Hello beasties!
Yes... The baby is me! By my side is my best friend, at the time, Panda... What a wonderful first friend he was to have! I was a lucky kid... I think I'm the only person I know who actively used to insist on showing his school friends his baby photos whenever they came over for tea.
ANYWAY! Before we go anywhere I must just let you know about two new podcast episodes - one of mine, but more importantly there is that new episode of THE SMELLCAST that I feature in... I've mentioned it before and I'm terribly excited about it!
ANYWAY! Before we go anywhere I must just let you know about two new podcast episodes - one of mine, but more importantly there is that new episode of THE SMELLCAST that I feature in... I've mentioned it before and I'm terribly excited about it!
SC 414 There's A Shy Yeti On the Telephone
Toppie interviews Paul Chandler, the Shy Yeti Plus Listener Interaction and Stick It Out Your Backdoor. The Shy Life Podcast can be found on iTunes, as well as a number of other podcasting locations eg: Acast!
Write to Toppie at Smellcast@aol.com. Leave a comment on Toppie’s blog. Follow him on Twitter (as @Smellcast) and on Google+. Look at kooky stuff on smellcast.tumblr.com.
https://smellcast.wordpress.com/2016/06/29/sc-414-theres-a-shy-yeti-on-the-telephone/
I even feature in Listener Interaction and Stick It Out Your Backdoor! It's a real yeti-filled episode!!
There is a second episode coming up in a week or so too! More on that when it happens. Anyway, until then episode 414 is a really fun episode to listen to - so do! Yes, I know, I would say that!
The other podcast that I want to mention is a new episode of THE SHY LIFE PODCAST...
THE SHY LIFE PODCAST - 7: 
I JUST CALLED - TO SAY... SHY YETI!!
You can access the show on iTunes and Acast - or also on Soundcloud...
Soundcloud link: https://soundcloud.com/shyyeti/the-shy-life-podcast-7-i-just-called-to-say-shy-yeti
During my Shy Yeti sketch set in Amsterdam last week I posted some clean-shaven photos of me from around 1998, give or take a year. They were behind the scenes shots taken in black and white by my friend Lee F., during the filming of a series of SUTTON PARK episodes from around that time. I don't actually have that many photos from this period, as I was always so busy behind the camera filming or in front of it showing off; but these pictures are an exception. Here is a link to that post to remind you of the photos that I mean - scroll down to the bottom, to where the script is:
http://thedaffypoet.blogspot.co.uk/2016_06_26_archive.html
Anyway, using these photos on the post gave me the idea to post a number of screen-grabs that I took whilst recording sound clips from old S.P. episodes for the podcast recently. I present them here and have also written a little piece to go with it... The photos are coming up, but firstly I'll try and explain the context of them and roughly when these episodes were filmed...
Most of them are from different episodes of Sutton Park - the ones where I have a goatee are from May 1996 - there are also a couple of me clean-shaved from even earlier (around 1994). Mixed up in all these there is also a photo of our cats Panda and Poppy which was taken in the late 80s or early 90s. Poppy is the grey one and she was my cat when I was growing up - she came to live with us as a kitty around the time of my 4th birthday in 1977. She was a lovely cat and used to "bump heads" to show her affection - she'd also come to see what was wrong if you were upset; I nicknamed her "my second mum". The last two photos here are of me from more recently - the one of me standing by the sea, was taken in San Francisco around the time of my 30th birthday in 2003 and the very bottom one is from September 2007, when I was in Dublin at the Guinness Museum.
For those of you who are interested I have also done a brief post over on my Sutton Park blog-site: www.suttonpark.blogspot.com It's the first one I've done there in six years and over there you'll find some of the photos from this post, alongside shots of some of the other stars of the episodes that I have recently been reviewing.
Anyway... Enjoy! Shy Yeti in the 1990s - before he had even earned that particular nick-name!!
It's been fun to return to these old Sutton Park episodes as although I made a lot of videos between 1992 and 2000 when I was making the original series, I didn't have that many stills from these videos and so it's nice to take screen-grabs to be able to share with you now. It also led to me writing this week's prose piece which is all about looking back at old photos, although in this case the "story" is written from the point of view of somebody who is ageing backwards - from old to young. It's an idea that's been done by other people before, in different ways, but this is my chance to play around with the idea.
More soon!
Yeti hugs,
Paul xx
P.S. I came up with the idea for this prose piece around the 5th May 2016 and have been working on it on and off since then - with a lot of the work done on it the week before this post.
P.P.S. The illustration that follows was done by my friend Lee F back in 1996 - it's an illustration of the nick-name I gave him when I christened him my "creative gnu" rather than guru... I wrote a poem entitled that a few years back now - I really should dig it out to perform at my show!
WHEN TIME MAKES YOU YOUNGER...There is life -
But for him it is almost over...
There he sits - alone...
A figure in the last years of a long life...
He had been born at the age of 87...
Ever since he had been getting younger by the year...
Consider it...
A world where time makes you younger...
It is natural here...
It is the same for everyone...
There he sits - in silent contemplation...
It is rare that he gets any time to himself these days;
For he has recently reached toddler-hood -
Under constant observation by nannies and family members...
He will grow even more dependent as time moves on...
He will become a baby...
His memories finally fading...
Looking back across the years...
How strange it is to see himself so long ago...
So old and wrinkled...
So different to how he looks now...
Peering out of the photos with a kind of confused wisdom...
As if he, accurately as it happens,
Didn't know quite where he was...
Now, it seems that life had begun,
Just before he had lost his wife.
Beryl had kept him company through many a year...
They had begun distant -
Growing closer as the years receded.
He watched as she grew younger -
They both did, but she had been that much younger than him...
It had been fascinating to see the changes -
To witness the ravages of time slowly relaxing themselves...
She had made a good mother;
At first, independent they had grown into children...
But they are gone now - it has been years...
Soon it will be his turn...
The years that remain for him are turning to months...
He already knows the date of his departure -
For that is determined by the age he was when he arrived...
Back at his death - when everything began...
Beyond the house the world runs backwards -
The planet grows younger...
Technology regresses and wars undo themselves...
It is just how things are...
Turning the pages one last time...
He closes the book...
It annoys him that he must rest...
His ability to read is rapidly slipping away...
Maybe somebody will come and read him a story -
And then it will be time for his afternoon nap...
He gets so tired these days;
Now that time is short...
Life -
Where the end is actually just the beginning...
And where the beginning now clearly signals the end...
Life... Now it is nearly over...
