Let us go then

You have absolutely got to pop on down to BBC iPlayer and download episode two of My Life In Verse. It’s a documentary in which comedian and writer Rob Webb explores his favourite poem, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot. Well, that is, if you can. If you’re reading this more than three weeks in the future (hi, by the way! how are the flying cars and house robots and vastly altered climate working out? sorry about that last one – our bad) then you won’t be able to get it because it’s only going to be available for download for 17 days from today. Meanwhile, if you’re Lauren and live in Texas, then you’re ace, and I’m very glad you’re reading, but you won’t be able to get it either, sadly, cos it’s only available in Britain. Which is a real shame because here’s a mere smattering of the reasons why anyone who can download it ought to.

1. It’s got Rob Webb in it. He’s, like, the most famous person to be linked to my home town since Sir Joseph Banks. He went to my school and everything.

2. It’s got Horncastle in it! And my school! And my school hall! And Room 10, which is where I had my English lessons! On the telly! My school hall! On the telly!

3. So, if you know me in the flesh, you’ll know I sometimes start banging on about the aching empty beauty of the fens with the open black soil and the wild snowcone sky and all that, like some kind of knock-off Graham Swift. Well whoever’s done the photography on this has captured all that stuff perfectly. It just looks beautiful. Actually, it does make me a bit sad that you cnan’t see it if you’re outside of Britain, because it perfectly captures quite a few things that are beautiful about this messed up old country of ours. Ah well. You’ll have to come over. We’ve got a spare bed.

4. D’you know what’s even cooler? IT’S GOT MR. SLATER IN IT!!! (And he hasn’t aged a bit.) Now, Mr. Slater might need some explanation. He was my English teacher. He and Mr. Rees got me through English A-Level (school leaving exams at age 18, for my Texan readership). He was an imposing chap, quite a presence in any room, always wore proper, teacherish grey suits (which he would pronounce “syoots”, like you’re supposed to but nobody does), and a tidy but thick teacherish grey beard, from behind which would come this dark brown, mellifluous voice, round with old-school English vowels, the kind you hear on Radio 4, and measured out with careful consonants. He’d probably, one suspects, gone into teaching English more because he loved English than because he loved teenagers – he wasn’t everybody’s friend, by any means – but by heaven he did love English, and it was catching. Blow me if I couldn’t quite happily listen to him read poetry all day. If he ever runs out of cash he’s very welcome to come down to Devon and I’ll pay him to read me Eliot’s Collected Works, including the footnotes to The Wasteland, for 37.5 hours a week for as long as he likes.

What’s exciting for me, though, is I remember Mr. Slater teaching me Prufrock in The Very Room that Webb sits in to describe the first time he heard it (from Mr. S himself), and helping me understand it and love it, too. And I was chatting about this through the magic of e-mail with my friend Ang, who had exactly the same experience. I think what we learn is that Mr. Slater is very, very good at teaching T.S. Eliot, and I hereby give him mad props.

5. You get to hear a really, really beautiful poem by the woman who eventually became Rob Webb’s wife. It’s so good that even though I’ve got to work tomorrow and I really ought to be in bed, I’m going to set it down here now. Here goes:

Abigail Burdess – All Kinds of Trouble

I’m in all kinds of trouble now,

The kind where you wake up on a train

And everything, everything’s strange

And where am I? And when did the season change?

I must have been asleep.

I’m sure I must be late.

I’m in all kinds of danger.

The stranger on the platform is not a proper stranger.

“You’re here with me,” he says, “isn’t it great?”

And he’s right.

The kind where there’s too much meaning on the edges of sight

Because he might be there.

The kind where you randomly weep.

I’m in deep, deep hot water.

In a boiling hot geyser

In the mists

In the midst

Of ridiculous Icelandic snow.

Y’know,

You should give up the fags and eat fruit,

Because life should last longer, this life should last longer

If someone like him exists.

Everybody. Lock away the razors and save your lovely wrists:

Someone like him exists.

I’m in every single kind of trouble now

The kind where a kind man could write himself a significant part.

I’m in very grave danger

Of a change of heart.