Mark Grist's Blog

23-01-2010: I'll dice you up

Hello, you big beautiful blog fan, you!

As you can gather from the greeting, I am writing today to ask for assistance. Mixy and I have nearly finished our really exciting new show - we're showcasing it at The Brewery Tap in Peterborough on Tuesday 23rd February. As part of the act we've got to try experimenting with each other's style of writing and for Mixy's finale he'll be showing his poem he wrote for the Peterborough Poet Laureate competition. Without being a killjoy, he won the competition and so his story ends incredibly well. My story on the other hand...

Despite my slightly monotone voice, I've tried writing hip hop bars. I really have. They all sound like something your Dad would bust out at a particularly embarrassing and drunken moment. Added to this, I'm not particularly tough or dangerous, or even good at rapping. I say this because being tough and dangerous and good at rapping seems to be closely related with 'Grime' - a form of hip hop that interests me. I want to write a Grime track. I think it would be an interesting challenge. It'll probably sound terrible, but it'd be funny, I guess. Plus, I've been wracking my brain for ages and I've finally found an angle.

The angle is this. I'm the least dangerous person you could encounter. My background has been pretty middle class, I can't rap and I like my pasta al dente, but I am good, no deadly even,

When it comes to board games.

Serious. You name it, I’m good at it. I can kick ass at Risk and know things about Monopoly that'd turn your hair white. I'm even pretty decent at Hungry Hippoes. And so I figured I'd write a hip hop track about how stupidly competitive I get and how good I am at board games. That would be the most honest way of performing the piece. It'd also allow me to use some of the hyperbole and similes that Grime artists use, but in a different context. It'll also hopefully make people laugh.

What I need now are suggestions for board games. I have played an awful lot of them over the years but I've forgotten most of them. If you've got any please, please, please send them to my facebook page - add to my status if you'd like. I'll do my best to include them - and I apologise in advance for the musical crime that I'll be committing over the coming fortnight.

Here's a piece I wrote when Summer and I were at the airport coming back from Jersey this year.

All apologies

In the departure lounge
Looking for our gate
We hear a man
A slick,
Blonde haired
Well dressed
Man
losing it

‘For goodness sake!’

He booms,
His business suit
stretched
Against waving arms.
He yells
He howls
At his
Four year old
Son

‘Stop apologising!’

The words slap
from his lips
And his face,
This well manicured face
Glares
Shamefully
At the
Underperforming child,
Swats his suitcase
To the ground
Yanks the child’s hand
Off his trouser leg,
Stomps away.

His wife, made up
In her red patterned dress
Kneels down to the
Agonised face of the boy
‘Daddy is angry
Because you only
Need to say sorry once’

The man turns, snaps

‘You don’t need to say sorry at all!’

There are tears
From the child
As his mother
Holds his tangerine cheeks
Checks over her shoulder,

Applies tender criticism
Too quiet to hear
He bawls
Tugs at his fluffy
Blonde hair
In gulped desperation
For the right thing
To say.

We carry on walking but I’m
Aching, I think
To apologise to someone
Anyone, really.