Postcard from Vancouver:A performing poet has to explain about Brillo pads and egg-cosies

Dear All

I am in a downtown coffee bar and there's so far too much cinnamon on my cappuccino Otherwise things are swell. The hotel bed is king-size and the kings are big over here. Breakfasts are a big deal, too: eggs over easy, hash browns, toasted whole-wheat bread and fruit. Fruit? On the same plate as eggs? Mm. Little segs of it, lovely. We celebrate the differences except for the cinnamon-skinned cappuccinos. On the street when the traffic lights want your feet to walk there's a sprightly, brightly-lit Vancouver man, when it's time to stop and stand there's an androgynous Vancouver hand. And we celebrate the differences in the talk. I get an irrational thrill the first time someone refers to me as 'buddy' and I get the check, not the bills, with what I make, not what I earn. In the show Brillo pad needs explaining as do train-spotters and egg-cosies. Farting dogs are more universal as are relationships which fall apart but the Band-aid, not the plaster, is required for the hurting heart. There is a firm demand for merchandise but it's something we've missed, however we enlist the bustling festival office to assist and they rustle up a dayglo photocopied booklet which is very nice of them. In the hasty paste-up the egg-cosy poem is so good they have to print it twice. I call the book Verses for Vancouver it has a picture of a Hoover and on Nigel's suggestion the text is accredited to J. Edgar Hegley I assume this slightly more local joke will be much appreciated but the audience responds with silence. The ultimate criticism of the witticism. The festival folk have also made us a massive pair of glasses which I want to return with me on the flight so as to be one of the sights under the lights in my nights in Edinburgh. Tomorrow we take the chairlifts up Grouse Mountain this is a city with many gifts Vantastic.

(Photograph omitted)