It’s official: women love sheds too. Only one in five of Shedman’s audience at this premiere of his pre-Edinburgh show was male (but this is Brighton remember and Shedman normally expects about half and half).
For ten years, Brighton’s own Pighog Press publisher and poet John Davies (aka Shedman) has been doing the rounds of festivals and setting up shed. A tribe of fellow shed-lovers have crossed his threshold bearing random offerings. He holds up a jigsaw depicting (you guessed it) a garden shed, a mug with a lid, and (less obvious) a concrete tortoise. Mostly they bring poems to paste up in the shed; some write them on location, often facilitated by Shedman himself.
This afternoon Shedman is surrounded by memorabilia and a detritus of stuff familiar to anyone who loves a shed: garden tools lie loose among boxes of cardboard and heavy-duty plastic, bursting with yellowing magazines and papers; a pair of garden gnomes sporting Union Jack-decorated outfits, left over from the Royal Wedding, will come in for the Jubilee.
The only thing missing is a shed.
It turns out Davies doesn’t even have a permanent shed – to placate Mrs Shedman’s worry of urban eyesore. But while we are regaled with lovely anecdotes he’s collected over years of Shedman tours and poems from Shedman’s collection, and even write our own poems to his prompts, this corner of the Brasserie sadly lacks lustre – there really is no substitute for a shed. Still, at least he won’t get rats.
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