Southend

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Tapi Carpets Man Nick Potter turns Radio Man

Roy Stannard and Nick Potter getting ready to share some more guitar music

An unlikely musical partnership has emerged from a chance encounter between radio commercial manager and presenter Roy Stannard and carpet estimator Nick Potter who works at the Rustington branch of Tapi Carpets.

Nick Potter arrived at Roy Stannard’s house in Burgess Hill early in 2015 to measure up for a carpet fitting but the conversation quickly turned to music when he found out that in addition to being a regional manager with the More Radio Group, Roy hosts a weekly radio programme on East Sussex radio station, Seahaven FM 96.3. It turned out that Nick is a blues and rock guitar fan with a vast knowledge of the back catalogues of some of the best guitar players – and has a particular favourite in the form of Robin Trower, who hails from Southend which is Roy’s home town. When Roy mentioned that he had been to the next door school to Trower and used to travel on the same bus in Southend as Wilko Johnson, the conversation deepened and Roy invited Nick to put a list together of the all-time great guitar tracks by the best musicians to form the basis of the very first Guitar Greats Radio special on 16th April 2015.

Three years later and Nick and Roy have presented thirteen shows together with the 14th planned for the 25th October this year.

By day Nick works for Tapi Carpets, Rustington, but by night roams the land in pursuit of the wailing solo, the guitar shredding technique and the finger-picking good guitar break. A connoisseur of licks, lines and lead pyrotechnics, Nick is an expert on guitar legends live and on record in the South. He and his wife who live in Rustington spend a good deal of their spare time going to live music gigs across the South and this love has been passed on to his daughter who also likes rock music.

His manager Daryl Short is delighted to be getting lots of indirect publicity on the radio. He says “Nick is an excellent estimator. Like many others in the company he came to us after many years at Carpetright and has proven to be a great success with the customers who like his engaging manner and years of carpet expertise. He and another employee here Liam Perry are both guitar fanatics and let each other know about the latest emerging players. We love tuning in to listen to Nick and Roy on the radio as we usually get a mention!”

Tapi Carpets MD Martin Harris, son of Lord Harris who founded Carpetright is pleased that the company is forging a reputation for musical knowledge as well as floorcovering excellence. “Our Manager Daryl at Rustington thinks highly of Nick and this is a perfect example of how a chance encounter has led to great publicity for the company – simply because of the customer relationship building that we encourage amongst our staff.”

Note:

Seahaven FM is a not-for-profit Community radio station based in Seaford serving an 80,000 TSA that covers Seaford, Newhaven, Peacehaven and Lewes. Roy’s Show ‘The Whole Nine Yards’ broadcasts live every Thursday 7-9pm and can be heard on FM locally 96.3 and on the internet on www.seahavenfm.com and past shows including the thirteen Guitar Great specials with Nick Potter at http://www.mixcloud.com/roystannard

The latest show – The Nick Potter Guitar Greats Special Vol XIII was broadcast across two hours on Seahaven FM on the 31st May and can be listened to via these links:

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Moment

Leigh

Who knows when that moment will occur?

Moment

 

There was a New York moment
An ice-splinter in a sheet of sunlight
When without the aid of smart devices
Using dumb mind trails and heartstrings
We managed to connect
Like two sparrowhawks circling the Downs
Two wayfaring strangers caught in eye contact
A brother and a sister separated at the orphanage
The tramrails of recognition in a train carriage
Two carvings divided by centuries on an ancient Ashdown Forest oak
Together but alone, two flights scribbled together, trails in the sky
Lattice-work moments that we didn’t recognise then
But now in our Hadleigh twitchers hide they start to form letters
on the Estuary horizon as we look across the marshes of Foulness
And in the distance the iron-toothed refineries and the Essex tides
wash dreams from the tarnished golden mile to Thorpe Bay.
Do you remember being scared by thunder in the same storm?
Before grammar schools dressed us in new ambitions
That hung off us like extravagant hand-me-downs
And we didn’t know each other then
And yet we did, somehow.
We heard the strains of the same songs
drifting through our different worlds
echoes in adjacent rooms then
but hearing them again now,
as our eyes dance in the same places.
And as the shadows lengthen
The midges rise and the fairy-tale forest draws in
We let the thought hang in the air
There is a new Wealden moment
An iceblink as the glacier shifts
And the sun traces our faces,
our shadows merge, becoming one
as all of the things we always meant to do
collide here like carriages of a train
in its silent Beeching siding
but there in the car reserved for lovers
two people who have not known each other
all their lives
finally have their moment.
 
Roy Stannard 6th June 2013
(the 50th anniversary of the Beeching cuts)
 
Listen to a live recording on Soundcloud
https://soundcloud.com/roystannard/roy-stannard-moment-final-mix
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Southend Pier – still standing, but not standing still.

When I was a boy I spent hours upon hours on Southend Pier, walking its length, feeling its girth, teasing its claim to be the longest in the world at 1.25 miles.  Its slot machine alleys whispered to me alluringly. Cheap, trashy items like tin rings and shoddy pen knives (that I would have left on the ground if had I found them) became irresistible treasure if found on a moving tray of pennies or laying prostrate below a mechanical crane. I would lose myself for hours in these glittering, garishly painted palaces, emerging into the light and air feeling poorer and coppers lighter to lean against the walkway rails.

Southend Pier. The daddy of all piers has been rebuilt more times than the six million dollar man, made up and repainted more times than a Soho harlot and yet it still receives its lovers, supplicants and one-day tripper stands.

In 1959, three years after I was born, a fire destroyed the Pier Pavilion at the shore-end, replaced by a ten-pin bowling alley. Eighteen years later another fire swallowed up the 1908 Pier Head which remained derelict until a £1.3m grant from the Historic Buildings Committee in 1986 made good and also financed new rolling stock so that the tiny railway recommenced  the traditional ride back for the outward bound walkers. Almost immediately afterwards the MV Kingsabbey sliced through the pier between the old and new pier heads leaving an ugly, yawning 70 foot hole. It was patched up reluctantly, like an old lady at a modern dentist in 1989. Six years later the bowling alley was destroyed by fire, repaired in 1998, followed by a brand new Pier entrance in 2003 – only to play with fire again in 2005 which swallowed and spat out the station, cafe, restaurant, toilets and the pavilion. In 2007 Southend Pier was awarded Pier of the Year and two years later its brand new station platform and office was officially opened by Southend’s Mayor.

The result of all this wear, tear and repair is that the end of the pier is now pristine, clean and virtually clear of buildings. The RNLI building stands alone, proud of its heroic status, poised for action, imperiously dismissive of the simple tourists that climb its stairs for a prurient look.

No end of pier theatre, no varieties, not even a stick of rock in sight. Length isn’t everything. As a young man, I felt that there must be a better pier. The kiss me quick hats would always be faster and racier elsewhere. In 1977 I left Southend in search of  true seaside seediness in Brighton.

Before that, in the faraway fifties and sixties, a boy played on the longest pier in the world, a pier with no beginning or end, a pier that stretched as far as the imagination would stretch. Beyond that, there was always Kent.

Like the pier, I have had fires, objects that sailed straight through me, numerous repairs, modifications and people walking all over me.

We are both still standing.

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A letter to the six year old me

'One sees clearly only with the heart. The essential is invisible to the eyes.''

There are many things it would have been useful to know back then..

I was a cute kid, light brown hair with bright, wide open eyes, curious about everything, trusting about a lot more. I was a first born so for the first four years of my life I was Le Petit Prince, the centre of attention and the focus of everything – except that for the first five years I didn’t speak. I don’t know why. I was bright, inquisitive, played inside and outside the home with brave abandon. I just didn’t communicate in the dimension we call language.

Maybe I was scared, fearful of something deep inside. Afraid of being wrong, of mistakes that I wasn’t fully conscious of, but knew I could make if I wasn’t careful. I think I was told I was wrong a lot, but that could be a retrospectively imposed memory because I was told off a lot later. I think I was happy, but I can’t be sure which probably says it all.

For more than fifty years I have stored my only memory of this period in my life. I have a recollection – in fact, more than that, a dramatic video clip in my head of me on a tricycle pedalling furiously around the block where we lived in Southend, trying to get home before the storm broke. The black clouds were gathering like bullfrogs in the sky above and that heavy feeling in the air that gathers before a thunderstorm was pressing down on me. I could hear a distant rumble, like a chest of drawers being pulled forcibly across next door’s landing. The first spots of rain started to fall out of the sky and my urge to get home or at least out of the storm led me to propel the pedals faster. I was no more than a street away yet I felt as if I had accidentally drifted into a foreign country. I started crying, still pedalling furiously, in an attempt to beat the storm, to keep ahead of it, to work harder in order to beat it. But however hard I turned the wheels of my tricycle, I could not overtake the storm. The clouds opened, the rain fell, the thunder tumbled out of the sky and the lightning whipped across my retinas in a way I hadn’t experienced before. It was my first storm. I didn’t know that it wasn’t the end of the world. It would have been good to have been told that.

Earlier today I learned some lines by rote to use them in a minor drama. I learned them assiduously in order to be able to perform a two-handed piece with a friend who had also learned his lines. The cues were important. I assembled the script in my head. I could recite it word for word perfectly. In rehearsal I could speak and act like Gielgud – with no hesitation. When it came to it in front of an audience, my mind went blank in the middle of the piece – almost as if a piece of my brain had decided to bolt for the door.  Afterwards, I realised that I had unconsciously gone back to when I was six at Bournemouth Park Junior School in Southend where I was performing T.S. Eliot’s Macavity the Mystery Cat in its entirety on stage. I lost my way half way through and was castigated in a most unpleasant way for it by my class teacher. Since then, I have had a block about performing learned lines on stage. I have excused this by saying that I am a free spirit, that lines represent restraints, that I am an improviser, a spontaneous speaker, a kind of frontiersman of the performing world. That’s why I have worked in radio. No script. That’s why I have been a teacher. No script. That’s why I love to speak unrehearsed on stage to anyone who will listen. No script. My life as a whole has been lived without a script. All because a misguided Mrs Squeers gave me a hard time when I was six years old.

No script, ergo no safety net, no balance wheels, no seat belt, no contingency plan, no pension, does make for a more interesting life. But having cues simply means you can ignore them if you want to. Maybe I went off the rails because the rails resembled lines. ‘You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed.‘

Now that the six year old me and I have got acquainted, here are some things that I could share with him.

Just to make him feel a little better.

You are loved, little guy. There is no-one else in the world like you. You will give a whole lot of pleasure to a lot of people before you’re done. You will make mistakes but these won’t matter that much, not compared with the good you’ll do. All those mistaken ideas about not being worth very much are wrong. They were put into you by people who were damaged themselves. In fact, you’re priceless. Priceless in a way that might lead to people dying for you, perhaps even God himself. The love that you missed out on as a kid will be made up to you many times over, because you will hand it out plentifully to others. You will make an integral and unique difference to other people’s lives. You will brighten up many people’s days, every day. You will feel the black heart of other’s prejudices and blame yourself before understanding that it is their heart, not yours, that is hurt. You will have a place that you can call home in your own heart. You will cry, you will despair, but you will never be worthless. You will think you’ve failed, but that will just be another step towards success. You may feel lost, but that will just be exploration. You may feel like you have gone down dead ends but these will be just be paths less trodden. You will experience fear, but it will seem much better when you call it excitement instead. You will feel driven, but you will realise that no-one can drive like you, and it was you driving all along. Your ambition will feel out of reach until you understand that it is your ambition and you can do what you like with it. You will feel like a failure, but you will also feel like another hug, and have that instead. You will find out that the difference between depression and happiness is just a raising of the eyes from the ground into the eyes of another and smiling. Anything you decide to do will be your decision, even though you may feel guided by someone one else. There is no-one to blame. But the credit belongs to you as well. All of it. However hard you try, you will never stop being a human being of infinite worth.

You are now and will always be loved, little Prince.

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Loose tongues – can you trust what your voice is saying about you?

What do people hear – you or your voice?

Is your voice saying things about you without you knowing?

As someone who didn’t speak until I was five years old and who has intermittently lost my voice at times of stress in my life, I am interested in matters of the voice.

What does your voice say about you? Can it reveal things without you knowing? Does it attract or repel independently of the rest of our bodies?  Does it give away what we are really thinking without any cognizance from us?

I remember times when I have taken to the platform ready to deliver an inspiring speech, to rally the troops and persuade an audience of my fitness for a role and my voice has swung limply in the wind, cracked when it should have been solid, limped across the finishing line when it should have burst the tape.

The experts in body language will tell you that when your voice rises in pitch at the end of a sentence it means that you lack conviction in what you are saying. Controlling types are adept at making their voices close down like a mantrap at the end of a sentence in a tone that brooks no argument.

High, breathy tones denote turbo-charged emotional types who like facilitating the health and wellbeing of others, but do not inspire fear or respect.

The opening gambit in a sales call will either establish or destroy the same trust. A confident conversational tone will keep the listener on the end of the phone. A shouty sales pitch delivered in sheer desperation will inspire the ring tone. If the pitch of the voice that is speaking to you changes abruptly, there is fair chance that its owner is lying to you. Of course, it could mean that his underpants are too tight.

An extrovert is ‘outed’ by his or her voice which will be louder and more propulsive. An introvert will speak in a more muted and less speedy way – the voice will give away the fact that its owner is a highly analytical type unwilling to make quick decisions and deeply distrustful of  fast, emotional decision-making. An enthusing style personality will find such people irritating in the extreme as they themselves speak quickly, animatedly and without a great deal of forethought. The analyzer will find such people frivolous and unworthy of trust.

At Powerchange we find that the most important element to establish in manipulating the behaviour of others is the establishment of rapport. The voice is a key instrument in this endeavour. If we hear a voice that sounds like our own then we automatically feel at home with it. Not only do we prefer the voice, but we also veer towards believing what that voice is saying.

Research has also discovered that people with attractive voices enjoy better sex lives from an earlier age – and with more partners. Those with attractive voices are also likely to have better bodies – broader shoulders and narrower hips in men. Its equivalent in women would be an hourglass figure, curves and attractive face. That is why we are so disoriented when we encounter rare cases of beautiful voices attached to visually unappealing owners. A phenomenon that is often associated with radio.

When I was eighteen and working in the City of London as a Lloyds Broker I consciously made the decision to alter my voice from a working class quack from the Thames Estuary to that of a sophisticated public school drawl. The former would have held my career back; the latter ensured acceptance from the privileged sons of the land who occupied the underwriting chairs in the Lloyds of London Chamber of the 1970s. I sometimes wonder where my original voice went. Do tapes exist anywhere of me speaking with my untrammeled Southend vowels and Essex glottal stops? My voice allowed me a career in radio later in life and has sometimes afforded me an authority I probably haven’t deserved. It has quelled schoolchildren in classrooms and chaired business meetings. It has commanded platforms and serenaded women, delivered bulletins and bolstered egos. But I sometimes wonder who is speaking.

The voice is an important instrument of persuasion, reason, argument, flattery, anger and sorrow. I usually think before I use it in case something unintended slips out like a piece of kiss me quick doggerel.

It’s good to have an attractive voice. But attractive voices are more likely to be unfaithful – or at least their owners are. This may be connected with the fact that people with nice voices are perceived as having a more desirable personality.

Having a voice that you are comfortable with and sounds relaxed and at ease when it makes an appearance is usually interpreted as meaning that you are a person of worth, secure in your body, confident and great company.

A useful rapport builder and a pleasant bridge. But I’m listening to the voice within.