Iestyn Edwards is...what?

 I was walking home from my job front of house at the Royal Opera House to my flat on the Ethelred Estate in Kennington. It was the mid nineteen eighties, at this time of year. I had a clear view right down Lollard Street. There was the school to my right, black railings all along in front of it, small houses to my left, no turnings onto the street. I looked down momentarily to check my footing stepping off the kerb at the turning into the school.     When I looked up again there was a woman walking towards me.  There was nowhere she could have come from to be there so suddenly. She was in a brown patterned summer dress, too thin for this time of year, and what looked like scholl sandals. She didn't look at me as she drew level, then passed by, stepping down off the kerb.    I realised that there was something wrong with not so much the picture as the sound.  I turned to look back at her. She wasn't there.  What had been wrong with the soun...

  I mentioned Therese's dead father.    'We don't say dead, Iestyn,' said Therese, with that laugh that matches her farts.   'Deceased,' I tried again.   'Nor that word. So Public Record office.'   I was ready with: 'vitally-functionally-challenged' when Therese said,    'He is a shining one , who has fulfilled the karmic implications of this present existence and modulated to a higher plane of vibration.  On this higher plane we leave behind the body-functional and spin on a rebirthed spiritual axis, giving out a lilac light and making the most quiveringly pleasant humming noise. F or your further information and interest, I went to see my psychic this very today and dad came through. He has a new job on the other side, tending the gardens for the children to play in, whose souls have gone over early. Just now he's sowing in hardy annuals.'   And all I could think of was: if there are no bodily functions on thi...

   Click to watch "The Old Sow Song' on nicely Youtube   What did Lady Carter, late of Priors Hill Road, Aldeburgh, think were clear illustrations of moral degeneracy?     Libraries open on Sundays, train toilets that can be flushed at stations, the scrapping of The Royal Tournament .    Oh, and Harrods.    She also campaigned for the removal of the skating halfpipe from Kings Field - 'The dongs and clangs that come from it are an infernal parody  of church bells!' - for the reinstatement of public executions on the greensward and for the surgery to go back to using pen and ink for medical records.    One thing about using pen and ink is that you can't cack-handedly CC in people where you shouldn't as you so easily can using email.  When I do something particularly daft, producer and great mucker Delores Deluxe will put her head on one side and say, in brisk, corporate tones: 'Right, right , and let's just CC in...

    Practise what you will never reach... Therese, soprano, asked why Royal Marine Stacks would teach me to move off in third gear unless I was the getaway driver in a stolen police car?    See previous blog entry: Driving Miss Crazy    'To make moving off in first easier,' I answered. 'The school of Practise what you'll never reach , Therese. Like Anna Stolli would imitate a duck from the Bronx quacking right up to an F sharp to make sure of secure belt notes lower down her range for  Evita' s "Rainbow HIgh".  Or Beethoven would rehearse those horrifically difficult passages in his early sonatas - that have most concert pianists tempted to ask for a volunteer from the audience - with just his left hand.  Or over three decades William Tell would practise shooting his crossbow blindfolded. F.Y.I. Therese, It's a little known fact that  William Tell originally fathered twenty-seven children and that by the time of the legendary...

Click to watch the nicely film:  Twinkletoes or what?

  I've just notched up a century of shows for the National Rural Touring Forum.   Not that this impressive record helps sell me to potential promoters on the scheme who insist that I’m too niche for their audience.    I send them the audience survey form comment from Barry in Builth Wells:      I’m going to tell all my mates to go and see him in Mold.  I drew the short straw having to come and check it out tonight.  You don’t need specialised knowledge of ballet or anything else you might think at all. And I thought it was all bloody hilarious.  The rest of my mates just took one look at his flyer and thought “Who wants to go and see that fat poof being weird?     And still some promoters aren't convinced.    Ringing three weeks before to finalise logistics for that hundredth show Charlotte 'Totty' Farrell had said,    ‘We’re so thrilled we got you and your show!  So th...

  At my first driving lesson back from panto season, I moved off in third gear.    I was having the usual back and forth with Shahzad, my instructor - who, to this day, is on Beta Blockers.   'We've discussed this, Shahzad: you always miss me checking the blind spot on that side, so we take it as read that I did check it.'     Or:    'You can say there's nobody in that white Volvo all you like, but I'm telling you it isn't adequately stationary for use in my parallel parking extravaganza.'     And:   'Who yet again moved the fucking kerb?'   When I moved off in third, Shahzad became more than usually adenoidal. 'Where have you got that from?'    'My Marine mate, Stacks,' I said.    'And what else did this army guy teach you, just so I'm prepared?'   'Royal Marine. As he's officially a master-driver he knows the tricks of the examiner's trade. He said never to pa...