Poems from My Youth Part 1 - Summer With Monika - Roger McGough

I think it was 1971 when I lived in an attic flat opposite the bowling alley with my mate Alfie who was killed by a hit and run driver in 1973. It was a chaotic time, the flat was actually rented by Kaz, the pregnant girlfriend of Roger who was in prsion at the time, I can't remember what for.

When I moved in with Kaz she was only a little bit pregnant and for a short while we were lovers- I suppose that was my Spring With Kaz.... but her health was not great and eventually as the pregnancy progressed she moved back in with her family. Alfie who was homeless at the time then moved into the flat, ostensiblty to help with the rent although we never actually paid any and were eventually evicted. The day we were kicked out the landlord brought the police with him, for protection I suppose, but they weren't very interested and we had no quarrels with the landlord so we collected what we could of our things and dragged them down the street to a friendly house of multiple-occupation about half a mile away. We crashed there before I hitchhiked to Blackpool mostly to beg for food and money and to have adventures of all sorts after a few days of post-eviction navel gazing round the corner.

But while I still lived in that attic where that bloody blue neon sign on the bowling alley flashed opposite I read the classic deconstruction of Charles Manson's psychedlic assassins, The Family by Ed Sanders, still on my list of best books ever.
At the same time we listened to the 1967 album McGough and McGear from which the poem Summer With Monika comes and this poem has always been a favourite.

It is by Liverpool poet Roger McGough whose album with Paul McCartney's brother Mike McGear who were two thirds of the novelty/comedy singing group Scaffold and was at that time on the fringes of what was considered hip (the other absent member was John Gorman). The 1960s Liverpool connection and the relationship with The Beatles did nothing at all to harm that hip vibe, although Roger McGough always was homely to my mind.  More associated with cups of tea than lysergic acid even during those psychedelic times of the later 1960s.

This poem always reminds me of that attic and Kaz who made the transition from Roger's girlfriend to my live-in lover within about an hour of me arriving there, homeless and invited to stay for just one night. A stray cat.

Now in retrospect the characters of the fictional Monika and the real-life Kaz sort of get morphed in my mind when I think back to the Spring of  '71..... the poem, the attic and the blue neon light.
Kaz had a boy baby that autumn and she married Roger upon his release from penal servitude, so it all ended happily ever after (or otherwise) as history unfolded. I don't know we lost touch.

I went down to the south coast to work as a dining hall porter at Butlin's Holiday Camp in Bognor Regis for the remainder of the summer, which was where I became the proud tenant of a staff chalet and for about 3 months an attendee at a non-stop party. Not so much a job as an orgy with chores attached.

This unabated hedonism was only punctuated by working shifts and becoming the fastest mopper of the most cavernous dining hall in the history of skivvying.
 I earned the nickname Bomber because of my outstanding prowess in sweeping and mopping, but that's another story altogether, one about how I became the very model of a modern dining hall porter and a mopper extraordinaire.

So then, here is the recording of Roger McGough reading his poem Summer With Monika that I had on my vinyl LP all those many years ago. I hope you like it too.

Since the 70s Roger McGough has become probably the best known living poet in Britain, certainly outside literary circles anyway, although that title may be challengeable he has certainly achieved much for his art.

Roger is the host of BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Please which is always worth listening to if you can hear it (I'm toldthat radio on the BBC website is available outside of the UK, whereas television isn't).
 Poetry Please website

According to our old friend Wikipedia:-

 McGough won a Cholmondeley Award in 1998, and was awarded the CBE in June 2004. He holds an honorary MA from Nene College of Further Education; was awarded an honorary degree from Roehampton University in 2006; as well as an honorary doctorate from the University of Liverpool on 3 July 2006.
He was Fellow of Poetry at Loughborough University (1973-5) and Honorary Professor at Thames Valley University (1993).

This poem I now know refers to the film of the same name by Ingmar Bergman and here we have an interesting coincidence, because although I'd never seen or even heard of the film when I was listening to McGough's poem with Kaz in the attic, so I didn't know that the film is about a young working class woman who gets pregnant and lives a wild lifestyle that scandalises the moralists. I think we did a bit of that.

Wikipedia again, but this time on the film:-

Summer with Monika (Swedish: Sommaren med Monika) is a 1953 Swedish film directed by Ingmar Bergman. It sparked controversy abroad for its frank depiction of nudity, and along with the film One Summer of Happiness from the year before, directed by Arne Mattsson, it started the reputation of Sweden as a sexually liberated place.

If only we knew that we were doing Summer With Monika in reverse, Kas was already pregnant when I moved in and she fled to the security of family and marriage which was perhaps what Bergman's Monika did initially at least too. But the film the poem and the attic all seem to have threads that bind them together whilst the blue flashing neon of the bowling alley foretold the arrival of the blue flashing lights of the police that day Alfie and me got our marching orders from that former refuge and now deserted love nest in the blue neon attic.


The first small step on the road to becoming a Super Drudge down on the English Channel shore just a few short weeks later and the rest dear friends is history as they say.