GBA Episodes that talk about and with Coventry.

Coventry Episodes

The Coventry Years

This is an introduction to Dave who is the host of GBA. It was Episode 1 of  the series and had 130 plays at the time of it being ACCIDENTALLY DELETED. It has been re-posted out of sequence because there was no way of putting it back where it belonged.

Dave tells stories from his past, some funny, some sad, some a mixture of both, featuring two live stories told at Spark London events: http://www.sparklondon.com/

GBA 1 Dave

In GBA 63 we get better acquainted with Steve. Steve was my best friend when I lived in Coventry, between the ages of 10 and 13. We talk about our shared history and catch up with who we are now we're 30. Games workshop, fantasy worlds, Stephen King's It style childhood adventures, getting into music, losing touch and then being brought back together by the Internet.

This conversation is the prelude to an EPIC GBA Special that's coming out on Friday where I return to Coventry the city we grew up in. I tour the town with Steve. 

Both episodes are about that strange time of life: late childhood. The years before you are fully teen but when you are no longer a toddler. 

They are also about re-establishing and developing friendship. A friendship where we knew each other before we were fully formed. 

They are about the danger and the magic of being a child. And that strange nostalgic emotion that comes when you try and look back. 

We discuss stories that I talked about in GBA 1: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-1-dave

Steve Plugs:

His band at the time, The Sequins, who have now gone their separate ways: http://www.thesequins.co.uk/

UPDATE: Here is his new/old band: Late Starters: http://www.youtube.com/latestartersuk

We also talk about my old band Apples for Everyone: http://www.myspace.com/applesforeveryone

My previous podcast Four Days in a Room: http://www.fourdaysinaroom.co.uk/

And my current music project a Room Full of Friends. What we’re up to has had one public airing at the night I was running earlier this year and you can hear us in these two podcasts:

http://soundcloud.com/standuptragedy/stand-up-tragedy-17

http://soundcloud.com/standuptragedy/stand-up-tragedy-18

You can hear Getting Better Acquainted on Stitcher SmartRadio, Stitcher allows you to listen to your favourite shows directly from your iPhone, Android Phone, Kindle Fire and beyond.

On-demand and on the go!

Don’t have Stitcher? Download it for free today at http://www.stitcher.com or in the app stores.

Help more people get better acquainted. If you like what you hear why not write an iTunes review?

Follow @GBApodcast on Twitter. Like Getting Better Acquainted on facebook. Tell your friends. Spread the word!

GBA 63 Steve

In GBA 64 we get better acquainted with Coventry:

It's an epic document of my return to a city I hadn't been back to in 12 years.  I lived there through some dark and strange times 17 years ago.

In the show I really do get better acquainted with the city. I get to know its character. With my childhood friend Steve as my co-host I take you around Coventry's Cathedrals and shopping centres and we cover how the city was changed forever by the blitz. 

http://www.coventrycathedral.org.uk/

Then we journey back into my past, returning to the estates that I lived in as a child and the schools that we both attended together, through a barrage of memory and new perspectives. 

Steve mounts an inspiring defence of the city he has lived his whole life in and tells us why he loves the city so deeply. 

I take a long hard look at my past, re-evaluate my relationship to it, reconsider who I am, and get to know a different city to the one I left. Or is the city the same and it's me who has changed? Have I really changed at all?

Either way come and join me as I make my peace with Coventry.

As a prelude to this episode I released Steve’s GBA earlier this week:  http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-63-steve

Both episodes are about that strange time of life: late childhood. The years before you are fully teen but when you are no longer a toddler. 

They are also about re-establishing and developing friendship. A friendship where we knew each other before we were fully formed. 

They are about the danger and the magic of being a child. And that strange nostalgic emotion that comes when you try and look back.

Other good “extra listening” that compliments this episode are:

Episode 1 of GBA where I tell at least 3 stories set in Coventry during this time: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-1-dave

One of which is this http://www.sparklondon.com story which we talk about extensively at the end of the Coventry Special: http://www.mixcloud.com/sparklondon/two-cathedrals-david-pickering/

And George’s GBA is given a brief mention too: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-6-george

You can hear Getting Better Acquainted on Stitcher SmartRadio, Stitcher allows you to listen to your favourite shows directly from your iPhone, Android Phone, Kindle Fire and beyond.

On-demand and on the go!

Don’t have Stitcher? Download it for free today at http://www.stitcher.com or in the app stores.

Help more people get better acquainted. If you like what you hear why not write an iTunes review?

Follow @GBApodcast on Twitter. Like Getting Better Acquainted on facebook. Tell your friends. Spread the word!




GBA 64 Coventry

In GBA 66 we get better acquainted with Iris. Sitting in my childhood home away from home we talk about Histories: personal, social, local and shared.

Our conversation goes places - the excitement of London in the 60's, visiting Germany after WW2, providing educational support and assistance to disabled students, the psychogeography of cities, the use of the word chav, the beauty of immigration and discovering the heritage of a tiny part of Coventry are some of those places. 

Oh yeah, and we talk about what I was like when I was 12.

Iris Plugs:

"Don't keep hankering about going a long way away to find things out, look on your doorstep because often the answer is there, and look at your own environment and learn from it, and sortof... put your roots down where you are."

And the Willenhall Local History Group that she is the secretary for and the Virtual Museum Coventry: http://www.virtualmuseum.co.uk/

She has just set up an excellent blog for the Group: http://willenhallcov.blogspot.co.uk/

This conversation took place during the events documented in: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-64-coventry

Iris is Steve's Mother: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-63-steve



You can hear Getting Better Acquainted on Stitcher SmartRadio, Stitcher allows you to listen to your favourite shows directly from your iPhone, Android Phone, Kindle Fire and beyond.

On-demand and on the go!

Don’t have Stitcher? Download it for free today at http://www.stitcher.com or in the app stores.

Help more people get better acquainted. If you like what you hear why not write an iTunes review?

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GBA 66 Iris

In GBA 74 we get better acquainted with Mervyn who is still technically my Step Dad. He talks about growing up in Belfast during "The Troubles", working in factories, teaching Physics in Dubai, teaching English in China, living in a tent on a roundabout and lots more. 

This was a complicated conversation for me, for many reasons, and it moves from personal history to social and political analysis and back. A lot of ground is covered. It is also the first podcast I've recorded while drinking Guinness. 

Mervyn doesn't plugs anything, but I mention a history of Genghis Kahn that I've been listening to.

That history is made by the excellent podcaster Dan Carlin as part of his Hardcore History show:

http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-43---Wrath-of-the-Khans-I/Mongols-Genghis-Chingis

http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/hharchive/Show-44---Wrath-of-the-Khans-II/Mongols-Genghis-Chingis

You can hear Getting Better Acquainted on Stitcher SmartRadio, Stitcher allows you to listen to your favourite shows directly from your iPhone, Android Phone, Kindle Fire and beyond.

On-demand and on the go!

Don’t have Stitcher? Download it for free today at http://www.stitcher.com or in the app stores.

Help more people get better acquainted. If you like what you hear why not write an iTunes review?

Follow @GBApodcast on Twitter. Like Getting Better Acquainted on facebook. Tell your friends. Spread the word!

GBA 74 Mervyn

In GBA 77 we get better acquainted with... Dave. In this special edition of GBA guest host Zoe talks to the man writing this blurb about "The Coventry Years".

Prompted by the way that I've hinted at and touched on this time in my life previously in the series but have never fully covered it, I decided to invite one of my closest friends along to host a conversation about it.

In this frank and candid conversation I talk about what I've learnt from looking back at those years and some of the "work" I've done on myself as a result. This work is very much connected to, and prompted by, the GBA Project.

"The Coventry Years" refers to the time I spent between the ages of 8 and 13 in a house in Coventry which had very thin walls. Some of the main things we cover is the impact of the domestic implosion that happened to my family in that house; how it influenced my character, my future and my burgeoning adolescent sexuality.

Thanks so much to Zoe for doing such a brilliant job at witnessing and responding to all this. I couldn't have asked for a better foil! I think she genuinely got better acquainted with me in the process, which was a surprise as we’re pretty open with each other and are long time close friends.



I Plug:

Considering this quote from the Bright Eyes song Bowl of Oranges in relation to yourself as well as in the context of relationships: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUym7n7fJTQ

"And we'll keep working on the problem we know we'll never solve 
Of Love's uneven remainders, our lives are fractions of a whole.
But if the world could remain within a frame like a painting on a wall.
Then I think we would see the beauty.
Then we would stand staring in awe at our still lives posed like a bowl of oranges,
like a story told by the fault lines and the soil."

And talking to your parents about their lives, even if they aren't easy for you to talk to. Which is the major theme of this GBA Special:http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-53-to-the-heart-of-it



Also mentioned:

The full Christmas Story and the Inventing Masturbation story are featured in Episode 1 of the Show: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-1-dave

The Cardiff years, and specifically my experiences being bullied in school are covered fully in the Cardiff Special: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-17-cardiff

Other parts of my life in Coventry, including Steve's valiant defence of the City, and the intro which I talk about cutting stuff out of, and some hints at the material in this episode, are covered in the Coventry Special: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-64-coventry

The GBA with my Step Dad that also touches on the events and themes from this episode is here: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-74-mervyn

There have been two GBA conversations that I did with my mum released. The one we talk about most in the episode won't be aired for quite some time. But when it is it will join the first two in this playlist: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/sets/the-mum-episodes-1/

The set up in North Wales is explored fully in this GBA Extra: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-extra-the-partition

Zoe has a GBA all of her own, it is a good one: http://soundcloud.com/gettingbetteracquainted/gba-22-zoe

Spark London where the intro was recorded and which has also been very influential on where I find myself currently both personally and creatively can be found here: http://www.sparklondon.com/



You can hear Getting Better Acquainted on Stitcher SmartRadio, Stitcher allows you to listen to your favourite shows directly from your iPhone, Android Phone, Kindle Fire and beyond.

On-demand and on the go!

Don’t have Stitcher? Download it for free today at http://www.stitcher.com or in the app stores.

Help more people get better acquainted. If you like what you hear why not write an iTunes review?

Follow @GBApodcast on Twitter. Like Getting Better Acquainted on facebook. Tell your friends. Spread the word!


GBA 77 The Coventry Years

A weekly podcast: Join Dave Pickering on his journey to get better acquainted with the people he knows. Part interview show, part oral history project and part autobiography through conversation.

British Podcast Award 2017 winner (bronze in Best Interview category)

GBA was nominated for a 2012 Radio Production Award, aired for 3 seasons on Resonance 104.4 FM and was featured on BBC Radio 4's In Pod We Trust, BBC Radio 5 Live’s Helen and Olly's Required Listening and has been recommended by The Guardian, Time Out and the Financial Times