Speaker 1 00:00:22 I talked with her again today, conjured her in a summer bloom of elderflowers and corneal promise and the high homely path above saltine, a doubting sorcerer, surprised again, find my recent dead waiting at the same beef loud spot, where she appeared when I lost, lost my bearings are sort of a known for me to place a known familiar face to guide me. And so we talk, talk again. Remember the old and golden days does not so golden olden days of grumbling, Belize groceries on tick and hiding under the stairs. When the corporation meant man called then the knowing lounge or wistful smile and a voice that soft, the knowing. I like it here. It reminds me of Kara green name for me and your dad used to pick blackberries the sunny long ago, days. Now we both smiled her eyes moist for the memories we shared mine damp and Misty were the things I hadn't said. The things I couldn't say had no time to say before the dream expired. And she disappear back into my past, back into the grave from which I'd resurrected her, that who could meet again, talk and cry. So things that couldn't change.
Speaker 2 00:01:59 Kara green lane, red bites, author, Tony Frisbee, who was our guest today in a special edition of the plastic podcasts. I'm Doug Nevani how you doing? Yes. We're rounding off series five with a seventh episode from a group of six. Why? Because where the plastic podcasts and nothing can stop us. Tony Frisbees poetry has been likened to that of Montague Mon and Heeney born in Ireland and coming to England with the rest of his family as age 19. He's a relative newcomer to the world of vers, but our language is all the richer for his arrival. His latest collection, a boring and county Waterford published by inspired takes us back and forth between that Irish childhood and his current life in the Sussex downs. Then back again. But before we go on that journey, let's ask how you doing
Speaker 1 00:02:47 At very, very well. We just come back from Cambridge, um, uh, really gobsmacked with the Playfair three days up there just to, uh, just to break off the COVID staying at home, but, you know, just to be able to get out of the bubble for a little while it was actually glorious. Um, yeah. Lovely weather sort of botanical gardens yesterday and came back full of VIM and vigor to rewrite staff writing. Yeah. And meet you of course.
Speaker 2 00:03:18 Okay. Thank you so much. I was saying in the intro there that you came relatively late to poetry, but it's not as straightforward as that is it.
Speaker 1 00:03:26 It's also not strictly true in that like all young kids, I wrote poetry. Um, and, uh, indeed one of my poems as a child came into, um, and 96 page epic poem, I wrote yes. And then I went back to put writing poetry when I really was commentating on it in the, uh, 2000 when I began my, my research degree on Northern ice points. And, uh, as I had no intention of ever, ever teaching, and I was 60 at the time, I thought I'd write the stuff instead of commentating on it. And I've enjoyed that journey ever since it's been wonderful.
Speaker 2 00:04:10 And do you recall that moment, that, or if there was a moment rather than the process of when you decided, right, instead of commenting, you would actually be a, um, a practice
Speaker 1 00:04:22 Not regularly. I was quite happy doing it. And then I realized by the time 2010 came along, that proverbial number 17 bus came along and knocked me down. I'd now got 500 points that my partner would have to stop. So I began to collect them. I claimed them first as a series of letter, a collections lettuces or downs, that's the sea, let us to a cave-in saltine, let us to bridge it, uh, and lets us to my grandfather. I was very lucky not knowing how to publish or what to publish. I went into the, uh, the Argus, uh, local paper down here in Brighton. And I met the editor and she invited me to send in the book. So I read the book. So those, the first four became book of the week in the, in the August. So all of a sudden I had a kind of, uh, Kwame to write little booklets.
Speaker 1 00:05:33 I had printed and they were, you know, they were really rapidly sold because the August had recommended them at the time. Then I thought I better start actually having little gigs to sell them because there's not, there's no one behind me as aware, even now it's a little Waterloo presses now pick me up and we'll be doing stuff more stuff for me. Very soon. They picked me up in 2014 with Mimi and not me. So it was the, you know, the old rags to riches in reverse riches to rags because I certainly never made any money from poetry.
Speaker 2 00:06:17 The contents used to psych, um, skip back and forth between your, your, your presence in Sussex.
Speaker 1 00:06:23 Yes. Yes. Um, see one of the things that happened when I came to Sussex, because I didn't know anyone down here in Brighton, I'd broken up with my wife. Um, so I walked the downs and there's not many more evocative places than the downs. You're not walking through trees. You look walking along a landscape that has been tracked for 10, 15,000 years. It's very hard not to find yourself going backwards, forwards in any walk along the downs. Uh, if you go to Kayvon, you can't do anything else. But imagine that stone-age hill fault 15,000 years ago, and we doubt and top of the hill. So, and that is no more than the Irish pattern of going round the world. I mean, coming from Africa, coming up through Africa to the modern countries here, um, indeed one of the points in this that the, the Boreen point talks about our ancestry, how we got through France, we stopped in the caves.
Speaker 1 00:07:29 We, we, we, we ended up burying each other up in, up in Norway and Sweden, Denmark, you know, as, uh, as barriers to the goddess nurses and they were in England. So there's a, there's an easy way to follow the, the Celtic route from, from Africa to here. Um, and it's also extraordinarily, uh, romantic, I mean, because having a pen in your hand, we've talked about before you can do anything can happen. So yeah, I'm on that track 25,000 years ago out of Africa. So, um, it's, uh, it's quite magic. So it's very simple once you're walking in the here and now to be thinking of the there and, uh, to marry the two and appointments is not too difficult, our
Speaker 2 00:08:16 Past present and future much the same to you then.
Speaker 1 00:08:19 Yes, yes, yes, I do. I think we are a continuum of, of that first person walked out. We're not, we're not separate, there is a kind of, um, uh, what we call it, the, the mythic consciousness, we all share, you know, the, the, the Celtic Celtic, uh, design is to be found in Egyptian tombs, you know, with no looks at all. There's no relationship. There is, there's a kind of psychic relationship between the, between the, uh, the, uh, uh, the brains as well, uh, as, as there is an awful lot of stuff in India, that is, we would say it's Celtic, but it's not, it's just a shared, uh, a shared heritage. So yes, I would have thought yes, in one sense, the past the future, the present what's happening now is just part of the continuum,
Speaker 2 00:09:20 Come to, um, yolk of memory, which is part two of a boring encounter. Waterford, uh, you, you moved back and forth. We talked about this before with various quotations, from Irish writings to go back to the 11th to 12th century.
Speaker 1 00:09:34 Yes. Yes. If they gain a children, I mean, many of those will have been monks, but yet they share the same Mandy thoughts as I do. So this is a good, um, like I don't think we were awfully lot different to what we've ever been through through the continuum. Um, so at the time I was saying, I was doing these walks around here kind of quite lost. And I was also, uh, I was still in the middle of my research and I hadn't packed it up then. And then I, uh, I think John Montague's on a John Montague's books on the ancient Irish writing. And, uh, it was full of the same references accepted thousands of years before I sat him or not sat with literally thousands of on set, like a thousand years before I ever said that. And they said it much more eloquently than I did, but I wasn't trying to be eloquent. I was trying to pull myself up on a page with little tiny, big nets. And then here we are for many of the monks in the monastery or to, uh, to a barn somewhere, they're already saying what, uh, what I was saying. But they were saying, I mean, Sweeney is all, all this weaning, like, whingeing like me, w w we need to go and you say my Nestor's garden. Well, that's no more than I was doing, but I was doing saying, you know, I'm broken hearted down here in Brighton.
Speaker 2 00:11:10 Uh, it's at a particularly Irish thing though, to have the past constantly there on your shoulder.
Speaker 1 00:11:15 I don't particularly think so, but we're particularly good at it. A bit like the Welch's great at the here rice and, uh, to hear Spanish window, you knew twin, you know, bloody, well, this is a past weighing down on the, either the dancer all day guitarist it's yeah. It's or any Moroccan song or, or, uh, Aboriginal dance. You know, there's always something going on more than little dances. There's something, uh, terribly, um, redolent of the past, be it mythic past or whatever.
Speaker 2 00:11:56 And we talked to them in the preamble to all this. You talked about, um, history being taught, not necessarily as Irish history in Ireland, but there's a, more of a hate the English
Speaker 1 00:12:04 H a very much so, well, whatever it may be that, I mean, I was taught by Christian brothers and, uh, uh, uh, uh, less Christian. I I'm no longer, uh, um, I'm very much a humanist. I'm no longer a, um, a church girl. When I was raised in Ireland, it was almost obligatory that the people who taught us book Gaelic. So they went to the Gail talk to find the people who were teachers, but that didn't mean they had brains. I just, that was just a natural tongue in the kale talk. So they invariably went into seminaries at 14, probably stifled every bit of their, any sort of normal sexual impulse. And they came out and took it out. Most boys, I've not, I've no doubt. There was something to do with that, with the amount of Catholic priests who pray our youngsters nowadays, because they go into LA, they haven't sexually developed. They're probably frustrated beyond belief and it comes out or some sort of easiness activities. Uh, but I mean, if I were going to be liable for that, I didn't say,
Speaker 2 00:13:15 How do you think that relates to cheat to the teaching of history?
Speaker 1 00:13:18 I think there was a, um, there was a very nationalist movement in the, in the Irish, uh, uh, psychic at the time. I don't mean lackness like going to turn into Nazis, but we want to be Irish and look what happened to us by those people over the water. And there was no time for generosity. It's only when you come to London, you find everyone's the same as you, you realize that it's never people, it's always governments.
Speaker 2 00:13:59 You all listening to the plastic podcasts. We all come from somewhere else, find us on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook, Tony Frisbee's first volume of poetry letters to the sea. It was published in 2011, this, after he'd abandoned his academic studies, which themselves came after jobs as a laborer, fruit picker, fitters, mate, sewage worker, and chef at a wimpy bar among other things. We only have time for a few pages from his life story, but let's start that at the beginning with Ireland, his mother and his father,
Speaker 1 00:14:32 He was a, uh, sugar boiler. And she was, um, she was, uh, she worked with, uh, Friday, Friday brown. She worked for, um, done the clothes from, and I think she was quite a beautiful woman. So I think she went up to Dublin every now and then. And she would, she would, uh, model the clothes. So they have quite a handsome pair. Um, but seven children later they're just ends well, not well, men not being met as well. So we, we had to get out ahead of the probably, well, it wasn't on the house. It wouldn't be ahead of the balers, but it might've been the end of, uh, Mrs. Mulcahy and the shop, what we did then was use the hub for shops to get credit. And then as, as you ran out of money, I still couldn't pay off. You'd have to go off to find another hooks to shop.
Speaker 1 00:15:32 So I think we just get out ahead of that huckster shops coming round to mothers. And we landed up in Putney in, uh, in London. And that was all nine of you going straight across there? No. What my, my sister had already gone before us, uh, um, seven of us arrived and we scattered amongst, uh, my father's brothers and his, his, uh, cousins. I'm, uh, I'm from my, uh, since I was the middle of, uh, four sisters. Uh, so I, two sisters, either side of me and I have to say, Doug girls are not nice to grow up with. They do beat up the odd boy.
Speaker 1 00:16:22 So, uh, we love each other dearly, but they were very young. So I'm told I kept on asking why, why, why? So I couldn't be told, I'd have to ask why I'd like to think that was an intended and common. It probably was just to get them riled up. Typical boy know, brothers, sisters, or we had one of my fondest memories of, uh, uh, what of it is that, uh, we, we, we all were youngster slept in the back bedroom, so they could be five or six, but when you going to bed, we overlooked the water or the water patrol, small rooms, and the odd car coming back from Tramore look glorious on the, as it came out in black rock, it was always on television. There's a nice car coming home in trouble, terribly small little things, but we did life could, we spent, we would spend all day walking out back from, from war. So I'm have to say my childhood in Ireland was absolutely idyllic. Absolutely. I wouldn't wish a better childhood on people than being set free in the summer and holiday seeing home because you slept out and you, you know, you lived off the field. It's quite wonderful. Yeah. But not a nice place to be fewer if you're when you were older and
Speaker 2 00:17:52 You could make enough maintenance to make ends meet, you were 19 when you came across. Yes, that's
Speaker 1 00:17:59 Right.
Speaker 2 00:18:00 What would you have been doing in OD? And prior to that,
Speaker 1 00:18:03 I left school at 14, and then I went to the tech tech school. We had an, a Waterford and I was quite good at design. And, uh, I was asked to go to Waterford glass factory as a designer at 14, but I passed it. I, my, my designs were good enough, but they I've got a bad, uh, right eye. And the medical, the doctor, he said, I couldn't do the job that touch intense work with a bad eye.
Speaker 2 00:18:37 So what are the jobs did you do?
Speaker 1 00:18:38 I worked in the paper mills. I've worked in the paper mills in about three different positions, um, ending up with still in the paper mills and the bit that had run into water, but, uh, which sorted out just the, the, uh, wastepaper. So no, no big gala job. When he came to England, I found even worse jobs. But then when I was 21, I took an exam to get into the post office. And I went straight to, um, into the counters, uh, you know, uh, the money end of, uh, of a, of a post office, uh, the, uh, the, the, we would call the grant with post Telegraph officers. So all of a sudden I was earning double the wages after work and going to suit, going to school, going to work in a suit kind of thing. And then I fell in love with, I was once, uh, succonded to sub post offices where you became in charge of the bureau local world. And then the end I bought, one of them in, uh, in, in bonds in London, never looked back because it went from then on.
Speaker 2 00:20:03 I was just wondering, you say you, uh, and the family moved from Waterford to Putney and come from a very, very, um, rural area to a part of the city. I mean, what was your response to that? I'm thinking of particular that when my dad moved from county Claire into, in, into the Southeast and so forth for the first year, what really couldn't get past was the notion that he was surrounded by brick all the time.
Speaker 1 00:20:22 Um, what I did hate with the, on an anonymity, I hate the fact that going to work in the morning, I'd say a lot to everybody, but no one has the time to say low back. I felt completely and utterly alone in all of those people. They're just very, I used to just walk over Putney bridge and I, I could have been, I couldn't be on the moon. It's very, very, very, very strange. Um, so I was very unhappy for a long time, bang on happy. I didn't want to be there. And I carried the NA chip with me. If I did go in for a pint, I'd never go into, uh, into slumber. I go into the public Bal. So it's, um, it's a learning curve, it's a learning curve. But the one thing about being in London was that you and you understood that migration Muslim, just something we had to do as Irish, because down in London, working with me where Jordy's Yorkies to Scottish, to Welch, they were all away from home trying to find work.
Speaker 1 00:21:31 It was not, it became quite normal. I didn't feel as though I just, w we patties were being picked on. It was, you know, everyone seemingly in British Isles had to go somewhere else to get work. This is right about what the mid sixties, about 60, say 61 to 66. By the time I, I, I I'd moved into the post office. I was getting on with people leaving school. So early at 14, I had no idea if I could re I knew I could work, know I could work hard, but whether I'd be appreciated. And all of a sudden I was being appreciated, that I, where I was I'd end up a little bit further up the rang up the wrong after a little while. So that was quite nice to get, to find my own place in life, you know, to, to be in a different country and still feel it lost society. But knowing that a Forman would pick me out or office manager would pick me out. So I quite like that it began to give me some sort of gravitas when you read
Speaker 2 00:22:38 The, uh, the hardware stores in bonds and the post office in between. I mean, we're starting to kind of almost small town. I did it sort of existence. So what was that like,
Speaker 1 00:22:52 Kind of, kind of, it kind of returned to the, the, um, they and bond is it's full of, uh, absolutely full of famous pay spaces. And I, as a small place boundaries as well. So we, we know most customers that come in on the QS to the post office once was a very famous actress. And we look to each other. I mean, we gave each other a cuddle and it was only after we both stepped back, realized that we didn't know each other. She just knew me as a shopkeeper. And I knew of the television, but you know, it'd been, as you say, the small <inaudible>, I don't know who this woman is. So yeah, that was, there was a nice feeling about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2 00:23:43 But everybody says hardware store and post office combined. I have this kind of image of trumpeting in my head.
Speaker 1 00:23:48 Yes. It's a, it's a little bit like that. I mean, wherever you're going to get your pension and the capitalism, there's one in jackfruit in the, in Devon, they got more stock in the window, the knife that my old shop, you know, real proper place where you probably could buy a horse at one time, I do like himself, I love the smell. The towel had an opportunity to, to, uh, sell them on the business zone. And I took it because I might, I thought most shopkeepers in the Heights. It was 70 at the time. And I thought, I didn't want to end up like that. And I went turned from working 47. So, uh, because I, I could, I could earn enough from, uh, from renting for the first year. I thought, I just I'd be happiest, man, in the world playing golf and football. And I got, got bored Witless after a year. And then my, my then wife had gone to take a mature degree and my sister done it to take a D. And I thought, well, I, I wouldn't mind doing that as well. Cause I knew I had a business spring. I didn't have a bloody clue. I had a real brain and I couldn't believe the joy of in the classroom being told things.
Speaker 1 00:25:03 It was delightful. And I was very lucky because I only did an hour an hour a week or two hours a week. And I did play golf, play tennis, play football. So I got my blue from one of them, except I lost it overnight because I couldn't find the page. So I was too embarrassed to turn up anymore.
Speaker 2 00:25:34 You're listening to the plastic podcasts, tales of the Irish diaspora. We'll be back with Tony Frisbee in a moment. But first it's that pause of the podcast where I asked one of my interviewees to talk about a member of the diaspora of personal cultural or political significance to them this week, illustrator, impressionist, and singer Jessica Martin brings us a personal plastic pedestal.
Speaker 3 00:25:58 I have got a lovely, uh, very talented actress writer called Caroline cook. And I went to see her show, um, which was about the life of youth for joyous. It was called Testament of youth, um, which was on a Waterloo east she's Luddy. Amazing. And she is from her. People are from Humana and she's bought McGuire's on her maternal side. My record. We might be distant cousins. I think we'll find that out. We've got to have some, you know, some connection, but she also wrote a show called carry babies. She liked me. She loves to talk. She's great at telling a story. We were both of us analyzing this thing about what is it about Irish people they'll tell you about something that's happened in their day, but it's not enough to just give you the facts I have to kind of weed. It's not necessarily a joke, but it's just the arrangement of the events. It's in the way of telling it an Irish person gives you. I think an Irish person gives you a bit of themselves, got bit of soul about them, and that's what she's got
Speaker 2 00:27:03 Jessica Martin there. And if you want to hear more of what Jessica has to say and why the heck wouldn't you or indeed any of our other interviewees, then why not go to our archive on the
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[email protected], enter your email address. And one confirmation read, click later, all the plastic loser, the world shall be yours. It's that simple. And now back to Tony Frisbee, as mentioned, Tony went from retirement to academia, gaining a BA in art history and then an ma in Renaissance and modern literature. It was while working towards a PhD in Northern Irish poetry that he turns to creating his own work. I wonder what the fascination was for a man from Waterford, with the poets of Northern Ireland,
Speaker 1 00:28:04 The master's in, uh, internet and bond literature course Datalink. The world is Spencer with the world of, uh, modern and modern literature. And, um, the, the great parallels that was pointed out to me by Haney between what Spencer would say, read the decimation of the Irish language and the bardic tradition in Ireland kind of reminded me that there's well stuff well, both right, weeding. And Heaney's about the past very hard poetry to write the, during the troubles, because everybody is trying to walk that tight rope, but they didn't inflame either heritage. So it's phenomenal poetry of the period. Um, and I fell madly in love with it as a host, a wonderful poet from Northern Ireland who wrote during the troubles,
Speaker 2 00:29:01 When we were talking, you were talking about Spencer and language and so on. I would just want it to take you back to that because Edmund Spencer,
Speaker 1 00:29:09 I guess that's right. Yes, yes, yes. Fairy queen and his, he is, he's got a particularly awful book out. Um, uh, when he was secretary to the, whoever was running on at the time, it's called a view of the state and it does it just privatizes for the complete control of the Irish by denying their language and denying that they have access to the bardic system. So, um, that they, but what I found very strange was that he's now Lord as the, as a wonderful point, which he was, and yet he saw no value at all in the wonderful poetry of another country. Oh, the language,
Speaker 2 00:29:55 All the language. And, and, and this is where I was trying to follow up there because when we talked about the Christian brothers, we talked about them coming from the Gaeltacht, uh, and so on. And also, uh, one of our previous interviewees again, to cite, uh, cherry Smith, uh, apart from Northern Ireland was saying about how during the hunger, a lot of the, uh, the instructions and suggestions by the British government were, were written in English rather than Gaelic and as a result. So like, uh, that there was a vast amount of suffering in the Gaeltacht region because I ended up abandoning of the language because if gala couldn't, couldn't protect you from this, what could it do?
Speaker 1 00:30:29 No, that's right. It's a classic and Peerless gesture is not a, it's not new, uh, uh, to, to destroy the connectivity between your past. And, uh, and, and, and what's going on and making it look as though everything there's no connectivity other than to the new, the new reality, which is English or, or Germanic or French or whatever, or exactly the same things they all did. All the companies did in, uh, in Africa. And we were ignorant to not alone in this. It is a fact that English is the language that's most used at the moment I get the people speaking English will be often talking about the position of language, you know, so, but the only medium that can do it in it is media. It,
Speaker 2 00:31:27 You have your own poem of you, of the state, uh, in a Bahraini counterbore third.
Speaker 1 00:31:32 I have. Yes. Um, uh, and it's, it's largely to do with my partner and that I see things, we're both what we are, you know, we're, we're, we're socialists and we March all sorts of things. Well, we don't always see the same things the same way I do. I is that the Walmart I, and, uh, you see
Speaker 2 00:31:58 When Bama bombs found in the north and Patty kill Patty, you wash your hands while I grieved for separate tribes.
Speaker 1 00:32:03 Absolutely. Because I know more about it. Uh, because being, being, uh, educated in England, again, there's an English flavor on what goes on and on, and there's no real knowledge of the, the huge history it's gone before. It is it's as immediate as it's of what's happening now. And I wish they'd stop it. That attitude is lovely. Yeah. Please stop it. But you have to know why Steph to know how to stop it. So I can see that it's tribes because for a long, long time, the, um, the Scottish settlers who went there, planters have always thought nor now, is that where they belong? You know, they tilled the land, but that has been an old colonial canvas for a very long time. You till the land and all of a sudden you owned it, well, somebody had to get off it for you to own it. It's a, it's a, it's a tight rope to walk well spotted. Well, thank you.
Speaker 2 00:33:09 Uh, but, uh, I, it was there in big letters.
Speaker 1 00:33:16 So, uh, yeah, there was a, there's a, I think there's a benign aspect that lots of English people that have to, to the empire that doesn't bear much questioning about. But then I didn't question anything about the, uh, I thought, well, English people were pretty awful when I came to England, it's walking down the street soon taught me that that was completely and utterly nonsense. They were exactly the same as me.
Speaker 2 00:33:46 Like you say, like a, you take away a language, you can take away a culture and a, and a and so on. And then I know that, um, uh, also in your collection that you have another sack of turf, uh, written, uh, in both, uh, Gaelic and English.
Speaker 1 00:34:01 Yes, I have it's uh, but don't, don't, um, um, um, don't assume that the Gaelic is exactly right, because in a, in a kind of a conceit, I wrote in school by Kaylee, because the last time I've spoken Gaelic walls as a school by 12, and I couldn't get much help from the, the magic machines, we've gotten enough computers. It seemed to have enough that I, as a school-wide still could still read and say all that seemed going back up to port nor to these McGovern bikeys and getting a new French up. So it has that in that sense, but don't get up, don't get a linguist since it was probably all shade. He's probably passed. I'd probably mix the tenses up. Which one
Speaker 2 00:34:53 Did you write? First?
Speaker 1 00:34:55 I will be English first because then it's easier. It's an easier template meeting to work on. And then I looked up all the words that would, I would know. Um, and then I joined them all up and I think it works. It certainly sounds beautiful when I read it. Well, then I'm probably venting the accent as well. So do
Speaker 2 00:35:19 You like reading out your poems?
Speaker 1 00:35:21 Oh, I love it. I love it. My appointment, I think come to life on the page when I read them out. And that's what I'm told. So, um, and I, I it's much to my annoyance that, uh, three years ago I packed up doing it because just before COVID and then I, I just, haven't got myself around to arranging gigs anymore. Gigs are a bit of a pain in the ass to arrange, but, uh, I've just seen my favorite point. Can I read that too, please? Yes. Blackberry picking frantic groupings in the Badlands of an August, hedge one arm straining for the heart to get you never catch me alive. Berries, nestled deep in the jet black, just beyond reach back of a boy, desperate launchings, and always the artful Dodger formed in brown, just slacking like Collin five-inch stored against old trespassers until suddenly as though a year, it never passed all handful yield to growing expertise.
Speaker 1 00:36:22 And there's 200 pickings now soft Tinkles gathering on themselves. Black gold, plenty noise in the bottom of your pale until some of the bounty. My sky was like silent prayers, crowds to deaths upon itself to be heard. And now only glossy thuds, Quita, dumbstruck juice, heavy sacrifices, the coal black slow black offerings to cross the tasks and the pies calling smugly on another shelf are arrayed and golden sediment eat on our buckling kitchen table. But there were days when I tell him mornings pickings for four pens enough for one back to school, propelling pencil, avoid his own newspaper and an ice cream. And later, still in long trousers pickings a day squelching mass could yield more than enough. Me and breeder the dark steamy backward courting seats of Mrs. Kirby's chin roof cinema on the K or tripped promos strand, a breed. And I learned to swim with the tide, the same old waves to save old games, splash this newer chore, the same longings for autumn pickings and loving on the strand, but different names tumbled in this crowd, the past and another country. Another place where I can no longer recall the faces of those who teaching me how to love, forgot to tell me how to let go.
Speaker 1 00:38:07 Do you ever really want to let go? Oh no, no, but they telling me that's what you must do to grow up. I bring my dead with me on my head. I don't go with graves. I, we can have a chat anytime of my head. So yeah, I quite like carrying my baggage around with me and I read, I know my mother's here and she's going Jesus by, do you know what you're thinking of? Cause I'm standing up in front of a crowd reading and the other side is Monken Mikey saying Fox egg by capias yourself on
Speaker 2 00:38:54 You are listening to the plastic podcasts, plastic and proud as with all my guests. The great pity of our interviews is we can only talk for so long when I wish we could talk for so much longer. In this last section, I talked to Tony Frisbee about football and Irishness, but first of all, about something he'd mentioned in our preparatory chats about coming to England as a family of zombies,
Speaker 1 00:39:20 We were kind of displaced in that it all happened so suddenly. Uh, my father and mother come to London, to his brother and I think there might've been something going on there where they were planning it. And then all of a sudden we got the nod to come. So within two or three weeks, we'd, we'd packed up everything sold what we could, if nothing, um, and came to it was just there seeing no planning at all for we younger members of the family, my older sisters had come with my mother and father, and then we kind of just packed up the rest of us, packed up and came and not ready for it. My particular problem with that, I spend, uh, three years of the time of the years before I on night shift, by which time I'd lost, uh, most of my friends had gone to school with, cause they couldn't come out. They, I couldn't go out at night. I was going to work at 11. Uh, so then I had to play, stop playing football because I was too tired in the morning. So, so mine was a bit, uh, a bit, uh, you know, uh, very zombie, but I was probably the, at the age when I was more aware of the enormous difference and what I had had, I didn't have, although I wasn't sad to lose my job, I'll leave that job because it was pretty awful. But, uh,
Speaker 2 00:40:51 Yeah, an awful lot of the stories that you hear of, of uh, the art coming across to, to England is that psycho, the Irish find each other, uh, particularly in London. So it was that, was that the case with your family or was it
Speaker 1 00:41:02 No way because they lived in Putney, we came to Putney and it's not an Irish place at all. Usually it's Cricklewood or, um, Paulson, even chaplains Butch and
Speaker 2 00:41:16 A lot of having Shepherd's Bush.
Speaker 1 00:41:18 Yeah. Uh, I, so we went and fall from them, but we had our own little coterie of Irish people around there, but they weren't nearly all my family. So, um, so there wasn't that. Uh, so it wasn't, uh, any inclination, no need to go anywhere. It's going to be out of housing where we were. Um, it probably wouldn't be nicer if, where we lived up there, but I, I used to go to Harlem for dancing, you know, and I, I wouldn't really want to live there because, uh, I mean I went past, um, um, like a Gary on place, you know, once and there were two bounces down, David beating shit out of a drunk and Irish person and they were drunk and it was way, way over the top way of the top. It was so malicious, you knew you got, you know, you got the kind of thuggish Irish person on the door there and they were going to teach this person had less than that.
Speaker 1 00:42:23 He'd never come back again. I was, it looked pretty awful. It looked really pretty brutalized. Um, and I don't think I'd want to live where people were allowed to do that. Quite honestly. Didn't look good. Could you ever have possibly imagined that you'd be walking across the downs and engaging in poetry? I wasn't. I was a bit of a romantic, um, and whereas I wouldn't have imagined it had, I imagined it. I wouldn't have been too surprised. I think what helped me was that, which I got from my mother and father, I've got a good work attitude. Um, I come to work for, you know, work hard and by the time I'd been in Britain a little while I realized I could work better than many. Uh, and that if I playing football, I would be the worst flare. So I, all of a sudden got a template against myself.
Speaker 1 00:43:22 And then by the time I reached 46, I thought there's not much I can't do anymore. I'm just open to any opportunity and any opportunity. Cause I didn't think I would be like everything I did in life. I'd probably find myself above average. Now I don't mean for a second, never first, but I do mean that I'd be kind of, if you're picking a football team, you'd probably put me in third. You've mentioned it a few times football. Yeah. Is it still a love of yours? What you won't believe this you'd have to vehicles. I'm going to tell you. I think at 80 I joined, I started playing football again.
Speaker 1 00:44:05 So the 20th of May this year walking football, but the nauseous thing is walking football. Once you see a ball and you have to get to it instantly, you get into whatever speed you can get up to. And, uh, I found I was running around like a blue ass fly everywhere. So yeah, I, I told the game, my daughter, I don't barely end up as captain and I looked people and I was, I mean, whatever, whatever, whoever I've got the thank, but I've got a fairly strong heart and lung systems. So, um, I can keep going forever on the football field. So, uh, it was the automatic place for me to be, and I could be everywhere. And I, I quite love the whole scene at night start. I packed up properly when I was 62. And uh, but I thought I'd go back at 18, but I've since packed up because I realized I have to be careful with this.
Speaker 1 00:45:03 I, and, and although does not contact an elbow is easy. So I have to be careful. So I thought, well, no, I've had, I had six games and I thought, nah, I won't do it anymore. I loved it. I loved the game I once played with. Do you follow football? I bet you, you could tell from the accent. Oh, you poor fellow. I once played, but mountain Peters, he was left wing and I was right-wing and we had a lovely time. These two too. Good to be true. I mean, it was a totally it's like, it's like God playing.
Speaker 1 00:45:44 The man was an absolute genius. Absolute genius. What were the circumstances there? Well, this, this, I played for Harrods, the, the, um, the, um, the veterans, I was Harrods and we often had a guest player playing with us. So we played a really a team, uh, like w I think that they were playing the spurs, the physios or something, but they were all the same age. They, you know, so we were all by then about fifties and Martin was known to one of our players. So he came long papers. Harrods. How was the show shop in London? Yeah, I'm looking for the jump there. Oh, sorry. Sharon's herons. The Herodians, uh, sports ground was in bonds. So I knew the, uh, chair of the, of the Rodion club. And that was where the veteran side was. What's the joy of football for you. I've always been a believer in that.
Speaker 1 00:46:47 Uh, and, uh, I've always loved to run. I don't like running, just plotting around. So I'd like to run with the ball. That's the nearest thing can get to it. I love the competitiveness and I love the fact that things are the most important fact for football for me was that I had a secondary job. I had to be nice to people all the time. It's actually quite nice to get out and push your way around and have it pushed back and have the, just the general organized rotten as we're game around me, because you have w w I came out of my little Klux uniform and had to go in rough into tackles, had to be roughly titled. I quite love the whole aspect of the, of the game. And I love the, I love the new ones that makes it fun, makes it go right.
Speaker 1 00:47:35 You know, it makes the make, it gives a quick cohesion between teams, some teams I played for it. It was like hitting, like we'd all been born as siblings to each other, and we knew exactly what was going on in their minds. It's quite lovely. I, that, uh, that relationship with a little pill popping around between your legs, you're trying to control it. It's quite lovely. Uh, yeah. I've loved football there forever. Yeah. Yeah. We talked about words or the use of language and so forth, and diaspora is a strange word to use. I mean, do you, do you consider yourself part of the diaspora? Not formally in any way at all, but I do realize I do. I do, I do belong to it, and I do belong to that day as part of that, that there's many who belong to it. And perhaps don't articulate anything about it.
Speaker 1 00:48:30 Um, my, my Facebook pages, 20 Frisbee, and, but the one I normally used was 20 Frisbee, an Irish voice. And Beth's, um, and that's because I'm quite proud of my, of the Irishness that comes across when you read my poetry. Uh, it's not always obvious to other Irish people. It is very obvious to people who are not Irish, um, that, that I'm coming across at a scene, strange slam to things, all that. I've got a melody or my voice that is Irish. So I'm not, I don't do the Patty Whakarae, but I'm very proud to be Amish, but I'm not, I'm not nationalistic about it. I just like to be it. I mean, I'm in so much a humanist. I don't have to fucking answer some questions.
Speaker 1 00:49:23 I belonged to the, I was an Irish diaspora. Uh, I hope it's the best part of the diaspora. Uh, I don't floaters, but I never ever hide it. If somebody comes up and talks to Dawn and says, oh, you're from England because we come across something. And I always say, no, I'm from Maui. So I'm a kind of a, I stand up for my Irish. I asked purism I'm I don't float it. And I'm sure it means a great deal. More important than I think somebody said to me, uh, recently, uh, one of the points and the, I put it up and it said, uh, um, it's the hole in the stone. I ended up, uh, the, uh, the first two pages. I am a born again, pagan, hallelujah, which I thought anybody would have 90 cents might realize if I'm saying hallelujah saying pagan, I I'm actually offering a little bit of a, come on, say something silly about this that's. So unrooted, he said, I, I don't like you calling us up pagan, Tony, you are part of the Celtic spiritualist movement. I said, I'm fucking not. I'm a pig.
Speaker 2 00:50:42 You've been listening to the passing podcast with me, Doug to that eight out of my guests, Tony Frisbee, the plastic pedestal was provided by Jessica Martin and the music by Jack divining. Find out more about us. That's www.classicpodcast.com. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or
[email protected]. The plastic podcast is a production of the plastic project.
