I deliberately switched my day around today, recalling how much better last Monday was for pushing back the café until the afternoon. There’s something about rain on a Monday that really triggers my melancholy. I had the usual early start this morning, put in a couple of hours work, then retired to bed to listen to something for an hour and a half – finding the focus to commit to the audio was near impossible – before heading out for a lunchtime run. Multiple layers got soaked. I wore a hat, a buffer, three tops, the leggings were out, under the shorts and I was double socked too. It was unpleasant, but the run was made easier as I rehearsed a short set. I only have two gigs this week and I’ll be doing the same set at both. Wednesday’s, relatively local, will effectively be a dry run for Thursday’s potentially hostile gong show.
After lunch and a shower, I walked to the café, which involved several stop offs. There were a couple of shootings locally last week and two floral tributes have cropped up at the scene of last week’s fatalities. I’ll spare you the details. I read a report or two and it’s all pretty depressing. I had enough of south London a long time ago.
In between those two tributes, and we’re talking about just a grim 40 or 50 metre stretch of road, scaffolding has finally given up on a house that was the target of a fatal arson attack earlier in the year. The people below have kept living there, but it’s always struck me as curious that the burnt-out windows weren’t boarded up to keep pigeons out. Either way, these tributes don’t do much to lift the spirits and I wonder if there’s a grimmer section of road in London right now.
Yesterday was a good day, despite the miserable weather. It had actually opened in a slightly worrying fashion with an email from Twitter. I don’t tweet so much these days. In my early days, I’ve now been on the platform for 14 years, I was named as one of the UK’s top 5 tweeters by a well-known magazine, back in the day when having just a thousand followers was enough to get you a book deal. These days you’d need to live your life on Twitter to get similar opportunities. Anyway, on Saturday night, irked once again by the open-mouthed gum mastication of the Brentford manager (his gum chewing is worse than that of his closest rival’s, the Chelsea boss), I’d recorded a 3-second clip from Match of the Day of the guy’s outrageous open-mouthed chewing and posted it on Twitter. By Sunday morning, the Premier League had spotted it, reported a copyright violation and lo and behold, I had my first ever Twitter warning. These guys, they’re multi-millionaires, but we’re talking the basics here. Good manners. Close your mouth when you’re chewing. It’s not difficult.
Recovering from the violation warning and after running some errands, I spent the afternoon with old friends. I over-indulged on the desserts, unusually for me, so today’s suffering on the lunchtime run was in some way deserved. I’d bought a cheesecake for yesterday – Iceland (writer, etc) which, had the gathering been small, would’ve been passable – but the lunch guest numbers crept up which I felt made my dessert look even more frugal. We had profiteroles too and my friends also put out a bowl of grapes that were quite stunning. Now I’m quite good at buying grapes. Asda do decent ones, as do Tesco and Brenda, who runs the fruit stall outside Stockwell station, suddenly an irregular thing these days, also serves good grapes, albeit with a limited shelf life given their freshness. But yesterday’s grapes were something else, the fruit equivalent of Erling Haaland, while my own grapes are the Darwin Núñez, a level below, raw potential, occasionally take the breath away, but you’re aware that if money was no object, you’d be getting your grapes in from elsewhere.
I came home to the empty flat and it didn’t matter. It had been a nice day. I hadn’t seen my friends since a funeral which sadly and predictably is the way too many middle-aged friends tend to see one another at this stage of their lives, and in these situations, you always wonder why you leave it so long. When you’ve known one another all your lives, you don’t have to work on the catch up. You just pick up where you’d left off. Even any silences are comfortable.
Next time, I’ll try not to overindulge on the desserts. It was a Sunday of good food, good company, and before I go, I should add, some good firm handshakes on my part. I recovered from a bad one early on and asked the recipient if we could repeat it again. There was an indifferent one towards the end when I was coming down the stairs and found myself in a corner. Reaching for the departing fellow guest’s hand, my elbow was at an awkward angle, and I was a little disappointed. Something for me to learn from. Don’t get dragging into handshakes while on a staircase.
The waitress brings over my latte. It looks like she’s settled into her new lips, October’s fillers having given her a tricky couple of weeks where she often seemed to be half-pouting. Sometimes I’d see her struggling with the lips and I’d wonder if she was instigating some chat.
The café is almost empty. I appear to have walked in on some pre-tribunal work investigation, two young men running through an extensive list of questions with a young woman. One of the investigators is wearing some seriously garish black trainers with PUMA emblazoned over the front of the shoe rather than the sides. I wouldn’t be happy having a guy who thinks this type of shoe is suitable for such a meeting overseeing my case, I can tell you that. What a seriously ugly piece of footwear.
Before I leave you, Star Wars Football Silver Age Season 7 ended in dramatic fashion on Saturday night with a titanic struggle between new league champions Hoth and seven-times champions Tattooine in the FA Cup replay. The first match had ended in a 2-2 draw, and on Saturday night, both sides, unbeaten in the league all season, and in Tattooine’s case, it’s an unbeaten run that extends to 48 games now (my old childhood door number), played out a game that while not the equal of 2019’s Christmas Cup semi-final (widely regarded as the Silver Age’s greatest ever game), was still something special.
Level at 1-1 after extra time, the game went to extra time with both side’s young reserve keepers pulling off some superb penalty saves. Hoth skipper Lando, the newly-named Player of the Year, stepped up to take the decisive fifth penalty for Hoth which would’ve secured them the double, only for Tattooine’s callow ‘keeper to thwart him.
In the end, action force figure Campbell’s retaken kick gave Tattooine their fifth trophy of the season and their third FA Cup of the Silver Age. We now enter a brief close season, during which the transfer window reopens, and two new teams will be competing next season, which opens with Hoth and Tattooine again clashing, this time in the SWFA Community Shield.
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