Fred Slattern vaulted into top 100 live poets

From next year's Guardian "Fred Slattern made his debut public performance at Colchester Free Festival on 18 September 2010. With there being uncertainty about the exact time and place of Fred's performance, he couldn't depend on his loyal crowd of misfit friends to support him, and instead had to live or die on stage by his wits. Standing at a busk stop just inside the Castle Park gates, Fred had good footfall, and not all of it kept walking by. Witnessing an inspired performance from Colchester's wordsmith equivalent of Seasick Steve, some innocent members of the public has their ears assaulted by Colchester's self-styled slum poet.

Opening with a tale of sub-standard housing in suburbia "condemned" he led into "fear and loathing in Prettygate" a story of aging, isolation and fear. Slattern introduced each of the (mercifully short) pieces, his staccato delivery giving the impression of an accountant on EPO. He recited a piece about procrastination entitled "when I get my tattoo", a mordant ditty that he claimed he wrote at a "creative writing for no-hopers" course a few years ago. Upping the performance by several gears, he did a political piece about chavs, more specifically about those who revile them, with the cryptic title of "Council House and Van". Fred clearly fancies himself as the people's poet Rick from "The Young Ones".

Moving on to the whimsical "had James Dean lived, would he have shopped in Waitrose?", Slattern was into his stride, as he delivered some appalling wordplay involving car crashes and the cheese counter. Clearly Slattern had problems concentrating at school, or indeed at any other station in life. Then a topical piece written with an eye on the art gallery under construction and the vitriol in the local papers "when's it going to be finished?". But Slattern's session wasn't all about lampooning of the authorities and the media, it was about celebrating Colchester,with two pieces about the history lingering in our open spaces at "Hilly Fields" and "electricity" about High Woods.

Fred's finale consisted of pieces about the ever changing High Street "the High Street's full of cafes and charity shops" and "thanks for the sandwich" celebrating our Big Issue sales people. Twenty five people witnessed this tour-de-farce performance, vaulting him into the top 100 poets performing live today.

His banter between pieces was well received, and the sole poetry themed joke he could invent - about the iambic pentameter - was appreciated by at least two or three in the audience of mainly rural folk. A warm ripple of applause greeted the end of the show, maybe from a sense of relief, but mainly because these ordinary folks had, at last, found someone to blather on their behalf - a fanfare for the common man, with no side salad thank you very much. Fred Slattern, this modest man from suburbia, who has much to be modest about, has now been approached for other gigs."

harvest time at Big Swifty's vineyard

Hello Fans and Followers. From looking on here you might think it's all gone quiet at Big Swifty Towers, but the opposite is true, with blogs slipping down the prioritised list of tasks in hand. We've got news from all fronts, with diabetes stories, lots of paid work, home and garden, Colchester Free festival, and a holiday all taking our attention. So that's five blogs lined up for the near future, confirming the adage about a long wait then several buses come along at once.

We've been making a special effort to change our approach to life, looking at how we can best care for our little family. Following "Radical Homemaking" principles, our priorities have been to go even more natural with food. We have been active on the free food front, which is educational for Frank as part of his Unschooling, and also appeals to me as I'm so cheap. With a couple of pals, Frank and I have been picking wild apples (no, I won't tell you where the trees are) and we've all been busy making apple butter and puree. We have a bumper crop of quinces on the tree in our garden, and yesterday we stripped our vineyard. When I say vineyard, I mean one gnarly twig that looks dead in the spring, but this twisted bit of deadwood has produced about sixty bunches of grapes this summer. Amazing.As we render the grapes down, the house and patio smells sweet. But we'll soon put a stop to that pleasantness. Next year we want to grow more veg, and I've found several sources of free horse poo. I won't tell you where the apple trees are, but I can tell you the source of the horse poo - a horse's a***. Come back soon for more tails of horses, diabetes and slum poetry word play from our own Fred Slattern .............

Pump and circumstance

It's a big week ahead at Big Swifty Towers. Frank's diabetes management is incessant, 24/7 attention, but we're all doing pretty well (and hopefully pride doesn't come before a fall). At his most recent quarterly check-up Frank's HbA1c test gave as good a result as one could possibly expect for a four year old with Type 1 diabetes.

Poor test results with persistent elevations in blood sugar would indicate it's more likely that the person would have increased risk for the long-term vascular complications of diabetes such as coronary disease, heart attack, stroke, heart failure, kidney failure, blindness, erectile dysfunction, neuropathy (loss of sensation, especially in the feet), gangrene, and gastroparesis (slowed emptying of the stomach). On the plus side you get to wear a medic alert bracelet.

At present Frank has about eight pin pricks a day in his fingers, and four insulin injections. This keeps him in good health but does little for the flesh on his fingers and bottom. Some people with diabetes wear "fingertips of steel" T-shirts. If he takes up the guitar he will have ready made callouses on his fretboard fingers.

So what happens next week? We're off to Addenbrookes Hospital at Cambridge to open discussions about the possibility of Frank wearing an insulin pump. This should help us better match his carb intake with his insulin needs, being able to put smaller doses of insulin into his body, as and when required, without the injections.

And, yes, he can eat meals like the one in the picture, which he enjoyed at a cafe in Ipswich when we saw the mammoth. Type1 diabetes is nothing to do with the current obesity epidemic, and he does not have to avoid carbs in his food. Indeed, a mixture of carbs, protein and fats is pretty good, as he avoids the blood-sugar spikes that we would all have if we had high sugar fast release foods. Don't you wish you had a "full English breakfast" diet like Frank's?!?!

And finally, the usual disclaimer, I am not a doctor, and don't take anything I say as proper medical advice. After all, I'm the guy that thought that, if he shared an active lifestyle, and fed his young son a healthy diet of mixed foods, some wholefood and organic, he would avoid getting any of these chronic conditions everyone's getting these days. Pah.

Unhappy Meal at McDonald's

The beef is safe. I have a confession. I have been responsible for the destruction of the rain forest, I have destoyed the sustainable lifestyles of tribes of indigenous people, and I have punched a big hole in the ozone layer.

I have been a McDonald's customer since 1975 when I visited their Woolwich restaurant, their first in the UK. I know it's wrong in so many ways, but I love McDonald's.

But, from now on I'm not going to their restaurants ever again. On 2 August I dropped off some friends at Stansted airport, and at 05:45 I dropped in at McD's for a breakfast. I had a relaxed breakfast, with extra drinks, did some stuff on my laptop, and left at 07:56. And on 10 August I was issued with a parking charge notice, demanding £50 for exceeding the sixty minute free parking limit.

I'm sure there were signs up, but I didn't see them. I fully accept I'm responsible for where I park, but it never occurred to me that I should be looking. So my happy meal breakfast, has become a very Unhappy Meal.

I've got a message for McDonald's. The Campbells are coming. But Big Swifty's not, anymore. Unable to get a clan together to massacre my hosts, I can only resort to the internet. I've complained on their website, and expect to hear nothing, except maybe a bland computer generated reply (much like their food). A plague on all their houses.

Fred Slattern, Colchester's slum poet

FRED SLATTERN - Colchester's SLUM POET is expected to appear on the busk-stop stage at the Colchester Free Festival on 18 September. He will present his show “love, hate and prettygate”.

Fred is Colchester’s “x for no publicity” slum poet, and has been talked into appearing in public for the first time. His short pithy poems reflect Colchester life from the vantage point of anonymous suburbia. Listen to his tales, and spot yourself in his writing. He’s been watching you.

I have written some fairly upbeat pieces, mostly mercifully short, celebrating Colchester. I would suggest the material's more in the "amusing observations" bracket rather than proper poetry. Every now and then I like to challenge myself to do something different. This could all be a terrible mistake.

Statler and Waldorf Unschool now open

How would you like to be herded into a room, and kept against your will for six hours, and told by your guards that you've got to come back 170 times a year, for the next 14 years? And all you have in common with your fellow inmates is that you were born in the same year, and live in a similar area?

I don't know about you reader, but my friends and colleagues are a wide range of ages, and live all over the place. That's what makes them so interesting. If I could only spend time with my neighbours of my age, what would we talk about after we'd discussed favourite albums of the mid 70s?

We were wavering about sending our Frank to school as we're not in love with the state education system. Stir in diabetes management to the mix, and our decision's made. We're going for homeschooling, specifically "Unschooling". And we're not the only ones. Steiner and Waldorf are on everybody's lips - not Statler and Waldorf the grumpy guys on the balcony from The Muppets Show. Steiner and Waldorf are educationalists, and alternative schools applying their methods are in every posh town in the UK (not yet in Colchester).

What with the www, and local networks of homeschoolers, we've already got hundreds of ideas about how we can make a go of alternative education, and dozens of new friends. Many people assume one has to send their child to school, but this isn't the case. Indeed the new government are encouraging alternatives as part of the Big Society debate. Apparently, we need to find thirty others, and we can call ourselves a school and get state help.

Cameron's not got the monopoly on the Big Society debate. We've had our household Big Swifty debate, and have decided we'll take more control of how we run our lives. No good expecting the system to do everything for us. Meanwhile, we wonder how much of the pension I paid into for over thirty years will actually be available for when I reach retirement age. I don't think Frank concerns himself too much about this, he's busy at Big Swifty Unschool building wooden trainsets. Not that a career in Transport Planning beckons for another Big Swifty generation...........

Joel "mystery man" Thomas - Col U legend

Mystery man, Joel Thomas, has last year been seen at Colchester United's stadium, but has never played a whole game. Joel was signed from Hamilton Academicals for £125,000 in July 2009, by Colchester manager Paul Lambert. His record at the Accies was ten games started, nineteen sub appearances, and one goal. Obviously the guy had hidden talents. (And no jokes about Scottish goalkeepers on here.)

In the first game of the season Colchester beat Norwich 7-1, a result so impressive that Norwich sacked their manger, and appointed ours soon after. Striker Thomas never played a whole game for Lambert, despite him having paid a fortune by Col U standards.

The next manager Aidy Boothroyd also never selected Joel, althoug he kept the bench warm for some matches, and actually made seven substitute appearances for the U's during 2009/10.

Boothroyd left Colchester this summer, so Thomas's third manager in one year, John Ward might have given him a run, especially as we're low on strikers? No, Thomas doesn't want to play for Colchester any more, and he's been released for a free transfer, not that anyone's signed him yet.

Well, for Thomas's year's salary (of say £30,000?) he made seven brief appearances, totalling maybe an hour in a Colchester shirt? He scored no goals, but the soccernet website suggests he had three shots, one of which was on target. He made no assists, got fouled six times, fouled others eight times and got a yellow card for his efforts. I was fortunate to catch a couple of his substitute performances and can confirm that he ran about a bit, possibly as he was cold sitting on the bench for the previous eighty minutes.

Frenchman Thomas (23) has played for several clubs in France, Germany and Scotland, but never much, or for long. So why did Lambert sign him last summer, and make Colchester United £155,000 lighter, one year on?

Meanwhile, a new season starts tomorrow, as the U's travel to Exeter for their first game. As always I'm optimistic, but know that by the end of August we'll be out of the League Cup, and it will mathematically almost impossible for the U's to be League 1 Champions, and that a play-off place might be the best hope. There's always the possibility of a decent cup run, before being knocked out by some team from the North Circular Road Relegation League, to a hat trick from their star striker, Joel Thomas. Being a football fan is such fun, and being mainly an armchair fan, I'm not funding this folly.