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The morning after the comedy arse-kicking the night before.
I feel better than last night. Pulling up the now 82 togs on the bed last night and drawing them over my behatted skull, I thought, if I wake up late, I’ll skip the café. Clearly my body needs a rest. But I was still awake at 3am and then once I woke up at just after 6, I thought, ‘Yeah, I’ll do the café, catch Mr and Mrs Chin Fissure, and then catch up on sleep later’. And boy do I need it.
My left shoulder, once dislocated, feels a little sore this morning. I slept on my right side, which meant pulling up the huge layers of bedding with my left arm. It’s no easy thing when there’s so much bedding and there’s always the danger of pulling something.
Gigs like last night will never not be painful but I got to remember the excellent nights earlier in the week and I believe that’s my level. The bad nights make sure you don’t get carried away.
The whole booking gigs thing has taken over my life this year and while I’ve gained a lot since returning to the circuit, like a life, a handful of new friends who are the type of very grounded people I would’ve always been friends with regardless of where I met them, nights out, the buzz of being on stage, it’s also had a negative impact on the regular writing and also, for the first time, made me concerned about my phone usage.
I had a really strong life/phone balance until earlier this year, but ever since having to open my first personal FB account, this one, at the start of this year, to return to the circuit, I find that’s gone out the window. Apart from scouting vintage action Star Wars figures to see if they’ll cut it in the high intensity world of Star Wars Football and studying their limbs on eBay and speaking to sellers as to how stiff or loose the limbs might be (loose limbs can limit a player’s longevity), all I do on the phone is related to the circuit. The problem is, it’s very time consuming. I try to do most of it on a proper screen as doing it on a phone has wrecked my eyes. The messaging, the filling out the Google Forms, pasting links to your sets.
It’s strange that booking gigs on Facebook is still the default way to get booked, at least at this level, as it was in the early 2010s, but at the same time, it's effective, I get my gigs so from that point of view, it’s a positive. As long as I’m not wasting time online. I wouldn’t have an FB account if I didn’t need to do this.
I arrived in the café this morning just as Mr Fissure was finishing his usual sausage sandwich, the ketchup on the table. I could still see the indentation from his hand on the bottle. I suspect the double-denimed-dimpled one is a strong man and the bottle was going to take a while to recover.
I gave the Fissures the ‘morning’. That was my second consecutive weekend exchange with them. I think it’s fair to say that addresses any concerns I had, justified, that our morning greeting had been wrecked by the pandemic. I’m slightly disappointed I had to revive the greeting. It was never going to come from them.
The Fissures looked pushed for time this morning, judging by the widespread toast crumbs left on their table after they departed. They’re normally elegant breakfasters. As Mrs Fissure walked past my table (again, they never give the ‘goodbye’), I noted a crumb or two of toast lodged in her deep chin dimple. Magnificent.
Triple D had a good mouth wiping technique, semi-pursing his lips to wipe the sides with his serviette. My dad, a meticulous mouth wiper (always instructed as to dab one corner at a time) would’ve been impressed.
I opened the door on getting here for a café regular who’s been coming here since I first walked through these doors in August ’01. He’s a single-legged amputee. I would’ve opened the door for anyone. It’s just good manners but I don’t know if this was a faux pas or at least seen as one by the man who has always been, in my eyes, the café’s most fashionable guy. He walked right past me without a ‘thank you’ or even an acknowledgement, as if he felt insulted.
As someone who rarely irons and on the few occasions I do, can’t even iron properly, I’m always fascinated by the perfect fold of the denim on his amputated leg. Seriously, the way his denim is always folded, it’s like this guy has worked in some clothing retail. If I had the misfortune to be in his shoe, I suspect my trouser-fold would be an absolute mess.
Music-wise, the standout track during the composition of this morning’s post was Boy Meets Girl’s ‘Waiting For A Star to Fall’, a big cheesy smash in the spring of ’89 which recalls my debut shave and knocking about with my oldest friends, two of whom are sadly deceased now. You never forget these people. I’m still close to one of my friends from those much-missed days and I’m still a huge admirer of beards. Whenever I see him, I always make sure I compliment his beard.
Like with everything, I was a late developer. I finally took the plunge with a bic razor in May ’89 and vividly recall how strange my newly-shaven top lip felt afterwards. The equivalent of a dead arm. It would be another six years before one of my life’s greatest ever moments, the Saturday afternoon the CCTV cameras at Dixon’s Clapham Junction branch picked up my first ever (semi) proper beard on camera. What a ****ing moment that was. The closest I’ve ever come to that might be the King Gong I did at The Comedy Store back in the summer.
I walked past those Dixons cameras several times, revelling in the moment, at one point walking backwards to see from how far away those cameras could pick out my beard. It was approximately 8 metres, which for an unconvincing beard that looked like it could be blown off in a strong breeze, was decent.
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