People often ask me what an eccentric looks like.
I usually tell them they’re asking the wrong question.
When I became the Devon representative for The Eccentric Club, I imagined I would have to go searching for extraordinary people.
As it turned out, they were already my friends.
To represent The Eccentric Club in my own county was a great honour. It also meant facing challenges I had never expected.
Organisation has never been my greatest strength, and living with ADHD meant that planning events, answering correspondence and keeping everything running smoothly did not come naturally. Every achievement required a little more effort than most people realised.
Fortunately, The Eccentric Club was never a place where people expected perfection. Individuality was valued far more highly than efficiency, and that suited me rather well.
My immediate thought was, “Can I really do this?”
After all, who was I to judge whether someone else was eccentric? Most people seemed perfectly normal to me.
Then it dawned on me.
Where was I going to cast my net?
The answer was obvious.
On the whole, they were already my friends.
One was a singer and guitarist who always performed wearing a rubber wolf mask. Audiences loved him, and he invariably finished his set with Michael Hurley’s The Werewolf.
Somehow, it all made perfect sense.
Another friend was a heavily bearded guitarist who performed with an uncooked potato tightly strapped to his abdomen. It wasn’t a fashion statement. The potato was there to discourage a troublesome hernia from making an unwelcome appearance during the evening.
Then there was the singer whose introductions to songs were usually longer than the songs themselves. This caused the occasional outbreak of panic at Open Mic nights, where strict time limits were considered more than a mere suggestion.
And who could forget the banjo player who could only play in the key of G? Fellow musicians developed remarkable skills at avoiding eye contact whenever he unpacked his instrument. His speciality was lengthy Celtic ballads, delivered with such conviction that nobody quite knew whether they had understood a single word.
These are just a few of the remarkable people I was fortunate enough to call friends.
Music and poetry were never far away from anything we organised. They brought people together and gave everyone permission to be themselves.
One of my happiest memories was our Eccentriku competition. We borrowed the traditional Japanese haiku and gave it an eccentric twist. The results were wonderfully unpredictable.
The winner was Coco, whose prize was a pen donated by The Eccentric Club. Her winning Eccentriku still makes me smile:
Fishy in a dress.
My only wish for this fish
Is deliciousness.
It wasn’t trying to change the world.
It simply made people laugh.
Sometimes that’s achievement enough.
There were many memorable occasions. Presenting The Eccentric Club Award to John, at the Velo Vintage Occasion & Ride in Barnstaple remains one of them.
Another unforgettable evening took place at St Anne’s Arts & Community Centre, where Kevin entertained us on guitar, accompanied by the legendary Sam Spoons—of Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band fame—treated us to a wonderfully energetic performance, and I joined in on blues harp.
What a night it was.
It wasn’t a polished concert.
It was something much better.
It was a room full of people enjoying themselves without the slightest concern for appearances.
Representing The Eccentric Club in Devon also opened doors I could never have imagined. Some of those doors weren’t even in Devon.
At the time I was editing and publishing SAW, a poetry magazine I had started simply to help local poets see their work in print. To my astonishment, SAW grew into an international publication, attracting contributions from well-known poets around the world.
Those connections led to invitations to perform and read my work in Kentucky, Brittany, Dublin and London. Looking back, it still seems extraordinary that something which began with a small poetry magazine in North Devon could travel so far.
People often assume that The Eccentric Club is about colourful hats, unusual clothes and odd behaviour.
Of course, those things add to the fun.
But clothing is only the wrapping.
Real eccentricity, in my experience, is curiosity, generosity, humour and the confidence to be yourself.
One evening, as I looked around a room full of musicians, poets, artists and wonderfully unconventional people, I realised that nobody was pretending to be anyone else.
Perhaps that was the real secret of The Eccentric Club.
It gave people permission to be exactly who they already were.
Looking back, I don’t remember committee meetings or correspondence.
I remember the laughter.
When I accepted the role of representing The Eccentric Club in Devon, I thought I was joining an organisation.
I now realise I was joining a family.
I set out looking for eccentrics.
They turned out to be my friends.
Thoughts.
