An early start today, as always, but not quite with it this morning. Very tired. The boiler packed in yesterday evening, about an hour before last night’s Brixton gig. Going to set me back £400 to fix it. The repair is pencilled in for tomorrow.
These repairs are mounting up. The desktop PC continues to work when it decides to work, slowing down the release of my next When Shorts Were Short historical football podcast, which I still hope to get out today. I just feel a little worn out.
There was then the little matter of a mouse to deal with at last night’s gig. I like to feel this year, one where rodents have played a starring role at the flat, has taught me to be less nervy round the vermin, and really, it was just like being at home, particularly after the gig emptied out after the interval. I might as well have been rehearsing at home.
I messaged my sibling about the mouse.
“You should be used to them by now,” was their succinct reply.
Even the person that came to see me specifically at last night’s gig left at the interval and didn’t hang around for my set. It was understandable. The first half of the night, which had started off promisingly, went on too long. I do feel promoters should charge for nights. If punters have paid something in advance, they’re more likely to want their money’s worth and see out the whole night, but you can’t test their patience by having a show go on too long. It’s a promising venue run by two of my favourite comics on the London circuit at this level, very funny chaps who I think will make this night run in the long-term. We need to value art. There’s a rogue comic out there who never gets on other promoters’ shows just because he tells it like it is. He’s not easy to get on with, by his own admission, he’s very rude, but I do think he’s spot on with his views on the circuit and calling out the free nights.
I’ve got a gong show tonight, Beat the Blackout, in Greenwich, and had no idea there was a tube strike until I saw Stockwell Station was closed, so that’s going to be a pain to get to, just as it was first time around.
This Saturday, I’ve landed a spot at what is supposed to be London’s most brutal gong show in the West End. It doesn’t start until midnight. While I’ve cut back on caffeine in the last two years, and indeed, on coffee in general (nothing after 5pm, and limiting myself to 5 cups a day, down from about 15 during the pandemic), I suspect I’ll need caffeine to liven up for an unusually late show in front of pissed up punters.
I woke up in the middle of the night and right away remembered that I currently have no boiler and that stressed me out for a moment. I’ve gotten much better at dealing with these things, but this one got to me a bit.
It’s only day two without heating and hot water. I’ve got to put it in perspective. I grew up in a bedsit in Stockwell which had no central heating or hot water. People don’t believe that, but my oldest friends will remember. It does shape you and makes you appreciate a bit more what you have now. For my generation, it was unusual to live in such a way. The generation before me, many of them would’ve experienced such hardship but it was very unusual by the time I was growing up, and I do see a link between living like that and my parents both dying unusually young. Both were the youngest siblings in their respective families, and both were survived by siblings 20 years older than them for more than a decade (not uncommon in Franco’s Spain for there to be a big gap between the oldest and youngest children). Poverty kills. So, sure, being without heating and hot water for a second day is a stress, but it’s proving a mild winter so far, and hey, in an earlier life, I did this for 24 years. We survived under heavy blankets in winter, which I replicate these days by sleeping under almost 80 togs worth of duvets, and hopefully come tomorrow evening, everything is working again. Until then, mentally and financially, I just need to bite the pillow.
It’s been a quiet morning in the café. I worked out my journey to tonight’s Greenwich Gong. Last time out, it turned into one of my most epic treks. Behind me, a Spanish man from my childhood who never recognises me and I’m happy with that, has a coffee and a pastry. This guy was one of four or five guys who between them kickstarted the gentrification that swept through Clapham and Stockwell in the mid-80s initially, before picking up and finally overwhelming these parts from the late nineties onwards.
Him and his wife, and their young daughter, lived on my childhood road. When we visited, it was the first time I ever experienced the vibration of a tube train beneath a floor. This man loves his money. Of those early property developers, he’s the only one who continues to work and owns something like 40 houses now. Not many people like working for him and I remain proud of the fact that my dad, who like me didn’t believe in Buy to Let, and was a gifted decorator, refused to work for him ‘back in the day’.
Hopefully the mood picks up later today.
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