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Walking through South Lambeth today, I happened upon a funeral procession. Horses and carriages definitely seem to be in right now, something this side of the pandemic. I think if I went for that option for my own funeral, visually the spectacle would revive memories of the rag and bone men of my childhood. There’d certainly be nothing fancy about my own service. As traffic slowed to allow the funeral cortege to pass, I found myself reflecting that two businesses that never seem to be in trouble are funeral directors and dry cleaners. I’m sure the lockdown tested the latter, but if they did suffer during the lockdowns, they look like they’re back to peak strength now.
A few years ago, as an old friend considered their options were they to leave their job of a couple of decades, they were willing to try their hand at anything so long as it allowed them to earn a living but with a better work-life balance than they had, and I remember throwing the idea of a dry cleaner’s their way. I’ve never seen a dry cleaner that isn’t busy, though I should add, with a deep aversion (bordering on fear) to setting foot in any office, I doubt if I’ve ever used a dry cleaner more than half a dozen times.
Those two business, funeral directors and dry cleaners, they cannot be improved on. You could take those ideas to Dragon’s Den and the Dragons wouldn’t be able to take them to another level. They’re deemed essential by so many.
I’m probably not far off the age most people seem to be when they start planning their funeral, but I’ve no plans to do so. Not just for financial reasons. I’m not funnelling latte money into paying for some coffin that’s only going to get obliterated in the cremation process. Also, I just think mentally, planning my funeral would affect me. I’d be accepting this is something I need to start thinking about and the effect would likely be so bad, I might as well jump inside that coffin soon as I start paying whatever you need to pay every month to get that sorted out. I’m a single middle-aged man. I don’t care what happens to me when I’m gone and it’s not as if there’s anyone else on the scene who’s going to get burdened with that cost unfairly. Unmarked grave? I’m not too bothered. I’d rather have that than have someone hyphenating my name on some overpriced gravestone. My jaw always sets hard whenever someone hyphenates my name.
Everything that’s ever happened in this world, there’s been a first time for it. And seeing that funeral procession this morning had me wondering who would’ve been the first Early Man, Neanderthal, Denisovan or whichever hirsute archaic human, to have died in the history of our planet? For those left behind, at what point, noting the lifeless body of their loved one but not having a clue as to what had happened, did they think, “Okay, what’s going on here?”
And when did they decide they’d have to do something about the body? How long did they give it before they realised the world’s first ever deceased person wasn’t ‘coming back’? Did they only decide to remove the body once the smell become a problem? Did they think the smell might’ve just been a one-off until the next one of their group dropped dead?
I arrived in the café this morning to the sound of some Thompson Twins track from around ’82 I think, when the band peaked. They had a curious enmity with Tears For Fears around that time. I’d actually popped into Stockwell Lidhell first to check if they had any Long Life semi, but yet again they were out, meaning before I returned there post-café to complete my weekly shop, I’d probably need to stop off at the Nine Elms Monster to pick up their Long Life. An absolute pain of a detour and one which I had to make.
It's been a week of coming down from the high of several gigs, especially Tuesday night’s show where I did a 15-spot. That was easily my favourite of the week. It was a lovely venue, a great MC and the promoters really get behind acts they like. I know I’m good enough for these longer spots and I’m just trying to ease myself away from the 5s as quickly as possible.
I’m not sure there were many English speakers there on the night, with the gig falling in a part of south London where the catchment area seems to be predominantly Chinese, and I suspect most of them didn’t understand much more English than my aunt and uncle do, but it was still a good night. I loved having enough time on stage to allow my set time to breathe. There was no chance of sleeping properly after such an exciting evening and nights like that make the toil and the expense of gigging worth it.
Wednesday saw my new bank card arrive. The first one (I hadn’t requested it but my bank are switching everyone over to Mastercard from Visa) didn’t arrive, so it had to get cancelled. The new one finally came, or so I thought. As always with a new card, you have to use chip and pin first time around to activate the card. I thought what better place to debut the new card than in the café where I continue to spend most of my free money. The card was declined. Seb K, the café’s greatest coffee maker since he first rolled up in SW8 back in 2004, told me I probably needed to activate it by withdrawing money from a cashpoint. That wasn’t my understanding of how these things worked, but I went along with it, while paying for my coffees with another card.
I then took a trip to Asda in SW11 to pick up two of my favourite yoghurts whose prices are locked in at a £1 as opposed to Sainsbury’s ruthless £2.45 a pop, plus a couple of packets of Hall’s Lozenges that I am addicted to, which are 20p cheaper than anywhere else, and tried the new card in there. Declined again. Then I went to the cashpoint just outside. The card was also declined there.
I popped into the Clapham Junction branch of my bank and told them the issue. They looked into it. They were puzzled. “It says here,” said the member of staff who’d curiously grown out the wide band of hair around his balding skull, making me feel like I was back in the seventies, “that the card has been cancelled.” It was then that I twigged I’d received the card that had ’never’ arrived and which the bank had cancelled. So, I’m currently left with a few days of not having a card for my default account. While there, I was reminded that I need to change my name with my bank from ‘Danny’ to ‘Daniel’.
I had opened my account as a kid back in the days when everyone called me Danny and when I used it all the time. It was only in the mid-90s that I started using ‘Daniel’ after realising that no one really takes you seriously as an adult if you’re using a diminutive like ‘Danny’. Having been escorted from a great many numbers of offices in my disastrous (intermittent) office life, I felt being addressed as ‘Daniel’ while being fired lent those uncomfortable situations more gravitas.
This morning I took my new passport to another branch of my bank to finally change the bank account name to ‘Daniel’ only to realise I couldn’t because of course, I HAVE NO BANK CARD. So, until that new card arrives, I’m still ‘Danny’.
Meantime, I returned home to find a couple of parcels. One had arrived a day late, the other a day early. Such is the inconsistency of the 2022 Royal Mail. As I gathered the parcels from the communal hallway, a neighbour arrived wearing some slightly eccentric shades. I know them fairly well as far as neighbours go, and I felt the shades probably needed to be acknowledged given they were of the EXTROVERT variety, but I’ve been so tired I couldn’t find the words. The neighbour kept the shades on throughout our considerable communal hallway discourse, so I think they were dragging the exchange out until they got the shades acknowledgement.
By this afternoon, the weekly midge bites acquired on a Thursday night in Regents Park playing football, began to bother me. I do have some midge spray but again, I forgot to spray myself with it and the mosquitos were out in force as dusk drew in. I played in goal again and the old reflexes were still there. I made a strong save at the start of the game, diving low to my right and parrying the ball away to the corner and away from danger, but I could feel I’d got there so much slower than I would’ve in my peak years. Plus, my vision now is so altered, too much screen time writing and too many books, that I saw the ball coming at me in a very different way, if that makes sense. My spatial awareness is very different now and it also causes me problems in my running, particularly in winter. Mind you, it was summer last year when on a glorious Friday evening, I ran right into a thick tree branch and cut my forehead, and it was another two days after that before I did the right thing and went to A&E for concussion. We’ll gloss over the huge error I made late on in last night’s game.
Back in the café this morning, Not Mick, the sometimes unhinged regular who is a dead ringer for the Fleetwood Mac drummer, sneezed into his own coffee, recoiling dramatically from the cup as the caffeinated kickback landed in his eyes. I’m glad he drinks from cups rather than tall glasses. I’m not sure I could ever have relaxed again in the café if I’d known there was a chance of me drinking from the same glass as him after that. That glass would have had to be washed a thousand times for me.
Meantime, for the first time this side of the pandemic, Old Dad and Younger Mum were in. It looks like Younger Mum is pregnant again. They’re a very well-to-do local couple. Every time they’re planning something, I think today they were putting together a plan of action for when Old Dad is looking after the young kid (and future influencer) they already have, it’s like some military operation is underway. I think that’s a middle-class thing. Both checking their calendars repeatedly. The guy was only planning to take the kid to the cinema and this discussion was going on for a good half hour after their breakfasts of Eggs Benedict and Portuguese toast arrived. The money in that coupling can, I’m sure, be traced back several generations. That’s the way this world works. There’s no chance of Younger Mum ever getting together with some working-class writer who has no intention of ever paying for his own funeral.
I rounded the day off with a lazy 5k run in the park. I’d brought back the long-sleeved thermal under a t-shirt and at no point were the sleeves rolled up. Autumn is almost here.
UPDATE: There is still NO handwash in the gents in the café.
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