Half-hearted SMALL talk, late night RMD action, Jeremy Brett - King of the Holmes and physio (coffee ordering) gestures
Thursday
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Well, the good news is SOMEONE TOOK THE CHAIR. That was a weight off my mind as I wasn’t looking forward to having that back in the flat (see yesterday’s post if this makes no sense to you) after what would’ve been a couple of days and nights on the dirty streets of London. I wrote my ITV2 and Channel 4 commissions from that chair. I also slept in it one night in my old storage unit in Balham when, during one of two homeless spells, I found myself without a place for the night.
The bad news, for me, is, in the back-up café for this afternoon’s intended meaty writing session and I have forgotten all the notes for my script.
That’s stress for you.
Frustrating.
Winter seems to be back today for hopefully one of its final cameos of a spectacular season.
I incorporated the above observation into some limited SMALL talk with Upright as I wondered into the back-up café. She was sipping an espresso, fast tracking the Kosovan’s assimilation into Italian culture. I think she knew my heart wasn’t in the SMALL talk.
I came here with some erratic stubble after the charge ran out of two of my three beard trimmers.
Meantime, the digital watch is giving me some grief this week. I’ve the watch, whose screen I no longer have the eyes for, for about six months now, and still have no idea how to use it. I’m just not that interested until something goes wrong with it. I’ve obviously done something to it, knocked it in some way, as every day, at 15:02hrs (now), the alarm goes off. I know how to stop the alarm, but I don’t know how to deactivate it for good again without tracking down the PDF manual.
As usual, I found it difficult getting to sleep without listening to something. Shortly after midnight, I was watching some YouTube videos on Rhythmic movement disorder (RMD), a longtime favourite of mine after an ex of mine suffered from it. I miss their flute-playing like finger movements as they dozed off. I took great comfort from those twitching fingers. I like stuff like that. There was another ex who used to grind her teeth in her sleep. In our early months together, I could never pin down where the audio was coming from, and for some time, I was convinced there were mice. I was always checking under the bed until I thought to myself, ‘There can’t be mice in every single hotel room we’re staying in.’ What a time. Paying £70 a night to stay somewhere just to get laid. Half a lifetime on, I wouldn’t even pay £7.
At some point during the night, I had a strange dream involving canals and a tin boat which was sinking as soon as I got in it. I’ve always wanted a house boat, though several things bother me about them. They’re likely to be freezing in winter, the moorings cost a fortune and I don’t like the idea of people just being able to walk right past the boat while it’s moored. Oh, and I’ve no doubt steering it would be a problem. Also, where would you get your mail?
But the unsettling aspect of life on a house boat would definitely be having people just walking right past the boat. It’s why I never live on ground floors. I’d have trouble getting used to people just walking past my window or chatting outside on the other side of a brick wall.
For today’s lunchtime workout, accompanied by my increasingly click-heavy bones, I listened to another episode of the wonderful Jeremy Brett Podcast, a show that celebrates the brilliant and arguably definitive TV/Film incarnation of Conan Doyle’s great detective. Brett has fascinated me since I was a boy as he lived locally, one of Clapham’s most notable sons, and I suppose he’s intrigued me more because of his manic depression (what it was called during his time on this planet) and how that impacted his portrayal of Holmes, as did the heart condition that left him much heavier and ill-looking in the show’s final years.
The guest on this episode was the brilliant pastiche Holmes writer David Stuart Davies who as a young writer got to spend a great deal of time with Brett, famously covered in his 1996 book, ‘Bending the Willow’. Davies currently has a Sherlock Holmes play on in Kennington, my birthplace (I usually get lost on the road I was actually born on) which I’d love to go and see even though I’m not a big one for the theatre.
Seeing Holmes on stage has been something I’ve wanted to do for years. I was too young to go and see Brett and Edward Hardwick’s stage show which ran, unusually (for a period), at the same time as the Granada show and this is a chance to scratch what is a rare itch for me as I’m just not a bucket list guy.
I may need to crowdfund a haircut before Easter. I always have a couple of months grace before the mid-life BOUFFANT re-emerges. I’m not sure if I’ll return to the Stockwell barbers I’ve been using for much of the last year just because of the level of jeopardy in there. The guy with the limp who wrecked the hair a couple of months back always seems to be the most active barber in there. Last time, I had to wait across the road, hidden, and observe who was free before one of my two favoured barbers were available, at which point I went in. One of those two barbers is just too much of an EXTROVERT and I try to avoid him as I don’t want to be chatting all the way through the haircut. If you’re not happy with something, it can become too big a step to ask them to address some flaw. When you’ve established zero rapport with a barber, they know you’re serious about the haircut and are not going to hesitate on pulling them up if you’re not happy with something.
It's 15:51hrs now. I’ve been waiting for the second latte for some 12 minutes now and still no one’s come over. It’s the lingering frustration with this place. There’s some easy listening music playing right now, which I can live with.
It was 16:03hrs before I finally cornered Upright as she delivered a latte to someone newly arrived, and asked for the second coffee. That’s a full 24 minutes since I finished the last decaf latte. Upright’s long, high up pony tail adds to her magnificent upright posture, swinging behind her as she patrols the café (more often than not without scanning the tables for who needs another drink).
As she returns behind the bar, a bespectacled, baseball-capped late 50-something man with greying stubble, hopefully trimmed properly unlike my own stubble this afternoon, walks in.
“Are you working today, Mario?” Upright asks.
“I’m always working,” he shoots back.
Upright laughs, or cackles really. It’s more of a cackle. Did the response merit a laugh though? Probably not. She’s the kind of person who would laugh at every line at a gig and leave you overconfident in your ability as a comic.
In Star Wars Football news, Concord Dawn and Bespin, both reached the semi-finals last season, playing out an entertaining first leg League Cup tie last night at Dawn. 2-2 was a fair result in the end, Bespin denied the win by a last minute own goal from skipper Chewbacca who led a very young Bespin team.
Tonight, as the Last 16 League Cup First Leg ties edge closer to their denouement, league champions Hoth, with their increasingly youthful squad, take on Second Division Ord Montell. The game on the ice planet marks the return of McGregor, the 1982 Kinder Egg surprise action figure, to the club he only left just before Christmas. McGregor, a maverick midfielder, returns as player-coach after a brief spell at Canto Bright, replacing First American, Blanco, who has now taken over as manager at strugglers Apex Overlook.
At 17:13hrs, I finally got Nostril Flarer’s attention and ordered the third decaf. He did that ‘turnaround’ gesture used in football by physios and players when they’re signalling to the bench that a substitution is in order.
I’m one of the few guys of my generation to actually adhere to that mid-80s ‘Just Say No’ campaign, but if I had been tribal, I wouldn’t have liked to do a line with the Flarer. With those nostrils, he’d definitely be hoovering up the lion’s share of the old Colombian marching powder.
I’m shortly cashing in my loyalty card here, three lattes for the price of two and a walk home to try and walk off some of that full fat milk. I think when cashing in on the loyalty card, especially when the tip is on the frugal side, SMALL talk is critical to try and distract the barista from the fact it’s a tight tip. Sometimes I feel I should just wear a t-shirt with the word ‘WRITER’ emblazoned across it. That would just tell business owners everything they need to know.
You can’t build a business around the likes of me.
Postscript
Flarer has forgotten the coffee. What is the point in having that dramatic football gesture if you’re not actually delivering the coffee?
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