I arrived in the café after 13:00hrs today. I’d had a chat with my GP this morning over a couple of things. I always worried what would happen when my childhood GP retired, as he did just recently. Like a late career Ryan Giggs, without the allegations of coercion and violence I should add, his appearances in the practice were rationed over the last decade, and I used that time as an opportunity to try different GPs, eventually settling on his brilliant successor, a fellow Liverpool fan.
I’ve even got an understudy for the successor and I spoke to her this morning. The flat continues to impact on my health and more tests need to be done, but early tests so far have eliminated a couple of possibilities that were concerning me. It’s such a cold place, Hoth, as I used to call it on my old mercifully deceased podcast, and the battle to keep warm during this savage winter has caused me no end of problems.
Last night, I spent a nice evening with my aunt and uncle and one of my cousins was down. I think my cousin and I are both after the same thing now, a savouring of these last gatherings we’ll have together. It’s one big nostalgia trip and I expect we’ll come to see these evenings as special. Not that I’m sure my aunt was aware of this. Even by her usual standards, she was in super-nagging mode, constantly on at my uncle and berating my cousin over the state of the TV’s picture. My cousin improved the picture by going into the settings, but nothing was good enough for my glass half-empty aunt. She makes me look like the world’s most positive guy.
I thought we’d be watching the United – West Ham cup tie from the start, but my aunt had other ideas, making us sit through the end of some dreadful Spanish quiz show, before complaining bitterly at how this week’s televised FA Cup games had left her without the awful soaps that are on nightly anyway. Last week I’d had to sit through my first episode of Eastenders in at least fifteen years. I can confirm the show remains absolutely s***.
It was another late night. I watched a documentary on the Rwandan genocide on YouTube. It’s one I remember well in parts, but I was too young to fully grasp the horror of what was unfolding and at such a breakneck speed. By then I remember reading about the Liberian conflict every Sunday in The Independent and being horrified. It’s extraordinary that the nineties produced several horrific conflicts, especially Yugoslavia and Rwanda, where the West just looked on. It’s something that should always shame the civilised world and which will no doubt happen time and again. I think, I suspect that is, that one of the reasons I remember this so well is because the summer of ’94 was an extraordinary one, both on a personal level and just in the world, with many notable events, most of which seem to be on the negative side. That spring and summer, I was using the internet for the first time, the early internet that is, in a Fitzrovia picture agency and we’d get these breaking stories like Kurt Cobain’s suicide, OJ going on the run, earlier than most as they come down the ISDN line we were using. It was of course the year too of the tragic early death of Labour Leader John Smith, whose death in his bathroom always left me questioning whether one should lock their bathroom door. There were the deaths of Ratzenberger and Senna in San Marino too in the Grand Prix. It seemed to be one thing after another. And Rwanda of course.
I’ve been gripped/horrified by Rwanda since first reading Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda by Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire, a desperate book by the head of the UN peace keepers whose hands were about as tied as they could be in Rwanda. I read the book almost 20 years ago and saw a follow up documentary with Dallaire. The book is incredibly moving and it’s no wonder the man attempted to take his own life some years after that.
Here in the café, there was an awkward interaction with Phil Collins, the little waitress whose reluctant move from the kitchen to the café back in 2014 when the late owner got too sick to run things reminded me of the Genesis drummer’s move from drummer to front man after Peter Gabriel left ‘back in the day’. I hadn’t said ‘hello’ and I was trying to catch her eye. Eventually, I got my ‘hello’ in only for her to think I wanted to place an order. She stopped in her tracks, so abruptly there was almost dust kicking up from the cold tiled floor, only to realise I was just being sociable.
“How are you?” She asked me, for the first time ever, in her still halting English which I’m only too familiar with given my aunt and uncle’s complete inability to master the English language after almost six decades here.
It was a reminder that though both Phil and I have improved immeasurably since our old super-introverted days, at times, on the raconteuring front, we can still find ourselves in an awkward spot.
Again, I’m sat at the same table as yesterday and once again I’m making the mistake of leaning my head back against the wall. I’m gigging tonight in east London but the plan is, if I’m home before midnight, I’ll wash my hair before bed tonight.
The afternoon has brightened up, giving us another tantalising glimpse of spring. Meantime, noting my (left-handed) hold on my tall glass is too high up on the glass, I bring it back down. At some point over the years, I stopped using the handles. I think that’s likely to be down to a previous incarnation of tall glasses where the glasses weren’t a good fit for the saucers and the handles were too small to slip any finger through.
The Head Man of SW8 is in with his partner. His partner is one of the most unflustered guys you could ever see. The two are polar opposites, which may be why they rival my aunt and uncle as the most warring couples SW8 and 9 have to offer.
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