly dropped. By golly. What am I like? We met dear Michael over the Grand Canyon. Literally over the Grand Canyon. By pure coincidence there he was in the next private helicopter flying alongside our own private helicopter. It was so funny. I said to my wife “Look darling – over there – it’s our best friend and lovable TV personality – Michael Palin!” We waved to him and he waved frantically in our direction, flashing that older schoolboy affable grin of his. It was so nice to see him again on one of his BBC travels no doubt. We are always bumping into him in unusual foreign places. One would almost think he was stalking us! Oh it looks like my stop is coming up soon. I wouldn’t normally slum it on the bus with the common garden natives, but I do have to pick up the Jaguar from the little garage owner chappie. We may not see each other for a while because we are planning to go to Iceland to experience the geysers spurting hot liquid like ridiculously randy teenage boys. That’s my wife’s description incidentally. She can be a little forthright. And so, while we are there we are going to try out some ancient Icelandic ice acupuncture. Apparently, they make you lay down on a cured penguin skin bed, poke you liberally about the person with super thin icicles and leave them in your flesh until they melt completely. They are very strict and if you attempt to get up before the ice has completely melted they make you listen to hours of Bjork. Then you get a full body massage by an Inuit who uses a pungent oil made up of sea lion sperm, fresh caught herring blood and wild dill with a hint of bergamot. On that note it has been so lovely talking at you. We must do it again in ten years time if we are not on holiday. Oh look, would you believe it there’s Angelina Jolie with Bill Gates! Angelina! Bill, old chums! It’s me! Fancy you seeing me here! Let me tell you about my holidays.’
Copyright. Phil Lowe 2019
Click on the East Midlands Theatre image below for more from Phil Lowe.
Having played Beowulf many years ago I entered a recent poetry competition with this new poem. Didn’t win but still want to share it. The poem imagines a village hall production with amateur locals taking part. Phil Lowe
Click on the East Midlands Theatre link below for more from Phil Lowe
In this poem I imagined a couple where one of them was greedy and always took some of their partner/spouses food with permission. This habit has been going on years until one day the victim takes their revenge!
Sitting amongst the pink blossom on Ruddington Village Green Nottinghamshire) I was inspired to write about an old blue Nissan car parked nearby and thought it would be fun to do the poem in a slightly oriental style.
A short poem created after seeing a homeless guy playing the piano extremely well in Nottingham Railway Station foyer. It made me realise that we don’t know the individual’s background and the skills they possess – sometimes we only see the beggar on the street.
Poetry and creative writing by Phil Lowe 