What teachers make…

Taylor Mali is one of my creative heroes and his poem ‘What teachers make‘ has served me well at speaking engagements over the last few years. However, it was time to move on and perform some other stuff. What better way to bow out than with a performance (if you can call it that) at the top of the Valluga, at 2,809 m the highest point in the Arlberg mountains in Austria. It was so quiet up there that I felt I just couldn’t rant loudly so just let the performance slip away peacefully.

I always enjoyed a love-hate relationship with the performance of that poem. I love the poem itself but hate how it caused me to ‘corpse‘ on a regular basis. The only time I really ‘nailed’ it to my own satisfaction was at the Communicate.06 Conference last year. The last time I performed it though, I couldn’t even get out of the first lines and had to bail out completely. It was a sign! So – farewell my friend and on to poems new!

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An English werewolf in Graz

As I reached the brow of the staircase the pianist ceased playing, conversations halted and all eyes were fixed on me, or rather on my shirt that was clearly far too noisy for the silent majority. The ’Slaughtered Lamb’ pub from the film, American Werewolf in London would have offered a more friendly welcome. 

Come to think about it – it may have been the fact that I had ordered a McEngland Meal, which I am sure is designed to lull unsuspecting foreigners into a false sense of belonging to the global McVillage.

McDonalds in Graz is a family-run franchise – probably by distant relatives of the Adamms Family!

Back in the Netherlands

Eindhoven airport has undergone a much needed face-lift since my last visit. I am sitting admiring the new surroundings, waiting for my flight back to the UK and day-dreaming about the great years I spent in the Netherlands as a young kid…

U wordt vriendelijk verzocht op dit luchthaven niet te roken. We thank you for not smoking at this airport

Tobacco smoke of the non-wacky variety
welcoming yet offensive
wafts from the strictly non-smoking restaurant
hangs above me
taking shape
an interactive, multisensory thought bubble.

I gaze and inhale deeply
Memories fade into focus
Faces sharpen then vanish
a vague haze in the mist of my mind.