The Pyromaniac as a Time Traveller

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Croydon Tourist Office

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All I can jump are the fires you've lit
Yet you have the cheek to call me the arsonist

Would be the most amazing opening line of a poem
But the world I inhabit isn't merely so melodramatic
And in any case I always wanted to start a poem with the word
Notwithstanding

I grew up in the suburbs
Lulled to sleep by sirens
And the electric flash from late night trains
And life was as beige as my dad's Ford Cortina
My camp mannerisms coming across if anything
In our council estate as more an aspiration
To poshness

I was always pained by the fact that I was not a time lord
Nor a Pet Shop Boy
And looking back with the benefit of hindsight
I was probably just a pain in the arse
With a vivid imagination and a bizarre fascination with
Jammy Dodgers and Bob Newhart

You can avoid the elephant in the room as much as you like
But at some point
You're going to have to clean up its droppings
And look what it's done to the sofa

I went to the fair
And I saw a sign which read coconut shy
And I thought
I know how it feels

I was never interested in poetry
I remember my English teacher saying
Now I'm going to read a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley
And all the way through the only thing I could ponder
As his silver tongue smoothed over Shelley's surreptitious syllables was
What kind of name is Bysshe

I'd imagine myself regenerating
And having a whole new body
And then go home and explore it in great detail
Because it would have blond hair
And a nicer face
And I'd be so much thinner
And my personality would be much much much much much more outgoing
And maybe then Aaron would like me
And the stars would dance
And the universe implode
And I'd finally be me
Me me and the end titles would roll
The doctor
Robert Garnham
And the theme music would play

The school careers officer asked me
What I'd like to do
But I couldn't say Neil Tennant
Because the position was already filled
Would I write a book
Or should I take to the stage
Forty years later I became a performance poet
And kind of did both
I told her
I wanted to work in a garden centre

I remember where I was
When the shuttle exploded
I have an alibi

That hum of energy
I took to be the hum of London
Reaching out to guide my nervous hand into its
Sweaty utopian embrace
Turned out to be the fridge

Standing in front of the mirror
No sign of a regeneration yet
The reason I'd spent so long in the closet
Was because I was pretending
That it was the Tardis

Through the distant crack of longwave radio
I'd hear electric storms on those humid nights
When it was so hot you couldn't possibly sleep
But through the static would come Bob Newhart
And I'd listen to his button-down voice
And look out over the whole of London
At those voluminous clouds lit up within
With sheet lightning
And I'd wish that I were as brave as Bob Newhart
Because he was obviously also just a shy person
Who had somehow found his way of making people laugh
And who knows one day it might also happen to me

I went to the fair with my brother Jim
When somebody through a tomato at him
Now a tomato is soft when it's wrapped in its skin
But this here tomato was wrapped in a tin

The kid next door was a pyromaniac
You can't really sleep properly
When you think that the house is on fire

Gonna be another thunderstorm tonight
Now over to Bill with the sport

All the houses looked the same
Until dad slapped on a coat of beige paint
That matched the beige of our Ford Cortina
Parked the Ford Cortina against the wall
Oh no where's the Ford Cortina
Oh there it is
They're both beige
As beige as the suburbs
As beige as my ski jacket
As beige as the fifth doctor's Edwardian frockcoat
As beige as my realisation that regeneration
Is a lifelong progression
As beige as the smoke rising from the neighbour's shed
And I still adore the Pets
And Bob Newhart creases me up
Because he's not showy
Or shouty
He's just kind of beige
But beige can be hilarious
And wouldn't you know it
I actually did manage to travel in time
Cause sometimes
I see old photos of me
And all I can do is jump the fires that I lit

Which would be
A damn good last line
Of a poem

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