March is finally here but spring seems to have got lost, at least here in London. I did an 8k lunchtime run and around the 2k mark, overtaking a couple of runners, I overheard one of them saying that next week temperatures are dropping even more. Is that even possible right now? While it’s important we don’t forget we had an unusually warm autumn, a pattern of weather that continued into the early winter, the last two and a half months have been bitterly cold. Am I imagining that because we’ve all been worried about turning our heating on or has it really been as cold as I think?
I was discussing this with the podiatrist this morning, having gone in because I was a little concerned I’d aggravated an old running injury and she said that the last two winters, there’s been an unusual amount of ground frost which has led to many of her regular patients struggling with their feet. I’m currently experimenting with a range of different insoles to keep my feet warm this winter, and failing. A good friend has recommended sticking a layer of corrugated cardboard in-between my new insoles and the shoes. I’m on the lookout for this particular cardboard. Meantime, I have fleeced insoles now winging their way.
I returned home last night from an enjoyable gig in Archway, and on the way home finished the late Michael Dibdin’s groundbreaking Sherlock Holmes pastiche, ‘The Last Sherlock Holmes Story’. Published in 1978, it’s a stunning piece of work and I can imagine it’s denouement would’ve shocked fans of the canon some 45 years ago. It certainly surprised me last night.
My obsession with all things Holmesian saw me today contacting Mayfair library to see if their available copy of Lyndsay Faye’s ‘Dust and Shadow’ was good to be borrowed, but apparently it’s a reference copy only. They have a Holmes section in the library curated by someone that occupies a lofty position in one of the various Holmes associations, and I can understand that much of that collection probably needs to be properly looked after, but Faye’s book was only published in 2009, so it surprised me I can’t borrow it. It can’t be found in any of the three other boroughs whose libraries I use, and print editions are currently going for over £100. It’s looking like I’ll need to buy the Kindle version but I’m not keen on more screen time.
After dropping off a couple of books at another of my libraries, this time in my native south, I finally reached THE café around 16:15hrs. Seb K, the café’s greatest waiter is off this week, probably in Portugal seeing his wife and kids. There was a Subbuteo-playing Italian kid when I was a boy who was Subbuteo World Champion in the early-80s. I tried, unsuccessfully, to get him on my nostalgia football (doomed, like all my projects) podcast When Shorts Were Short. He had his fingers insured for silly money during his Subbuteo years. Seb K, the most extraordinary coffee maker I’ve ever known, should similarly have his hands insured, though given he’s slated to leave some time this year to join his wife and kids in Portugal, that’s not going to be happening now.
The defacto owner was in today and has piled on quite a bit of weight. He’s definitely taken on his dad’s shape. I occupied the single-table, the other side of the L-shaped bend on the near side of the café, where pre-pandemic, my old toilet table was. This particular table has one of only two heaters in the café, and a wall behind me, where I keep resting the back of my head. I need to eliminate this for hygiene reasons. It’s okay if I’m washing my hair every night but that tends to be 2-3 times a week max. I don’t want to be resting this head on my pillow after placing the back of my scalp on a spot where pretty much every day, countless customers are also doing the same.
There is a new waitress in today or maybe she’s been seconded from the restaurant area here. In my 23 years here, I’ve only ever been in the restaurant once and being anal, I can give you the date. 31st July 2010. I remember that because that Saturday I’d carried out a decision that had such a hugely detrimental impact on the way my life has turned out, one I’ve never come back from.
The waitress is early-thirties, tops, has toffee-coloured hair, dyed I’m guessing, tied back in a neat pony tail, and some indistinct tattoo on her right wrist. Who doesn’t have ink these days, eh, apart from me?
A tracksuited woman, in a baseball cap, joins two female friends for a meal, kind of. As the Nepalese waiter brings over a menu, she tells him she’s already had dinner that day, “At 2.25pm” which is unusually precise. She informs Nepal she’s just going with dessert. He asks if she wants to wait until her friends finish their dinner so she can sync her dessert with theirs. “No, f*** it, I’ll have it now.” I’m not sure that’s the kind of language commonly used during public meals. She fails to remove the cap.
Shortly afterwards, a cheesy group of four Brazilian men, mid-forties onwards, arrive. One has a suit which makes him look like he’s travelled forward in time at least a couple of generations and he has his har slicked back and topped off with a tiny pony tail. It’s the kind of look if you’d seen it on a mid-80s episode of Miami Vice you’d have immediately thought, “Yeah, that’s going to be my next hairstyle.” Meantime, sat next to him, a man also keeping his cap on and with celtic tattoos on both biceps which were almost certainly inked in the mid-90s, has a bluetooth device clipped to his right ear, like it’s still 2004.
Outdated Suit Guy wastes no time in making a beeline for the table with three women, paying particular attention to Baseball Cap Woman (BCW), and orders some beers for them. It turns out it’s his birthday. As he chats to BCW, she reveals she’s a boxing trainer. Within minutes, they’ve exchanged numbers. Is it really as easy as that these days?
That’s all from me tonight. I’m off to see my uncle. Tomorrow night I have a Stoke Newington show and then on Saturday I’m gigging in Folkestone.
Keeping busy keeps the head just the right side of ok.
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