(Written on my way to and from last night’s gig)
I've been predictably lost without the café which is closed until the 26th of August. I'll try and cover that in more detail in the coming days because there's also been some huge news from there for the café and for me. It’s sad news for me, not what you think, but long-term I do think this major change will alter the café's long-term future.
The positive, at least yesterday, is that I'm determined to use these 3 and a half weeks the café is closed to re-acclimate to writing from the flat, something I barely do these days. It's ridiculous. I could've perhaps had the café in my life as a social outlet and worked from home. Instead, over the last 21 years, well, to be fair, for the first decade it was balanced, but around 2010 it started to sway significantly in the café's favour. August is an unwanted opportunity to address that, saving on the time spent walking to the café, writing. I managed about 3 hours yesterday, albeit bitty ones, working on a project I've been labouring over. I made sure I took regular screen breaks which I'm often guilty of not doing.
Yesterday though was very unproductive. I've got caught up in some extensive DIY in the flat. Apart from making me feel very masculine (extra macho points for the vest), I don't enjoy DIY. Fixing something yourself, granted, can be satisfying, but it wrecked my day and tomorrow I have to follow up today's visit to two hardware shops with another.
I'm currently on the bus on my way to a gig in Finsbury Park, on the second of two very slow buses, running late, and I've had to snatch my rehearsal times along the way, once again running through my set behind the mask. Also, again, I've not had time to work on the new set. This concerns me particularly as I’m keen to road test the new material.
I can also, as I write this, smell the familiar smell of ripe bananas in my bag as this 88 pulls into Whitehall. The banana, like me, isn't a good traveller. I’ve topped up tonight’s gig stock with a fresh banana from the Nine Elms Monster just in case these riper bananas don’t survive this journey across London.
Tonight is my last gig before Sunday's Vauxhall DingDong Gong show which is supposed to be brutal. I do have a busy August schedule, including my first Brighton gig and at the end of the month, my first spot at the King of the Gong shows, The Comedy Store. I'm allowed to bring a free guest to the Vauxhall DingDong Gong if anyone fancies it, though of course there's a strong chance I could get gonged off early. I think I'm right that in this instance, three dildos held up by the audience means you've bombed. Something to look forward to.
I wasn't more than 200 metres away from Sunday's test of nerve this evening as, via a fleeting trip to the Nine Elms Monster in Vauxhall, I waited for the 88 to Trafalgar. There at the bus stop, cycling northbound without a helmet on a fancy red bike, was a café regular, more irregular these days, another of the North African crew, unusually fair skinned for that part of the world. He was chatting on his handsfree when he saw me. He made a beeline for the kerb with one of those smiles that can light up a room.
I was indecisive as to whether we were bumping fists or shaking old school (elbow bumps seem to be dying a death, though I did have one on Tuesday night). We ended up shaking hands which will always feel more personal and this time, having forgotten his name last time, I remembered his name and made sure he knew this by crowbarring it into every other sentence that came out of my mouth.
He asked how I was. I said I was struggling a little without the café but was hoping I could use the time to write more. He told me he always switches things up by going to different cafes, so the summer closure hasn't hit him hard. “I don’t let a place do that to me.” But he knows I'm a creature of habit. He's known other writers, he added, and they're similar. After saying his name another three times, my northbound 88 arrived. We had another firm handshake as I reached for my face mask and then I heard him speak into his hands free. He'd kept the person on the other end of the phone on hold. NHS-like, I should add, after being on hold for 52 minutes to those buggers today. I wholeheartedly support doctors and nurses, but the admin side of the NHS has been a disaster for the last 20 years or more. My experiences with these guys just don't improve and I wasn't surprised their IT system crashed recently. Bizarrely, I was in hospital two days ago for an appointment that neither the consultant nor I knew the reasons for. Neither of us could access the appointment letter and while the department obviously narrowed it down, I still had no idea as to specifics. Remember, I come from a line of hypochondriacs. We need specifics. The IT system is 98% up now, apparently, so the appointment has been rescheduled for next week.
I'm struggling with the usual exercise outlets this week. Injury wise, I've never had a bigger problem with my running over the last three years than I have now. My new running shoes arrived last week, and I really should’ve been kicking on. In the last month, I've alternated between 10 and 15ks, still down by 5k on my PBs of the first half of last winter, but the new shoes and the padding I wrapped around both feet, are doing little and I've not even hit an aggregate of 10k this week. When I'm limping in the actual flat, attempting to run is probably silly. I'm finally at the foot clinic next week, three months after they lost my referral, and I'm hoping they can fix me up. I've also pulled a muscle either through the regular weights I do or the planking or new-style sit-up reps I've been doing all summer. The DIY today left me short of time to squeeze in one of my three-weekly non-running workouts, but I'm hoping that I'll benefit from that, assuming the muscle injury has been compounded by the workouts. Which it probably has. All across the board, in every area of my life, I do not understand the science behind anything. Even writing. Whenever my old producer sent me on some masterclass writing weekend, I would struggle. I’m a good writer. But it was in me. It’s how my mind works. Ask me to delve into the science behind it, ask me for the motivations behind some character’s actions, and I’m left flapping. My mind doesn’t work like that. It’s a strength and weakness, more of a weakness I suppose when you’re doing something that’s exacerbating an injury.
I'm now coming into Warren Street on the 29 bus. No pre-gig butterflies as yet but I'm sure there'll be a flutter or two before I go up. You need a bit of that. I just hope there's an audience. The flutter is usually absent if there’s no audience and then the battle for me is to try and motivate myself on stage and push through in front of an audience of supportive but surly comics.
Given the state of the circuit right now, it's very hard to luck in and do two busy gigs in a row. We're in an age where the average Joe places little value on the arts and it's no different in stand-up. I'm not sure if those people who think watching comedy on Netflix or YouTube or who go to the sell out comedy gigs at our big theatres makes them supporters of stand-up, can be reached and persuaded to attend a grassroots stand-up night. The damage wrought by the internet on the circuit these days is all-too evident every time I'm on stage. You could extend the negative impact of the internet these days to pretty much most things. It’s given us a lot. It’s made knowledge, the good knowledge, attainable to all of us, but it’s also diminished our lives and communities in so many ways. It’s strangling the arts, it’s killed our high streets, it’s toxic, people expect many things for free. I could go on. Though of course the flip side is I can reach a small number of subscribers with a written-on-the-hoof newsletter post.
At this point, I should add that once again I've been unable to bin my banana skin so it's currently in a bag within my messenger bag. London definitely has a shortage of bins.
The first of tonight's buses, a 196, took me through Brixton and everyone on the upper deck had to suffer another of those idiots playing various things off their phone. Of course, it's never classical music. I'd like to live long enough to see that one day. Like a riot where for once bookshops get looted. I want to see that. Let me be clear. I'm not advocating a riot. I'm just saying how in a riot, you never see that and if we ever have another riot, that’s something I’d want to see.
Somehow, the original cause of the riot, justified or not, along the way gets lost as the looters begin smashing up the electrical stores and sport shops. Back in that dark summer of 2011, I swear I was the only one in Stockwell without new trainers. I'll admit, spitefully, the one plus of the riots for me was that they started on my most recent ex's birthday and I revelled in her birthday plans most probably being significantly disrupted, feeling she had treated me harshly the previous Christmas in ending things.
As for the moron on the 196, it was a middle-aged guy in a tracksuit. What is it about sportswear? This is a growing phenomenon in London. The middle-aged earphone-dismissing public transport phone user, I mean, not the sportswear. It’s strange because we’re the generation that grew up with earphones, those old orange foam headsets from Dixons, and we’ve gone from that to now deeming them surplus to requirements on public transport. Now as someone whose hearing has been significantly damaged by 15 years of audio work and has to endure tinnitus every day and night, I’m no champion of earphones, but if you’re going to be playing stuff on a phone on public transport, I’m saying nothing ground-breaking here, stick your ear phones in.
I can’t believe someone is so dumb and ignorant they don’t know what they’re doing. I suspect they would love being confronted over their nonsense and are getting off on ruining everyone’s journey. The starting point for getting into any argument with someone being particularly obnoxious on public transport is you’re dealing with an idiot who will be used to being challenged about their behaviour. The public confrontation won’t be new territory for them. Just last week, I got into something on the upper deck of a southbound bus (the meds again) and while I didn’t regret it, it was pointless because I was dealing with an idiot who was never going to accept they were wrong.
Tonight was another gig that I had to run to once I got off the last of my four buses, just to get there before the night started. And another dead night. That’s not a reflection on the MC, who I’ve gigged with previously and who I consider a good comic, or the night. It was a nice venue, old, you could feel the history in there, but as per my earlier point, there’s just not the support for nights in London. I’m not sure it’s entirely explained away by it currently being summer. I’ve been seeing this for the last six months now.
As is more often than not the case, the MC got my name horrifically wrong. ‘Ruiz’ is often skipped by MCs, though last night Ruiz and Tizon were morphed, and I think I was introduced as ‘Tuiz’. Another one to add to the ever-growing list. If you’re going to get your name messed up again, at least it’s nice to have someone come up with a new variation of it. There was no point in correcting this when signing off after my 10 spot when there was barely anyone audience. I wasn’t pissed off. The night had other challenges.
It's coming up to midnight, and I’m only just getting home. For some reason, Holborn, where I normally pick up a bus back to south London when travelling back from across the river, was quiet for buses. The lowlight of a long wait at that bus stop before making the walk to the West End was a guy on a moped speeding up by the kerb and snatching the mobile out of a drunken man’s hands. I ended up walking through Bloomsbury, and onto Charing Cross Road and all the way down to Trafalgar to get a southbound 88, by which time I became aware of another banana breakage in my messenger bag.
Arriving home, I got changed, had a shower and had another late-night bite to eat, suddenly feeling peckish having only had a snack before the gig. I’d worn this dark green top for the second time to the night’s gig, and if I was superstitious, as I suppose I can be sporadically, particularly when my OCDs are really playing up, I’d think this shirt was cursed. Two very quiet nights now, difficult nights, in this shirt. This was meant to be a top for the good gigs.
Some guys have lucky shirts. I reckon most of my shirts, if this is a thing, are ‘unlucky’ shirts. I do recall a pale red grandad collar short sleeved shirt back in the memorable but ultimately crushing summer of ’94 which probably nailed down my melancholy character for good. That was a good shirt.
I don’t think this green shirt will be out for Sunday’s Vauxhall DingDong Gong show. That night is going to be tricky enough as it is without me going on stage thinking whatever I’m wearing means the odds are further stacked against me.
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