I feel knackered today and that I can attribute to the 5-hour coach trip to last night’s Bournemouth gig. The gig itself was enjoyable. It was good to meet acts I hadn’t met before, and the promoter had done a good job shifting tickets. I’ll cover this in more detail in my next Patreon episode.
I got home almost twelve hours after my actual journey from south London to Bournemouth had begun and settled for a bowl of cereal and yoghurt rather than the post-gig go-to bowl of porridge, before dozing off some time after 0200hrs.
Despite the legs having nothing in them today after an appalling lack of leg room on the coach, I was still out in the park by 1100hrs for a 10k. Without that coach trip, I would’ve gone under 56 minutes, I’ve no doubt about it.
I spent the full 10k running through tonight’s set – I’m gigging in Pimlico – and had a rare stroke of luck around the 4k mark missing a guano strike by just a second after running under some trees. To have to have run the final 6k with some guano on my person, and it was a spectacular drop, let me tell you, would’ve been difficult and visually arresting too. As a low-key guy, that would’ve been tortuous for me.
I popped into my aunt and uncle’s after a light lunch. They were arguing over the coronation, bringing me up to speed on what I’d deliberately missed, before my aunt brought down an old watch whose value she wanted me to check online. This was given to her by her old boss after twenty years’ service, probably some twenty years ago and she rarely wore it. She still has the box too. For once, my early searches seemed to indicate that this watch could be worth at least £80 minimum. Initially my uncle didn’t think it would be worth more than £15. Once he saw some of the online prices, he was telling me how the watch was easily worth a couple of hundred quid without him even knowing about these things.
The Flute Man of SW8 was walking around the Stockwell Memorial, prowling really, he’s made the place his own since last summer with a saveloy on a cardboard plate, given to him by the local fish bar (my old landlord). Flute was muttering “Yum Yum” after every bite of the, these days unfashionable, highly seasoned sausage. I wonder if a revival might be on the card for the distinctly-coloured sausage, spearheaded by Stockwell’s dirtiest resident.
I arrived in THE café just after 14:03hrs.
There is of course, still, NO HANDWASH in the gents.
The café was busy, and I managed to grab the one single table left, saying ‘hello’ to my favourite elderly woman customer, a Portuguese woman in her late eighties who was driving right up until the pandemic. These days, this long-time regular is looking somewhat shop-worn after the pandemic – aren’t most of us? – but she always has a smile for me, and we speak in Portuguese. Hopefully I’m not going all Steve McClaren when I try out my basic Portuguese on her. The two girls sat to my left finished their meal and left, to be replaced by a man still wearing his baseball cap while eating. He’s only on the starter and he’s already killing me with his loud masticating.
There should be questionnaires when you arrive in an eatery, grilling you on your eating skills, encouraging respondents to be honest about their level of eating. If you recognise you might be prone to the loud masticating, you answer honestly so that the staff sit you as far away as possible from other customers.
14:54hrs
I finished my opening latte and over my glasses I could see Phil Collins, 12 o’ clock, the little waitress whose metamorphosis from kitchen staff to initially introvert waitress, reluctant to engage with customers, following her switch back in 2014 when the late owner fell seriously ill, is akin to my own post-pandemic change from committed introvert to at times erratic raconteur. Phil Collins clocks the empty tall glass and swoops upon my table immediately to spirit away the glass and order me a new one. If only the back-up café displayed the same vigilance.
I suppose that losing my regular toilet table to the pandemic in some way helped me become more outgoing in THE café. I was never holed up in my little corner. I had to come out of that shell.
Even after almost a decade of delivering these lattes, Phil Collins still favours the double-handed delivery, a couple of subtle fingers (left hand) supporting the saucer. Perhaps it’s a habit or she simply still lacks the confidence to embrace the single-handed delivery.
At this point, Loud Masticator next to me, has coughed and I’ve felt a breeze on my left forearm. That will mean a second shower of the day when I get home before leaving for tonight’s gig. But back to the delivery. If they were to sketch a close up of the staff’s hands in here delivering lattes, making all the hands look physically the same so that I couldn’t distinguish the male and female staff, I think I’d still be able to identify each waiter from their distinctive delivery style. I’d love to be able to test that theory out.
15:03hrs
Loud Masticator has left. Thank the Gods. I get a good look at him. Mid-thirties, maybe, 6ft, navy blue baseball cap, stubble. Still young enough to have parents to pull him up on the mastication audio.
I’m taking every opportunity I can to stretch my legs here today. I can feel the relief as I do so. I haven’t been on a plane for 15 years but after yesterday’s road trip, I feel like there’s more chance of DVT happening on a coach than a plane. As I stretch my legs out under the table again, I feel my running facial breaking through again. I can’t have that facial in THE café too. It’s pretty much starting to be my dominant facial.
There is now a third couple sat at the table right by my left shoulder. An English couple, late middle aged, possibly early pensioners. They’re quite argumentative and the man hasn’t done himself any favours by bringing out his paper during the starters of Pimiento de Padron and whitebait so he can continue with his crossword. The woman, who has just belched (the smell from that has assailed my nostrils) and not even said sorry, has been on this man’s case since they arrived. It won’t surprise you that they’re putting me in mind of my aunt and uncle. I think they have been in London for the coronation. As a lifelong Republican, going back to my very earliest years before I even knew what the word meant, I’m not even going to expand on that.
THE café’s serial throat clearer, the 70-something woman who had her eyes done in recent years, is clearing out her throat, LOUDLY, behind the swing saloon doors. How do people reach that stage where their worst habits carry over into public?
The woman now getting hammered, pours herself another glass of wine, belches and within a moment of expelling that latest oral discharge, has asked me if I want ‘any little fishes’. She’s got a pile of whitebait she can’t finish. I say ‘no thank you’ – I mean, how would that work? I rarely order meals in here during this café era, unlike the 00s, my golden age. What would THE café make of me taking handmedowns from other punters? Not that I’m actually hungry right now.
That’s me for today.
Ep 417 of This is NOT a podcast will be out in the next day. You can subscribe below.
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