Possibly related gig thing I’m doing

• Featuring: George Chopping
• Series: George’s Jamboree
• Date: Monday, March 8th 2010
• Time: 8:30pm
• City: George Chopping in Oxford
• Venue: Chester Arms
• Address: Chester Street OX4
• Country: UK
• Admission: FREE ENTRY
• Age restrictions: Licensed
• Add to Google Calendar | Download iCal

Three new ones:

High Street Girl

She looked at me
with a wonder of uncertainty
as to how mad I must be
to double take her
and her loud laughter of distress
as her size 7’s washed
around
in her size 11 shoes
and she spins round
with her mac entangled in arms;
her ruck-sack falling
from the shoulders
in her rush
to nowhere.

Misery

The misery of Winter’s
dreaded arrival
becomes clear
when the fun of
kicking crisp
Autumn leaves
up into the air
results in wet, rotted
black stuff
on the chin.

Rock’N'Roll

On the bus
on route
to Job Centre Plus
- attempting to avoid eye contact
with the stoney grey
clay
faces of Anthony
Gormley’s figurines
and not really feeling
like I’m part of a
‘Rock’n'roll Movement’
necessarily.

_________________________

Thanks for reading poems from the last day or so.

George’s Festive Gig Action:

DECEMBER

Friday 4th

The Gallery Sessions
in a cafe or a gallery, not sure
@ Queen’s Theatre, Barnstaple, North Devon
(in association with Apples & Snakes)
Zena Edwards – Headlining

Sunday 13th

Family Friendly Festive Cabaret of Music, Mulled, Mince and Aliterative Poetry, Possibly…and Pies (for the Mince)

(not sure what they will call this event but probably not the above; all tbc, details to follow.)
@ the Vaults & Gardens on the High Street, Oxford

Monday 14th

GEORGE’s JAMBORREE of Music, Poetry and Comedy
- An Open Mike (Michaels are actually welcome – the poster was a joke – stop asking!)
@ THE CHESTER ARMS, Chester Street, OX4

Last month was delicious, packed to the rafters and rocking with talent. Open-Mic spots fill up quickly so get in early if you want to strum, tap, bang, whistle, read or recite. Starts at 8:30 sharpish so please sign-up by 8:15 at the latest. Hope you and your friends can make it. People of all abilities are very welcome. FREE ENTRY.

Tuesday 15th

“Georgie’s doubling up“:
First Stop:
Doing an intermission slot for an event @ Albion Beatnik (a bookshop on Walton Street), Jericho, Oxford. Organised by Lion Lounge Press. Will be there till 8:30/9 ish. Details TBC -so please check http://www.lionloungepress.com/ for info closer to the time.

Next stop:
“CREATIVE TUESDAYS” – CHRISTMAS SPECIAL
@ Bar Tarifa, on’t Cowley Road, Oxford from 9pm onwards but it starts earlier (seen some brilliant musicians there in the past and the beer is lovely, called Mahou).
___________________________________________

Right, better get on and write application letters, hoorah!
Cheerio and thanks again for reading.
Yours,
George

Once shoe laces were tied I headed to the train station to buy a ticket for tomorrow’s gig in East London and so meandered past my favourite Big Issue sellar on Cornmarket, the high street bit of Oxford. He is a comic performer and quite often as I walk up Cornmarket, he is hurling mild/moderate abuse at the stupid public. Anyway, on this occasion, three pensioner women in their early seventies were walking past the Big Issue Man and he said “Morning Girls!” to which they replied,
“Ooh, we like girls!”
“Comin’ out dancin’ with me tonight?” he retorted
“Oh, not sure ’bout that!” they giggled.

“POLE DANCING!” He blirted.

They strode on looking more shocked than amused. But it certainly tickled me.

Anyway, got the train tickets: not too expensive for only one day in advance. However, I always debate the point of buying a ticket for the return journey because there are never guards on the train back from Paddington after 11pm. I’m not gonna risk it this time…or am I? Answers on a postcard (of a fat, lard-white woman sprawled across a tar black beach in Torquay, please.

George’s Gigs:

tomorrow
london

Saturday 24th Oct

London Poetry Systems @ The Isis Tavern, down on the river, Oxford.
Starts 6pm

Wednesday 4th November

A strange authors night
me and other people
@ The Corner Club, 16 Turl Street, Oxford
8pm upstairs.

Wednesday 11th

Cafe Tarifa, Cowley Road, Oxford
short slot

December 4th Friday

Organised by Apples & Snakes @
Queens Theatre,
Barnstaple, North Devon
8pm

…run out of sloes. Off to the Rusty Bicycle.
bye, g xx

APRIL

Saturday 11th


Part of OXFRINGE 2009 John Hegley and Spacial Guests
(me)
7pm in The Jacqueline De Pre Building (part of St Hilda’s College), bottom of High Street and Iffley Road, just off the Plain (roundabout), Oxford.

Tuesday 14th

So I won the “Utter!” Ajar Mic Competition 2008 in Camden. Part of the prize is to host my own “Utter!” night which will be on Tuesday 14th April, 2009 at The Green Note, 106 Parkway, Camden, London, NW1 7AN. 8pm start.
Featuring: John Hegley, Tim Key (and others TBC)

going to eat now.
Bye x

…oh, I’m going to bed..

[3 days later]

Morning, um, before I forget, I’m assisting in the promotion of and will be introducing on the night, a guy called Jean-Philippe Riopy. He’s not Welsh but French and a pianist who will be playing at The Jacqueline De Pre Building, Oxford on Friday 7th November. He plays Classical pieces but improvised with jazz in his own passionately distraught and unique style. Well worth the £8 or £5 as a student. He is bloody good!

In my last blog you can see the next dates that I’m performing and in addition to them, I will be performing in the ‘Ajar Open Mic Final’ on Tuesday 9th December at The Green Note, Camden. The event is called “Utter”, hosted by Richard Tyrone Jones. The prize is £1,000,000. Or was it £100? I can’t remember. Last Tuesday I performed at the aformentioned venue and have never felt so nervous in my life, nearly, but carried it off ok..ish, I think. Got the laughs but noted as I went through the set, how many things I would do differently and that the Senyru entitled ‘Window-Licker’ is a definite ‘no-no’ for any future audience.

[about 15 days later...Wednes 21st Nov]

God, I feel diabolical. But I don’t know why i’m telling you because you’re a carpenter; rather you were a carpenter…that’s if you ever.. Well, anyway, I feel like shit. It’s a mint tea day and a day of self-doubting, worrying about money, worrying about leaving the security of a secure job although, granted, a job that (like a lot of people have) was making me miserable but needless to say less miserable than being hungry and now I don’t even think I have the ability to be a waiter in a fucking sausage and mash restaurant! Perhaps I never was a good waiter? Perhaps people just had that perception in their head because I fooled them into thinking I was good because I can/could always appear confident, loud, mildly amusing and moderatly entertaining. Perhaps my Grandpa did shag John Cleese’s mother, nine months before he was born and two months before he met my Grandma..? But the entertaining thing was only actually as a result of the fact that I used to find the whole experience so incredibly stressful. Food that’s overcooked, raw, uncooked, unclean, too clean, too soft, too hard, too rare, not rare enough, “where’s the mustard?” “Any forks?”

“Um, sorry to trouble you but we ordered our coffees twenty minutes ago…”

“You, table 29?! Coffee? Haven’t you gone yet? Fucking coffee! I thought the tops on your creme fucking brulees weren’t fucking hard enough! Why didn’t you piss off after that dis-heartening state of circumstance; that earth shattering fact. Here’s your bill! I haven’t got time to make you fucking coffee. Piss off!”

Here is George’s Gig-List:

Tuesday 25th November, 2008

LPS (London Poetry Systems)
The Flea Pit
49 Columbia Road,
Shoreditch/Hackney, London

at 8:30pm

Thursday 27th November, 2008

John Hegley, Tony Curtis and George Chopping

The Thunderbolt,
Totterdown, Bristol

at 8:30pm

Wednesday 3rd December

Comedy Night
Johnathon Elston, Ivo Graham, Rachel Boxall, Broderick Chow, George Chopping,
Tom Goodliffe (MC)

Corner Club
16/17 Turl Street,
Oxford

Doors 7:45pm (8:15)
Members: Free
Non-Members: £5

Tuesday 9th December

“Utter!”
The Green Note
Camden, London

All sorts of stuff – comedy/poetry/music possibly
(please google event for time/cost/address)

Ok, off to the market.

Bye,

G x

http://www.timeout.com/london/comedy/events/696919/joke_and_spoken_word_night.html

Bleached /Blonde Dogs

Just outside the canteen fire exit
smoking on the path.
Trying to block out the husky guffaw of
Maggie from Bakery
and the illiterate shrieks
from the girls off check-outs.
All of them, stood slunched
in a military line-up,
sheltering behind the pillars
from the gust coming off the roundabout.

Yellow butts and scrunched coffee cups
litter the concrete path,
just off which, stand a cluster of heads
of dew drenched, snow white Snow Drops
- swaying in the breeze on their elf green stems.
Seven of them.
Dwarfed by the bushes, plants and trees
through which I see’d,
approaching the roundabout, a white van
with written on the side:
“Dial a Dog Wash”.

__________________________

Here’s the link to my first review. No idea whether it’ll work but please try clicking on it:

http://www.dailyinfo.co.uk/reviews/feature/2806/Oxfringe

Now for a few new Haiku:

Mother’s Day

Clambering over
garden wall. Daffodils clenched.
It’s the thought that counts.

12 Words Worth

On the 12th of March
Snow Drops heads’ shrivel up but
Daffodils flourish.

Poetry in Lotion

When I run out of
aqueous emollient,
Goose fat suffices.

_____________________

Right then, off to bed in a minutes but first, here are a few dates for your diary of when I’m performing next. So:

Tomorrow night (Friday 7th)

At: The Albany, Douglas Way, Deptford, SE8 4AG.
The event is called: “The Book Bites Back” . There will be about four other performers incl. Daljit Nagra who wrote “Look We Have Coming to Dover”.
K.O. 8pm

Easter Monday (24th March)

At: The Poetry Cafe, Betterton Street, Covent Garden.
Supporting John Hegley (T.B.C. so please check Time-Out London closer to the time for details…)

Saturday 29th March

At: The Port Mahon, St Clements, Oxford.
The event is called: “Minty Fresh”. (Christ knows why).
Part of Oxfringe; a comedy line-up of me and two others.
K.O. 8pm – £4 .


So there you have it. Hope you or some of your London/Oxford dwelling chums can get to one of them.
Cheers for reading and see you anon!
Goodnight.
Yours,
George

Hope the weekend treated you all well and that unlike me, none of your genitals have dropped off as a result of frost-bite.

Cockless ‘Ku
Directing one’s wee
now proves tricky. So I just
release, hope and pray.

…Not exactly Keats. But if I’m honest, it was a bit of an after thought, really. Didn’t take many days to construct.

So, firstly (or secondly) my apologies for not posting for sometime. You must all feel lost. Directionless. Empty. Georgeless. But in my defence, I did spend a fair bit of time over the last week
adding bits to a blog as I felt (inspired?) the need. But technical problems pervailed meaning the lot wiped and so I gave up, have sulked and sworn since not to bother with this damn blogging lark ever again. But I’ve since picked myself up and decided to blog-on regardless.

Um, secondly (or thirdly) a huge thanks to all of you, regular readers (all three of you) and others, for the support with viewing and forwarding on of my You Tube link. 281 views, three comments and one potential stalker in just 6 days since it was first up-loaded. Secondly (thirdly or fourthly) a gigantically massive thank you to Richard Butchins who took the time to come along and record me at The Wheatsheaf and for then editing and helping me post it. Richard has several blogs (links from) “Angelsstandcorrected” accessible by clicking on link down the right hand side of my page. He has been working for the last 18 months on a documentary film entitled “American Freak Show”. Check out the trailer – amusing and touching and has had much interest shown by the National Press and Bafta, even!

Thirdly, (fourthly or fifthly?) thank you Xander for aiding me recently in my sorry financial state. I thoroughly enjoyed the tin-foiled hot cross buns;- kept ‘em pretty damn fresh, they were lovely toasted! However, the garlic butter didn’t do them much justice. Certainly taught me not to steal, mind.

And as for last night; the lamb was delicious, the sloe gin, superb! A fine evening; thank you both.

Now for the arse flogging: Hard to beleive, I know, but I (George Chopping) have actually reached a point in my life where I might even have to start keeping a diary! Typically, the last few weeks (proceeding my filling out of my holiday leave form from the shelves) was the start of people starting to take an interest and beginning to invite me to come and perform in places, all over the world…
…or (East) Oxford even. Here are some dates:

DATE ,WHAT and WHERE?
Mon 25th Feb – (part of a comedy line-up) Launch Party for OxFringe. – Oxford Castle, Hythe Bridge Street, OXFORD. Details to follow.

Fri 7th Mar – Apple & Snakes presents: “The Book Bites Back” Celebrating World Book Day. (Three poets and me).

At: The Albany, Douglas Way, Deptford, LONDON, SE8 4AG.

…and that’s it until the next time. I need to wash, eat and get this posted before it deletes. I shall post further dates next time.

Aha! Actually, before I go, I mentioned before, the Radio 4 programme that Xander co-researched, “The Museum of Curiosity” featuring John Lloyd (producer of “Spitting Image”, “Blackadder”, “Not the Nine O’clock News…etc”) and the genius comedian, Bill Bailey (“Black Books” blabla.) A great concept involving Profs and comics…And, well, listen and see for yourself. First broadcast is at 18:30 on Wednes. Immediately accessible to listen to on the web, the second the show finishes.

Right, have a good week. I’m off to read a book on grammar and comma abuse.
Goodnight,
g