It’s the start of another busy week or as this supposed speech to text app says, ‘the star of another busy week’. Both make me sound very self-absorbed. Regardless, I seek out this busy schedule. There are opportunities to down tools and rest, but I seem to shun most of these windows, reluctant to spend time indoors on my own. I’ve noticed something else about reaching ‘this age’ now and that is that while I can keep up with the youngsters in terms of having the energy to gig most nights and doing multiple spots on a night, that when I do stop gigging, and when I’m not drinking coffee or running, when I finally stop, my body really lets me know about it. Saturday was another reminder of this. There seemed to be a complete mental and physical collapse and I spent much of Saturday in bed. The usual depressing cat nap dreams came for me during this wasteful slumber. I’m genuinely relieved that outside of those periods of intense bereavement, I’ve never felt as depressed as I often do in those cat nap dreams. If someone tells me, “You are one of the most depressed people I’ve ever met,” I usually tell them they should be thankful they’ve never met my dream alter-ego.
Saturday’s cat naps meant I didn’t get around to responding to a neighbour’s kind invitation to attend their garden party. Anyone that knows me knows that that kind of social invite is usually dreaded by me and even my staggering more outgoing mid-pandemic persona wasn’t thrilled by the invite, but I had come close to going. I realised I’d need to bring something with me. It probably was more a bring a bottle than a four-pack of beers with me and I might have been out of my depth with that crowd. I should’ve popped in, complied, but I didn’t. Partly because I was so overwhelmed by the lethargy that came for me during the day.
Sunday was a bit brighter. I had a friend come over, who also happens to be a builder, and he was advising me to pull out some of the lights in these ridiculously high ceilings as we all batten down the hatches for this most dreaded of winters. I’ve tried replacing these fancy bulbs before and they’re a nightmare, but I’ll need to make another attempt. As of yesterday, those hallway lights have been put into hibernation until the spring and I’ll be navigating to the back of the flat with either my headlamp or the light from my phone. I’m serious.
Last week, someone, perhaps in the energy industry, had advised that we all put our washing machines on overnight to save on energy. If you live in a poorly converted flat, as I do, that’s just a no-go. It wouldn’t be fair on neighbours. As a friend tweeted the other day, we’re coming to a point where it’s going to be cheaper to just buy new clothes rather than to wash existing ones.
The boiler needs servicing again. It’s five winters since it had its last one and it would be risky to make it six and it’s a hit I’ll have to take. It did have one ‘explosion’ last year that rattled me and took me back to my childhood when the old Ascot Water Heater at Mayflower frequently blew up. Like many, I’m toying with not having the heating on and in my case, spending it in a ‘dr-uvet’, the duvet as a dressing gown. But then by not having the heating on, you’re only likely to increase mould issues in your place.
In the café this morning, one café regular who I hadn’t seen for months told me he’s so scared of the forthcoming winter that he’d stopped coming to the café and had saved over £500 for the winter. This guy is a trained lawyer who hit on hard times during the Great Recession and like many of us never came back. Him and his wife’s orders are a lot more flamboyant than mine, and he has a tendency to order in Portuguese when he’s monolingual. It’s that Steve McClaren Dutch thing all over again. He’s also called me ‘Alan’ for the last twenty years. At least it’s not ‘David’, like pretty much everyone else.
Anyway, listening to him put me off having the extra coffee which I’ll carry over into the removal of the current BOUFFANT tomorrow ahead of one of my biggest stand-up shows to-date tomorrow night in Covent Garden. Saving money and staying in, of course it makes sense, but I’ve made so many sacrifices over the years, the café is a lifeline for me, even the new back-up café. I’m so isolated and getting out, doing my work from a noisy café, it’s carried me through the years. Sure, one day I’d like to finally find a place that feels like the home I haven’t felt since leaving Mayflower. I see people working in their kitchens on big tables and I always wish I was happy enough to be living somewhere that I’d be happy to stay in and crack on with my work, but I’m not. I need to be out. £25 to £30 a week on coffee and the resulting writing it produces, is a small price to pay (just about now) if it keeps my head clear.
The morning had begun with me leaving the flat yet again without having done my laces properly. Outside my local (big) Sainsbury’s, I crouched down to do up the left shoelace and smelt the unmistakable odour of dog muck. I thought, ‘That must be nearby’. A quick scan of the pavement showed me it was within a paving stone and a half of my shoelace. I knew the moment, and the smell, would haunt me for the rest of the day.
On the way home, I got that single decker that has twice, 20 years apart, been voted London’s worst bus. It’s Hail and Ride section is an abomination of bus travel. This lunchtime, there was a very unpleasant woman on the bus, late twenties, mid-thirties, using the worst kind of language because something had happened to her bank card.
The situation was an important one for me because for the first time in years I felt little alarm bells ringing. I figured this is me getting closer to normal now after years on the anxiety-eliminating meds. Clearly dropping to 25mg takes me one step closer to my normal persona now and for the first time since 2018, I had something resembling fight or flight. It was weird being able to gauge that a situation was potentially dangerous and rapidly escalating.
The foul-mouthed woman then intimidated a young woman into giving up her seat on what was a near-empty bus. Now over the years, a good decade before going on the meds I’d like to stress, I’ve been one of those people interceding in these situations because you can’t not, particularly as a guy. That might be an old-fashioned outlook but I’m too old to change that and I should’ve stepped in here, but I was too slow. The poor young woman jumped out of her chair and got off the bus but was persuaded to get back on by a pensioner who’d just got on and took the offender to task, as did the bus driver who called her out and threatened to throw her off. I wouldn’t say it calmed the woman down, but it took the sting out of the situation. Today I was guilty of seeing the situation through my own eyes and what my options were if she started on me, rather than stepping in to help. I was thrown by suddenly feeling the alarm most would in that situation. It was complicated for me by the fact it was a woman, albeit one threatening to hit any passenger on the bus who intervened. Something she said several times.
As a guy, if you’re tackling a guy that is behaving like that, you know your options. If your intervention fans the flames, then chances are you’re in a fight. You either back down or see it through. Either way, you’re not going to feel guilty about defending yourself and hitting a guy back. But in this situation, I couldn’t work out how to handle it. I have no doubt this woman, based on her obnoxious behaviour, would’ve gone for me or anyone, man or woman, on that bus, who confronted her, and then what? I don’t want to be having any kind of punch-up, let alone an inter-sex one. This kind of behaviour makes me question if there can be an Afterlife. What plan does the Great Creator have for us and how do people like that fit into it?
I got home and asked my friend, you know, the one who’s spent his government energy support allowance on a new phone (that he doesn’t own) and a bike, if he’d like to come to this Wednesday’s local gig. He voice-noted me back, this time a short one thankfully (last week he’d sent me a 21-minute voice note which I told him constitutes a podcast and which I still haven’t listened to) and told me I’d given him short notice.
He's unemployed, lives 15 minutes from the venue and I’d given him 54 hours’ notice…
Some people.
Anyway, he’s coming.
It’s 17.30hrs and I’ve now just come back from a 10k run, albeit a slow one, but it’s cleared the head. Nothing more I can do to get through the days. Any gloom, and I’ve got to hand it to myself, I’m going about the right way of dealing with it.
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Lastly, you might be interested in this. I’m due on stage for a 10-spot at around 8.55pm.
Tickets: bit.ly/3TF8qwX
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