YANNY MAC'S TEN MINUTE PANCAKE-DAY SUPPER

Pancake Day or Shrove Tuesday is celebrated all over Europe, not just in developed countries like England or America.
Shrove literally means 'use up all the eggs and butter quick' and is often celebrated  40 days before Easter, so that the supermarkets have time to take down the Jif and McDougalls displays, and replace them with larger items, such as Yorkie Easter Eggs and disposable barbecues.
A lot of people forget that Baby Jesus nearly died of malnutrition in the desert, before having himself crucified so that we could make (or buy) hot cross buns and mini eggs.
In France they call Pancake Day 'Mardi Gras' which literally means 'Fat Tuesday', and shows that the French have no respect for Baby Jesus or any of the Big 3 supermarkets.
The Swedes also call Pancake Day 'Fettisdagen' which literally also means 'Fat Tuesday', but as they are significantly wealthier than us, and very nearly invented Lego, my recipe today will ignore them completely, and focus on the slightly more accessible ingredients used by those cuddly Vikings, the people of Iceland.
'Sprengidadur' literally means 'a day for bursting your stomach open', and in my experience, the frozen food from Iceland is very capable of doing just that, if eaten in great quantities.

Ten Minute Sprengidadur Supper

If, like me, you struggle to make your ends meet, living off benefits and generally being feckless, you may find this recipe a little challenging, and decide to get a takeaway pizza from say Pizza Hut or The Dominoes.
If you do, try asking for a maple syrup, or lemon & sugar topping, in order to be festive and show respect for the Lent stuff.

1. Get your ingredients from Iceland

2. The Icelandic people celebrate with salted meat and peas.

3. Carefully sprinkle salt onto your meat (I use Tesco Value Free Running Table Salt, but I once had a lodger who got hers from the sea! I think it was a quirky hipster thing, but it tasted ok, even though it was very lumpy).

4. Open your bag of peas from Iceland carefully, and add them to a boiling pan of water.
(If, like me, you've had your gas cut off, try melting the peas with a lighter from Gary's Discounts, or putting them out in the sunshine for a bit).

5. Serve with Findus Crispy Pancakes from Iceland (optional - mince beef may contain bits of animals).

Ingredients:
Meat (animal meat is best)
Salt
Peas
Crispy Pancakes (optional)

Og Lita' Par!
A ten minute recipe that'll have you fit for bursting, and won't have you taking out a crisis loan in order to pay for the kids Easter eggs

This is a photo of an experiment I did earlier. 
Call it 'Yanny-Fusion' if you like, but I combined pancakes from Iceland with waffles from the more developed & civilised country America (Untied States of, NOT South America!)

No Future.

A friend of mine was invited to Buckingham Palace last night, to meet the queen of Britain & Scotland.

In fact several of my friends were invited.

But this particular friend didn't go.

A lot of my friends talk-the-talk.
A lot of my friends are poets, and therefore are required to talk-the-talk on quite a regular basis.
In order to be zeitgeisty, fresh and 'down with the kids', a lot of my friends decry this government, and openly abhor anything that is marginally right-of-centre in the world of politics.
A lot of my friends are anti-establishment, and use their words as weapons or tools to joust and hustle those that run our country.
A lot of my friends are fiercely republican, anti-monarchy and repulsed at the thought of titular inheritance, silver spoons, old money and the nepotism that pervades the British class-system.

Some of my friends went to London to visit the queen.

One of my friends didn't.

DEAR CLARE BALDING.......

Dear Clare Balding,

I'm sorry I stopped following you on Twitter last year.
I was reckless & stupid.

I'm also sorry I stopped following Emma Freud and Elly Olroyd.

I now understand how Twitter works, and I realise that you are an important part of the whole experience.
I felt I could cope without you, as long as we had our Ramblings on Radio4 and the odd horse-meet.
You even said 'hi' to me when Luke Wright (the poet, not the cricketer) was with you on Saturday Live.
Our relationship felt consummate.

It was when I topped 200 'Followings' on Twitter that I realised I had gone too far.

I should've unfollowed Frankie Coccoza and The Real Gok Wan, but instead I rejected you, and for this I will be eternally sorry.

I hope you will accept my apology and we can tweep-it-up together again soon.

I have a horse called Albie.
He is very young, and we backed him ourselves.

Love Yanny.x

I AM NOT TIM DOWLING

As we approach the compulsory shit & piss-fest that is the NYE celebrations, I guess we should review the past year, recollect the bad memories and good, and be thankful that some of us are still here.

I nearly lost the wife back in July.
Not in the garden centre as per norm, but to a collection of pulmonary embolisms and secondary pneumonia.
Like George, it was all a bit 'touch & go'.
We also had to move house whilst she was in hospital.
As a consequence, we got behind in our regular readings of Tim Dowling's column in the Guardian Weekend supplement.

It's become a fairly pleasant routine.
I read the wife to sleep with a series of back-to-back TD escapades; ones that I rehearse in advance, in order to provide humour or gravitas when required.
I even do the voices.
I never attempt TD's mid-Atlantic nasal drawl, but I've mastered a trio of teen petulance for the kids, and do a slightly bored, if massively indignant wife.
I've even bestowed a Southern Irish lilt upon TD's best friend Pat, and my drummer from the band can often sound like Mick Jagger.

The problem we have with Mr.Dowling's articles is that they are far too short.
Reading them is like watching the daily half-hour repeats of 'Come Dine With Me'.
After several recaps and an abundance of DFS adverts, you're not left with much substance.
We now record CDWM and watch them back-to-back with the assistance of a f/fwd button on the remote.
And this is how we enjoy TD, with a few of his columns back-to-back.

In July of this year, we had several TDs outstanding, but there was no immediate fear of not completing them by year end.
Most of them focussed on yet another holiday in Cornwall, or yet another festival appearance by the band.
But by the end of October, I had so many Weekend's piled up, that they resembled a dog-eared bedside table.
Tim Dowling was growing in stature, but only on my bedroom floor.
I set about reducing the dust topped mountain with passion and theatrical prowess, and I'm happy to be able to tell you that we are down to the last three (yet another technophobe one, Dinner with the kids & Choosing the Xmas tree).

Tonight we will spend NYE with my friend Luke and his family.
I have less than ten hours to complete my task, a task that looked improbable in August of this year, particularly when my wife was hooked up to a life support machine.
Perhaps I'll read the final three to tonight's assembled party-goers, whilst quietly praying that this year can happily come to an end?
Or perhaps I'll save them for the marital bed later?
Or perhaps I just won't bother?

After all, I'm no Tim Dowling.

TOP 3 NON-PREMIERSHIP ADVERTISING HOARDINGS (w/e 11-09-11)

Is anyone reading this, or has this been an 18month-long excuse, just to stay up late on a Saturday night?
Does anyone care that the BBC has a 'no commercial advertising' policy, yet every weekend, Match Of The Day gives over nearly two hours to punting Barclays Bank, McDonalds, Budweiser, Nike and BetFred?

No worries.
As the summer break has just finished, this week's theme is 'holidays'.
(I'd like to dedicate this to Colchester United's celebrity supporter, Luke Wright, who is currently on tour in Australia and China)

CAMPBELLS CARAVANS - Preston North End

WALDEGRAVES HOLIDAY PARK: MERSEA ISLAND - Colchester Utd

HAYCOCK HOTEL - Peterborough Utd

A Poem For National Poetry Day

No-one has ever written a poem about me.
No-one that is, until Luke Wright penned this for R4's Saturday Live programme.
It's possibly the greatest thing that has ever happened to me.

"My mate Yanny dropped his phone in the bath
He knifed his Broadband line, kicked in his set
Grew vegetables along his garden-path
Wrote letters to everyone he’d ever met:
His old school friends, forgotten dinner guests
first boss, girlfriend, the man who brought the coal
he wrote in biro from an old fusty desk
didn’t use similes, wrote his words out in full
and soon the replies began coming back
Printed envelopes outnumbered by scrawled-on ones
with pink stickers, as his friends packed
them out with stuff they never said when they called
There was something about making something
that appealed to blokes who had previously
just penned one-line texts about birds & bling,
and each one back felt like something for free
Better nonsense composed at window sills
than a clockwork life and a mat full of bills."

Fliers/stroke/Posters

Luke’s in my kitchen

And he asks me why I’ve got a flier

for a Geldeston Locks

gig on my wall?

And I say

“Cos it was a good gig”

And he says

“But no-one turned up.

In fact, more than half the acts weren’t even there.

And it’s got my name on it.

I didn’t perform.

I was there for the conkers, but I didn’t perform!”

“It was a good gig” I say

It’s like my favourite poster, from the good old days, is like..... the Hammersmith gig”

“Yeah but. You didn’t perform” says Luke

“Yeah. But I was on the poster.

I made it to the gig, but I had serious man-flu.

So I went home.

All the way from West London to Norfolk.

On the train

With man-flu.

On my own.”

“It was a shit gig” says Luke.

And I say

“Yeah.

But we’d’ve never’ve got it

if I hadn’t felt-up the promoter's tits”

And Luke says

“Fair point mate.

Fair point.”

ANOTHER WEEK; ANOTHER FALL

SUNDAY: Put on a gig at Geldeston Locks Inn.
The first real 'summer's day', and therefore a huge crowd.
Beautiful weather, beautiful people and a beautiful time had by all.

I have fun, but decide that being a compere/promoter is not for me.

MONDAY: My friend John Osborne's book Radio Head is Book of the Week on Radio4.
It is a wonderful book. I have a signed copy, inscribed with the command to 'read it in your shed'.
My shed is my sanctuary. It is my space, that allows me to smoke my pipe, drink homebrew and paint things. I take it upon myself to listen to John's book being read, in as many places as I could.
I manage shed, kitchen, living room, bed alone, bed not alone, and bath. I also discover BBC iPlayer, but fear that this discovery can only encourage further procrastination, in my already halted life-progression.

Now that I have 'retard', my main aim is to get my anthology published.

TUESDAY: Another friend, Tim Clare, is also launching his debut book this month. I have yet to read We Can't All Be Astronauts, but the excerpts I have been privy to, have only gone further in confirming what I already knew; Tim is a tortured genius.
He has asked me to read at his book-launch at Borders next week. This, I feel, is a great privilege. I have spent the past few weeks agonising over what to read & what to say. Today I realise that I have nothing.
I haven't read the book, so I cannot really make a comment.
I should really buy it but I haven't paid cover-price since the heady days of student-loans.
My poems are tired & in need of a rest.
My new show hasn't really developed further than a title & a flaky idea.

Professional jealousy is now bordering on resentment, and I set about scrubbing the limescale off the shower walls, until my fingers start bleeding, and I'm overcome with the giddiness of chemical fumes.
Guilt, at my overuse of industrial-strength cleaners, overwhelms me, and I rush outside to my organic kitchen-garden (aka Hotel Slug), where I furiously start earthing-up my potatoes.
The kitten senses danger and thuds her way into the dining-room, heavy-pawed but athletically quick.
This starts a chain reaction of degus squeaks, rabbit panic and general pandemonium, with a volume even high enough to wake the hamster.
I run inside, just in time to catch the kitten mounting a rabbit.
I lunge for the water-spray deterrent, chase the suspect up Bedfordshire's steepest 'wooden-hill' and catch sight of myself in the bedroom mirror.

Eyes streaming, heavy breathing, rapidly greying and fingernails heavy with muck.
Water-bottle brandished as a weapon, and a scowl that says "Is this it? Is this really fuckin' IT?"

I move to go back to the bathroom and start all over again.
My first step goes wrong and I fall, rather heavily, down the stairs.

I won't be going to sauna tomorrow.

WEDNESDAY: I won't be going anywhere today.

I panic slightly about what to cook for tea, then realise our freezer is full of Linda McCartney.

Inspired by seeing my name in print in the Guardian Guide (on a tour poster for Latitude, alongside Grace Jones, The Pet Shop Boys, Pretenders & Squeeze - if only I could re-visit my 80s life for just one day, and tell them what I know now!), I set about writing some poems.

By 4-30pm, I decide I can't do this anymore.

THURSDAY: My friend Dick York, whose band 'headlined' at the Locks Inn last Sunday, is in the paper tomorrow. It's a double-page spread detailing his career as a mod-god with Sta-Prest, a Met. policeman and a subsequent mid-life crisis, that has led to a reforming of the band.
The kitten came from Dick.
I love the bloke. I'm constantly in awe of his energy & enthusiasm.
He too had to change careers due to illness, but it doesn't 'define' him.
Nothing seems to phase Dick. He gets on, offers everything, asks for nothing in return, and does it all with a smile on his face.

I'm going to try and be a bit more like Dick.
I owe it to the kitten.

FRIDAY: Luke is on the telly tonight.
I'm reminded while reading the TV guide, as I have my morning poo.
He's been doing a lot of commercial-telly recently, but tonight he's on the BBC.
Channel4 news have beamed his big shiny face into our living rooms twice in the past fortnight, firstly with regard to the appointment of a new poet laureate, and on the second occasion with regard to Ruth Padel & something to do with dining-room furniture.
I like Luke on the telly. I've always felt he was destined to be on TV.
He has the cheeky charm of a gay Russell Brand, and the boyish smile associated with a CBeebies presenter, but he also oozes sagacity, knowledge, erudition and wit.
I get excited when the Beeb ask Luke for some more of his wit.

Simon Armitage, probably my favourite living poet, comes across as a bit pompous.
He refers to Afghanistan as 'an apocalyptic Narnia', and I feel this may haunt him for a while. The Irish lady scares me like Mother Superior scared my sister at Farnborough Hill Convent. The other dude seems uncomfortable in his threads 'n bling. He does Shakespearean-Rap stuff and it all seems pretty worthy, although I couldn't help thinking that he was dying to get back into his grammar-school blazer & slacks.
Presenter Martha Kearney seems most at ease when turning to Luke.
She asks a relevant question, and Luke tells it like it is.
No doggerel, no self-aggrandisement, no promotion of his next show.
The Irish lady tries to match Luke's sincerity with some heartfelt opinions of her own, but she just gets fidgety, and Simon Armitage talks over her, as if he's the most important person in the room.
In between the less than-heated discussions, images & poems supplement the theme of this Newsnight Review 'poetry special'.
Footage of a recent 'Homework' gig delivers pictures of my other friends into my Friday-night-at-home.
I'm surrounded by Ross Sutherland, Joe Dunthorne, Chris Hicks & Laura Dockerill, and I'm in my nightshirt, eating potato chips & dips.

I text Luke, who is sharing a BBC Mercedes, back to East Anglia, with Martha.
I ask him if they'll stop for a KFC at the M11 Services?

I don't wait for a reply.
I go to bed happy.

I attended a 'stag-do' this weekend. I'm more than slightly ambivalent when it comes to 'stag-dos'.
I can't write the words 'stag-do' without wrapping them in bunny-ear hand gestures. I guess I have a problem with the modern concept, though I secretly relish the sentiment.
There is something intrinsically chauvinistic about 'stag-dos', despite the fact that 'hen-dos' appear to rival them, in levels of drunken debauchery and overall levels of crassness. To be honest, I enjoy the sexist banter & beer-swilling laddishness of a an all-bloke get together, and this is because I am well-practiced. It's what we do.
The differences between a football lads night-out, a drink & a curry after work with the boys, and a 'stag-do' are minimal, if at all, with the latter giving focus to a particular member of the group, due to the necessity of the occasion. These things I have done for many a year now.
This is what blokes do.
Ok.Things have changed a bit. The 'stag-do' is evolving.
In my teens in the mid-80s, reconstructed-man was beginning to move out of 'the local' and move into town. A meal & a club became part of the evening, and this led to the concept of 'making a day of it'. In the 90's, stag-days became the thing to do. And after go-karting & golf lost their allure, and young Brits found themselves with more NDI, organised weekends away to former Soviet republics offered new hope to lusty, booze-fuelled numpties, hell-bent on 'avin it.
But now that internet companies offer these all-inclusive packages to both fellas & hen-parties, the last bastion of healthy male-chauvinism, has been well & truly kicked in the balls, by a bunch of over-exhuberant, badly trained, inexperienced & under-dressed 'ladies', determined to redress social-inequality by taking on the lads at their own game!
This is ludicrous!
As a man, I don't try to host Ann Summers parties. As a man, I don't throw bridal or baby-showers. I don't shop for bridesmaid dresses, I don't discuss the cake, I don't watch Neighbours or go for pony-hacks 'with the girls'.
There is no glass ceiling to be smashed through on this one. Just a vomit-splattered urinal & the faint memory of singing I'm Gettin' Married In The Mornin' with your trousers 'round your ankles.
A bridegroom-to-be should not have to compete with the opposite sex, in a gender-testing alcoholic version of It's A Knockout, especially on what is supposed to be his 'last night of freedom'.
Fortunately for me, we didn't run the gauntlet of a busy bottle-strewn high street in Tallin or Torquay this weekend. We went climbing trees in Thetford Forest, and then hid ourselves away in author John Osborne's house, playing poker and offering up un-PC comments about girls that we knew.
The stag, poet Joel Stickley, got the chance to behave like a monkey, and we, his cohorts got to throw bits of metaphorical shit about, disregarding of etiquette, social sensibilty and in proper, time-honoured, blokey fashion.
Well done Luke Wright - Best Man-managed to perfection!

Blog Standard

I've finally succumbed. I've been invited to blog about my former home county, Norfolk, and the result is......
well.......this!

I've not changed my Facebook status for days. I've tweeted only once in a fortnight.
I'm cyber-lazing between a slow game of Scrabble and a Latitude Festival forum, that appears to be in perpetual denial of the presence of a poetry & literary arena.
In short, I don't think I'm ready for this.

I'm told that the Latitude poetry guru (Luke Wright) thought it funny to amend the original title of my new show 'Yanny Mac - Retired', to 'Retarded', in his pre-submissions to the organisers. He then forgot to amend this, before submitting his list of acts for this year's festival.
I'm still not sure whether next year's 'festies' will be wearing tour t-shirts suggesting that performance poetry's longest-serving curmudgeon is somewhat mentally deficient?
But I've embraced the new moniker as a title for my blog.
This is my first ever blog entry, and like an unprepared teenage virgin about to embark on a deflower-arranging course, I ask you to remember your own first time.......