Chair ('Please Take'), Difficult Conversations, Hygiene Fail and the ongoing fruitless Vermicelli Search
Wednesday
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I did my best not to dwell on last night’s underwhelming gig performance. As I wrote last night, I had to own it. It was one of them things. Regardless of the factors, I allowed one or two changes on the night to rattle me a bit. That and the tiredness. I’ve got to make sure I rest a bit more this week. The fact that I’m now writing and performing bigger sets means these short 5 spots can be tricky for me. When I started off, I’d write a 5 and as I got bigger spots, you’d expand that. But now, with these bigger paid sets coming in, the starts start off at a minimum 10-minute length. Cutting them back to fit into a 5 is a lot harder than developing a 5 into a 10. It’s all good experience though. Keep resting. Spend as much time with my uncle as I can while he’s still with us, keep writing.
I decided today to step up some of the intermittent flat clearance by getting rid of a large uncomfortable office chair I hadn’t used since 2015 when my old desktop PC died, just months after some floor guys wrecked the relative order of my then-study. I was never able to work again properly from that room in the back of the flat, overlooking the rail track, and instead relocated to the front room, using a normal chair which was actually more comfortable. I cleaned the unwanted chair up and decided to put it outside the building, with a note ‘Please Take’ before going for my morning run.
With the knee continuing to give me trouble, I decided to do a shorter run, targeting a 6k. I eliminated the bulk of the climbs I did on Monday for that too-slow 10k, but before I hit the 3k mark, the knee made sure it reminded me it was still a problem.
There was a big hygiene fail witnessed on my run. At least for me. The dog walker, to be fair, didn’t give a toss. They had their dog free but with the long lead still attached. That lead was being dragged through only who knows what filth in the park.
Settling for a 6.5k in what were still boggy conditions in the park, I returned home to find the office chair, with its wheels, had rolled off into the main road. This again is an example of my lack of common sense. I’m on a hill. The chair has wheels. It was always going to happen.
After a shower and a light lunch of (lightly-buttered) crackers, I left to catch up on today’s pre-café errands, securing the chair with bits of cardboard under the wheels on my way out. This didn’t prove straight forward. If it hasn’t been taken by tomorrow, I’ll have to bring it back into the flat and stick it up on Freecycle. I was just looking for it to go quickly as I need that space freed up asap. Normally when I’ve put stuff out on the street, it’s gone the same day. A few years ago, I’d only stepped out of the building with an old vacuum cleaner when a woman across the road walked over and after asking the kind of anal questions I myself would’ve asked, she took the hoover with her. This chair though is quite big, so I’m not confident I’ll be so lucky.
There was a moment before I exited the flat with it, never mind the building, where I repeatedly asked myself if I was really looking to get rid of the chair. Well, I hadn’t used it for over 7 years. It could go. And I wanted to be sure because with my OCDs, taking that chair back into the flat after it’s been out on the filthy south London streets, I got to be honest with you, that will keep me awake tonight. It’d be like taking a partner back if they’d cheated on you. Instead of potential STDs or STIs, whatever the f*** it’s called this week, it’ll be dog muck.
If that indeed does turn out to be the situation, I have a plan in place already. I will lay out loads of newspaper and recycling bags on a carpeted area, physically cleaning the chair, especially its underside and wheels OUTSIDE the flat in the communal hallway before it’s even back in the flat.
Pause post to block another Instagram porn account.
And we’re back…
After another fruitless search for my aunt’s vermicelli in the shops, I stopped off at my aunt’s where one of the palliative care nurses was making their first visit. This is all very grim and confirmation of what’s coming. Making sure my uncle’s wishes are respected, making sure my aunt grasps everything that’s going on. The problem is I’m not sure she does. I know she has been kept in the loop for a fact but she seems to have trouble retaining information these days. Later this evening, shortly before posting this, I called her to arrange taking her to the GP on Friday morning and I had to tell her, “Everything we discussed today, you’d already been told. You’re getting frustrated because you’re saying you’re being kept in the dark, but you aren’t. You’ve been told. It’s just you’re forgetting.” In a day of difficult exchanges, this was another one. It's hard to have these conversations with people who’ve been there for you all your life. People you love. People that are slipping away to leave a huge void in your life.
The nurse raised the difficult subject of resuscitation today. Did my uncle want to be resuscitated in the event that he needed to be? The nurse’s advice was that at his advanced age and given there is nothing that can be done for his condition, it wouldn’t be advisable. It reminded me of a situation I dealt with some years ago in some awful correspondence job. Up until then I’d always wanted to live forever. My answer to the same question was always, “DO EVERYTHING YOU CAN TO SAVE ME’.
And then I read this letter.
An 80-something woman that had lost her husband to a heart attack had been so traumatised by attempts to revive her husband that had left him with smashed ribs and a poor quality of life that at 80 years of age she had ‘DO NOT RESUSCITATE’ tattooed across her chest. But even that didn’t save her from a similar experience. When whatever happened to leave her needing to be resuscitated happened, I can’t recall what it was, she was resuscitated and also ended up with a broken rib or two and terrible quality of life.
Apparently she and her family were told by the paramedics that in spite of the unusual tattoo, they were legally bound to resuscitate her. I shared these anecdotes with my aunt because until that point she was all for reviving my uncle at all costs to keep him at her side beyond these 65 years they’ve been together. I can assure you my uncle wasn’t up for that.
I arrived in THE café at 15:46hrs. As I unpacked my bag to set myself up for today’s writing session, the bottom of my rucksack felt unusually warm. Pleasantly so. Electric blanket-like. One of my rechargeable USB handwarmers had turned itself on. They’re more sensitive than me.
Two of the tables at the back here in THE café have been rearranged, separated, turned around, I think in part to discourage elite-level hot beverage nursers like me. Today’s Waiters, The Mullet, whose mullet is super-slick today, and Nepal, are frequently at customer’s tables today. It’s the café equivalent of the Jurgen Klopp high-press. I think this is linked to the recent price hike. Charge more, get more out of the tables.
Meantime, there’s another new face in the café. He doesn’t look Portuguese. Very tanned looking, dark hair, a slightly goofy smile that these days is normally addressed in childhood by orthodontists. My second Liverpool analogy of today follows: the staff turnover in this place these days reminds me of Liverpool 1991 – 94 under Graeme Souness, when the club’s greatest ever captain seemed to be signing players every week from August until the old March transfer deadline day.
I’ll pause this post right now to block another porn account on Instagram. It’s crazy the last few months. I’m blocking and reporting these accounts, up to a dozen a day. There’s nothing in my output that can make me easily understand why this is such an issue on the platform.
Okay.
Account blocked and reported.
Say what you like about Twitter, but I’ve never had this problem on there.
Back to THE café.
There is still NO hand wash in the men’s loos so again I had to step across to the women’s hand wash dispenser. What is wrong with the guys here that no one seems to report it? I suspect that most aren’t jumping across to the women’s dispenser because if they were, it would be out of hand wash.
Café soundscape 1 (16:38hrs)
Here are a couple of café soundscapes from today. I live for this noise. It always transports me back to my childhood growing up in an immigrant community in south London where often, only the kids spoke English.
Over at the bar, The Beard, on his day off, stands having a beer. His long hair is loose, hiding the undercut normally on show at work where his man bun straddles the café stage, and his black and white checked lumberjack jacket and hoodie peaking out from underneath give him the appearance of one of those Series 2 stevedores from The Wire. You know I can’t write the other s-word (‘season’) because I abhor Americanisms being typed by British hands.
A couple sat by the cubby hole, one of only two spots here with a radiator, have finished their piscine-heavy meal. The fresh smell of sardines lingers in the air, evoking memories of mid-80s Andalucian holidays, some boat coming in with a fresh catch. I’ve never been a huge fish guy but freshly caught fish, eaten the same day as it was caught, that elevates fish to a whole new level. Fresh fish wise, I peaked early in life.
Café soundscape 2 (16:40hrs)
When I was starting to finally appreciate that running half marathon distances multiple times a week, without replacing what my body was losing, had made me look ill, I made a big effort to grasp nutrition for the first time in my life. One of the things I started eating, briefly, was oily fish, but Good God, the stuff is just nasty. I soon abandoned that.
The couple look like a May to September partnership. The white-haired man has a ridiculous Zappa-like tuft, long and pointed, growing from his bottom lip. It’s just easier to grow a proper beard. These tufts tend to leave the wearer prone to gurning a lot as they savour the sensation of the tuft tickling their chin. I had a great friendship in the mid-90s with a French-Mauritius guy. We spent a lot of time together, both at loose ends, our difficulties committing to the 9 to 5 world already painfully apparent by then. We played a lot of football together. He always wore the tightest shorts imaginable, by then unfashionable after three seasons of the new Premier League. He also had a Zappa tuft. To be fair, I don’t remember him gurning too much but I do remember always thinking the tuft was ridiculous.
Postscript
1: The chair is still there and some wag has taken the actual ‘Please take’ note stuck to it.
2: The nurse turned out to be an actual doctor. This is my aunt and uncle at their chaotic best again, dramatically downgrading a healthcare worker. When my cousin’s wife called and I told her I was passing her onto the nurse, the poor doctor, who didn’t correct me (would’ve been awkward) was probably thinking, ‘Seven years at medical school and these clowns have me down as a nurse.’ Administratively, my aunt and uncle are the equivalent of an open mic gig.
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