Dominant Pillar, awkward Spanish ham and back-up café Bizarro World Me sees me putting out my bins
Monday PM
It’s been one of those days, only this time it was expected. The first half of this week is, as mentioned I think on #407, quite challenging. It’s meant that today I didn’t arrive in the back-up café until 16.16hrs.
I managed to get a solid 10k run in early this morning. I’d developed a deep aversion to morning running in the last eighteen months so since switching my days around in late January to deal with all the overfamiliar regulars in THE café interrupting my morning writing sessions, so I’ve done well in this regard.
I then had a laborious journey into SW18, my second of three buses almost leaving me late for an appointment after all routes on that particular segment of the journey were affected.
This very altered day meant I had to make myself some sandwiches as I wouldn’t be home for lunch. I’m not a fan of the sandwich. Bread, for me, comes into its own when it morphs into toast. Toast is King. Toast with butter, I’m hoping that’s available in the AFTERLIFE. My aunt had given me some Spanish ham (now there’s something else, serrano aside, that’s underrated) but it had gone off a month before its expiry date. I managed to salvage two slices for the sandwiches, and in they went alongside some sliced cheese. Spanish ham isn’t easy to eat in a sandwich. It’s almost like the spaghetti of the ham world, pushing one into attritional packed lunch facials and it’s never easy to take a clean bite out of it. Eating on the move, dreading to think what the light wind was perhaps blowing onto my sandwich before it went into my mouth, I just did my best to get it over and done with as quickly as possible. It was food because I needed to eat something and it served its purpose.
I got to my meeting on time but there was no one at the door to meet me which was annoying. I had to hang around some ten minutes for someone to show up and the meeting was running half an hour late. I whiled away the time by again practising my left-handed writing, something I talk about in one of my early stand-up sets and which always goes down well with an audience. I hadn’t done this for some time and it clearly shows. Up until last year, I’d spent so much time practising writing sinsister-handed that the scrawl had gone from strength to strength.
The meeting room itself was curious and depressing, a thick pillar in the middle of the room, like some tree that had just grown through the room at will, reminding builders that mother nature can do what it wants. I had no idea how the person I was meeting with could work in such a weird-looking office.
After finally getting back to the flat at 15:45hrs, I found that yet again none of the neighbours had put the bins out. No one puts them out more frequently than me. With a dodgy back right now, I could’ve done without this but it was getting late and it was clear the likelihood was that when I returned from the back-up café post 18:00hrs, the bins were still unlikely to be out. It was best to just get it out the way. As I put the last bin out, I noticed Bizarro World Me, the back-up café’s table-hogging equivalent of what I did in THE café until the pandemic, was standing there at MY bus stop. He now knew where I lived. What would he do with this information?
Did he even care?
We boarded the same bus. Ascending to the upper deck, he sat at the front, while I was some six or seven rows behind, also on the left side, and matching him for a window seat. I got off a stop early because I feared he too might be coming into the back-up café, though it would be late for him too, and if we entered at the same time, his SMALL talk with the staff at the counter would batter my own attempt into submission, and worse still, we might have to both acknowledge that we’d travelled in on the same bus.
I can confirm Muscular Madeiran, who brings my opening decaf over on a tray, has retained his impressive standalone ‘tache for a second week.
17:14hrs
Finished the first decaf.
17:18hrs
Upright spots the empty glass.
Wednesday’s another messed up day so tomorrow the plan is to get in here for a longer writing session. This evening has just been about the Substack which often, much to my chagrin, gets in the way of the proper writing.
17:24hrs
My second decaf arrives. That’s pretty good going by usual standards in this place. A ten-minute turnaround time.
This second latte will be rushed but not too rushed, as Upright usually picks up on when I’ve not stayed long or in her view, done much work, all light-hearted of course, but I feel some SMALL talk possibilities are good for such a scenario and I’m not inclined to come up with some for this evening.
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