The awful winter weather of the last four months refuses to go quietly. This morning, on an ultimately doomed trek, I headed to the West End not realising that the store I was trying to get something from now only exists online. I miss the experience of going to a physical space. The anticipation. Trying something on. Heading home with it, or without it. That journey now, in this internet age, is gone. As convenient as the digital world is, I do think it’s robbed us of many things.
The rain was coming down as I walked the full length of Oxford Street, from Centrepoint to Marble Arch, where two more stores were supposed to exist (they of course don’t). Walking past Primark on Tottenham Court Road, I thought of how many hundreds of visits I’d made there during its earlier great incarnation as Virgin Records, in the early days to their comic store which (heresy) I preferred to Forbidden Planet (less nerds) and then in later years, once the comics had gone, for music and DVDs. I once got a job there as a security guard aged just twenty though the thought of apprehending French students for shoplifting some Smiths CD didn’t really entice me and I never actually took the job up.
Meantime, on a wet day like this, it’s one of the rare occasions I’m thankful to have a bus stop right outside my building. Normally I don’t like this and have never got used to getting off a bus and having people watch you go into your building (I usually make off in a different direction before turning back and going in). Today however, in a continuation of my 5-year battle with Thames Water, I have those guys once again attempting to fix the five manhole covers (clean water asset covers according to them, ironic considering their current track record on clean water) they first installed in the summer of 2018 that constantly rattle any time vehicles go over them.
The road was bad enough before Thames wrecked it. It’s a main road, noisy traffic all day long, though at the time I moved in, as I was doing live radio every week from a studio, I never needed to consider how the road noise would affect any podcast work. Once my glorious live radio days were over I realised that for podcasting, this road was a nightmare. I was constantly having to edit out the sound of the manhole covers rattling and, in the end, it was one of about a hundred reasons for retiring from the podcasting game. As challenging as stand-up is, it’s much more enjoyable than the monotony of recording and editing a show for a minimal audience.
I think I’ve completely missed the point I was trying to make which is that this bus stop, you know, the one outside my building, has been closed off to fix these drains. Which means when I return home from tonight’s gig, I’ll have to either get off a stop early or later. I have inconvenienced myself.
I don’t think, ultimately, these drains can be fixed. There’s too much heavy traffic on the road but I’m like a dog with a bone. A road that was never great to live on and which has caused sundry problems for the building, notably subsidence, was made far worse by the installation of these covers in August 2018. The noise will be back but hopefully I can get out of this place sooner rather than later. In the meantime, I will continue to be on the case because this poorly thought-out work has marred the experience of living where I live.
F*** the park, the farmer’s market, the pram joggers, the dog walkers, the gentrifiers with their overpriced coffees. I want to move back closer to the river, back to what I know and put these last nine years behind me.
Last night’s show was okay. I went on second, headed home at the first interval, guilt free. I’ve done my fair share of staying at gigs all night long. It’s a promoter’s job to promote a night and not rely on acts to be the audience. That’s applicable to most of the open mic scene, so don’t take that as me having a go at anyone in particular. It’s certainly not specific to last night.
I have two big spots at the end of this week. I’ve yet to incorporate the new bit into the longer set. Since this morning I’ve been refamiliarizing myself with the new set. It can take two or three rehearsals before it’s there, before I feel ready to time it again to make sure it comes in to time. I have so many different versions of sets flying around, depending on allocated stage time, that it can be tricky. Yesterday I ended up printing the wrong version of the new set several times before realising. As I wrote last week, I’m trying to transition now to a point where I no longer do the short 5 spots. Given I’m doing paid 20s, I don’t see the point of doing anything shorter than 10 as it’s so much harder to butcher a set and condense it into a 5 than it is to build it up. I don’t think 5s do me any favours now.
Tonight, I’m gigging in Stoke Newington. Commuting to London gigs, 95% of the time by bus, is giving me a knowledge of London buses I’ve not had for a generation. It’s also allowed me to read voraciously right now.
Over at the counter here in the back-up café, a bald man, no more than forty, still in his winter coat, chats to Upright and Muscular. I enjoy staring at the cerebriform patterns on his wrinkled skull. Shaving his head as he does, I wonder if he’s able to shave easily into any stubble spots caught up in the brain-like folds on the scalp. Earlier this week I saw a guy on the bus with a severe cleft chin. Now I think at one point or another, every guy has pretty much fancied a Kirk Douglas dimple, but a dimple this deep would cause problems shaving. I didn’t see how the fissured bus passenger could easily shave there. You’d probably need to prise it apart with forefinger and thumb and then go at it with the razor. It would be one more bit of life admin for you.
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