I probably didn’t get as much sleep as I needed to after a fortnight of what was a borderline bout of severe insomnia, but the quality of the sleep last night was better. I was still up fairly early. I’d made a point of watching something last night after spending a couple of hours on the Sherlock Holmes pastiche anthology. Back in the 90s and 00s, I’d watch hours of Television. That’s why I became a screenwriter. I fell in love with some of the greatest works ever seen on TV, Brideshead Revisited, One Summer, Scully, Kid Cop, Hill Street Blues, er, Man About the House, NYPD Blue, Deadwood, The Wire and it was only natural, being a writer, I would want to emulate that. It led to some TV commissions and a straight-to-DVD movie starring a former Star Trek Next Generation actress who was put up in a five-star hotel in Finsbury Park. I’m still dubious as to whether there has ever been a five-star hotel in Finsbury Park because that place was and remains, like its south London counterpart, Stockwell, an absolute dump.
I did some reading on what there might be to watch, having, as usual, found Netflix to be a waste of time. Yes, it has a lot of shows, but I think the days of that streaming service being the go-to place for quality shows are long gone. I rarely watch it these days.
I settled on ‘We Own this City’, a 6-part David Simon drama on the corrupt Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force, its rise and fall, featuring numerous actors that graced our screen’s with Simon’s seminal ‘The Wire’, including Jamie Hector whose drug Kingpin Marlo Stanfield remains one of TV’s greatest ever villains. In ‘We Own This City’, Hector delivers an impressive, understated performance as a homicide detective looking to do good but finding himself caught up in all the corruption. I’m halfway through, having stayed up until the early hours of the morning watching the first two episodes, and another this morning.
I then found myself listening to a couple of Arthur Conan Doyle podcasts, another on Algernon Blackwood, one of the finest ghost writers this country has ever produced, and then, I revisited one of my favourite collection of ghost stories, ‘The Haunters and the Haunted’, published in 1921 and edited by north London-born Ernest Rhys. If you love your ghost stories, I can’t recommend this anthology enough.
After all things spooky, I caught up with one of my favourite shows on the history of UK radio in the 70s and 80s, the time of pirate radio. I’ve been listening to an interview with the founder of Radio Jackie and it’s a fascinating listen hearing how it all came about and how they struggled to stay one step ahead of the police. I’ve never been one for music radio, but anything on that golden age of UK radio and I’m always open to listening.
After a lazy morning, I spoke to my aunt. It’s hard to keep track of my uncle’s various issues right now. The cancer is causing all sorts of ailments he’s never suffered from before, the latest being his vision and it makes you wonder how many different points of attack there’s going to be with this thing. Life can often be cruel and bad things happen to good people.
For lunch, I had my first bowl of porridge in a fortnight. Porridge is one of those things I never went anywhere near for the bulk of my life. If my mum came back now, partly through the drastic change in the shape of my nose owing to the multiple breaks and subsequent surgeries, and partly through just almost eating anything these days (except egg white, desiccated coconut – I recently picked up on the desiccated coconut as a minor ingredient, one of about who knows how many ingredients in something I ate and right away knew something was up - and Chicken Korma – the devil’s food), she just wouldn’t recognise me as her son. I was so fussy in my old life.
I’ve been content with my usual 1kg Lidhell’s bag of oats but last month I picked one up from Asda and thought I’d vary things a bit. After three or four bowls of this, I’m now certain this particular brand of oats is not for me. I’m going to leave it as a distant back-up now. Ideally, a back-up to the back-up, in the way last Tuesday’s back-up-back-up café is the back-up to the back-up café which I am in now and where I arrived at 14:19hrs today.
I took a nice walk up here, welcoming the warmer weather today, but probably had too much time to think on my opening SMALL talk with whoever was behind the counter today. In the end, it was Nostril Flarer and so I referenced last night’s mystery ICE CREAM CHALLENGE in my opening SMALL talk with him, raising a smile out of him.
Now regular readers/listeners of old will know while I’m no longer the elite level of introvert of old, I’m still averse to being dragged into anything too showy, anything that requires one to display some personality. So, it was with some horror as I was settling up for last night’s coffees that Flarer asked if I wanted to take the ICE CREAM CHALLENGE. I felt something happen to my face. I couldn’t tell you what the facial expression looked like, but the feeling was akin to my P45-heavy years when I was inevitably fired and often marched out of buildings. The face becomes numb, you’re halfway towards a smile because you hated the job anyway but you’re trying to halt the smile because you know it’s not the standard facial for what’s actually happening and you know the next job is going to be harder to get because you’ve acquired another P45.
I think this invitation to take on the ICE CREAM CHALLENGE came about because of my opening dialogue yesterday when I complimented Muscular Madeiran’s new standalone ‘tache. He probably thought, “Right, this guy isn’t the rude dick I thought he was’. Apart from the concern the ice cream, which I never eat, would put a pound or two on me (plus it wasn’t clear if I’d be charged for it), I knew I’d struggle to identify whatever it was.
I was right.
They told me it was ‘a yellow fruit’.
“Peach.”
“No.”
“Nectarine.”
“No.”
“Pumpkin.”
(Is Pumpkin even a fruit? Is it even yellow?)
I was getting nowhere. I cracked a few gags, draw a few laughs, still keeping an eye on my coffee coupon card which had yet to be stamped, wondering how I could segue into getting those stamps, but for the life of me I couldn’t work out what the ice cream was. It was nice, sure, but I was clueless.
“It’s a yellow fruit. You see it every day in the shops.”
Now, you’ve probably got this already but I am very slow.
“Banana.” Flarer smiled. Like a magician who had pulled off some trick.
“Banana?”
“Yes.” The three of them, Flarer, Upright and the chef, who facially looks very similar to Upright and I’m starting to suspect is his bald brother, were all looking at me smiling.
I then had to summon up one of my rare facial expressions. I think I came up with something approximating a smile, but it was hard work. I’m also concerned that in just eight months, I’ve managed to build up a rapport with the staff in here that took me twenty years to do in THE café. That of course is partly down the post-pandemic personality transformation I’ve undergone. But it means that when you like people, at least it does with me, you feel pressured into tipping more.
15:19HRS
I finished my first decaf.
15:24HRS
Upright collects my not-as-tall-as-it-should-be-tall-glass and asks if I want another.
15:26HRS
Some guy behind me is the latest to take the ICE CREAM CHALLENGE.
Flarer builds up the tension. “It’s a very common fruit. You see it every day in all the shops.”
“Banana,” says the man without any hesitation.
My ICE CREAM CHALLENGE last night dragged on for more than eight minutes. I’m starting to feel a bit of a dick right now.
15:27HRS
Moustached Madeiran brings my second decaf over. A sinister-handed delivery. Lovely to see. The three-minute turnaround time is definitely a PB in this place.
The Moustached one stops off at the table in front of me to discuss his dog with the couple who’ve just arrived.
“She’s a very demanding dog.”
Apparently, the dog is in its teenage years and is causing a few difficulties with his neighbours. Having now finished his shift, he’s popping next door, where he lives, and tells the couple he’s going to bring his dog in. He says he’s even got his dog a passport so it can travel with him. That’s how attached he is to it. He goes onto reveal he has ten ‘muscular’ dogs back in Madeira.
The conversation is interrupted by the audio of Upright dropping some more cutlery as she clears up a table. I’ve always avoided working in service industries even though I’d have fancied backing up my negligible writing income with working in a café, but never did because I’m quite clumsy. But watching Upright, who’s dropped cutlery three times since I arrived today, would I be any clumsier than her?
Café Soundscape 16:08HRS
16:26HRS
I’ve finished my second decaf.
I have four gigs this week, two short and two longer sets, so will need to refresh myself with the newest set from tomorrow, working out how to cut them into their shorter versions. It won’t be easy but it makes sense to stick to the same set this week. I don’t particularly relish having to relearn a set in its shorter version, especially these days as I’m writing the longer sets. This whole learning different versions of the same set business is quite a challenge, up there with the ICE CREAM CHALLENGE.
16:46HRS
I’m still waiting to order my third decaf.
16:47HRS
I finally catch Upright’s eye. As I’ve been waiting 21 minutes to place my order, I can’t even complete the sentence.
Muscular arrives with his spectacular dog, the huskie. Everybody at the counter, staff and customers, stroke the animal. There’ll be no hand washing between the stroking and not-as-tall-as-it-should-be-tall-glass delivery. I may as well stroke the dog myself.
16:51HRS
The decaf has yet to arrive but Flarer invites the couple in front of me to take up the ICE CREAM CHALLENGE.
In the words of the mighty James Brown, ‘Good God!’
The EXTROVERT nature of the CHALLENGE bugs me, as does the likelihood that the couple, like the guy behind me earlier, will correctly guess the flavour of the mystery Ice Cream much quicker than I did.
But, the ICE CREAM CHALLENGE is proving a struggle for the couple.
“Cherry.”
“EHHHH.” Flarer has introduced a new noise for this, gameshow buzzer-like sound. I’m glad he wasn’t doing this last night.
“Sticky pudding.”
“EHHH.”
“Water Melon.”
“EHHH.”
“Raisin.”
“EHHHH.”
All right, never mind the “EHHHH.” Where’s my latte?
“Banana.”
They finally guess. They got there quicker but they had more guesses and were playing as a couple.
16:56HRS.
The head is a little on the large side.
Decaf number 3 finally arrives.
With a slightly too-large head.
17:17HRS
It’s been a productive afternoon. If I’d stayed at home, I’d have probably loafed around. Saturdays are my rest day, no running, no workouts. I didn’t have any cleaning to do as I did that all yesterday. Chances are I would’ve drifted in and out of naps and left myself open to the vivid and usually awful daytime dreams that often see the melancholy descend on me. Getting out of the flat was the right decision.
As I pack my work away here today, I don’t mind admitting some concern as to what today’s exit SMALL talk is going to be. I’m not sure we can top the ICE CREAM CHALLENGE and my mind is a little foggy today.
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