It was a day of rationing the remaining wafer-thin supplies of Poundland sun cream (a dermatologist recently told me anything over sun factor 15 does nothing – 15 suffices) and keeping an eye on the weather before making a late decision it wouldn’t be wise to run in the evening. I kept glancing out of the front room window. Normally I never fail to see someone running past the building or in the park. Yesterday I saw no one. That told me everything I needed to know about the risk.
Rather ambitiously, I’m trying to have a new set in time for my third and final gig of the week in Clapham this Friday. I’m not sure it’s doable. I’ve had a fair few disruptions in the last few days that have given me a ready excuse. I’d earmarked Friday for the new set as I don’t like to return to venues with the same material, though it doesn’t stop others. It’ll be my third Clapham gig so I’d like a third set. The material is there but the editing hasn’t been ruthless enough and there’s still the almighty challenge of learning it, which will begin in earnest today.
I rehearse in the front room, using the mic and mic stand I bought on eBay a couple of months ago to help me get comfortable with mics/stands (very effective) and I’m going to need to put hours and hours in between today and Friday. Just as this front room, which looks out onto the park, is an ice box in winter, it’s an oven when temperatures soar as they have done this week. Though there is some satisfaction, I have to say, in watching a sweat patch develop on my t-shirt indoors. It makes me feel like I’m in some old film, a group of explorers venturing into the great unknown in some khaki-coloured shirt.
I’m always curious as to how much I sweat because I’ve never been a big sweater. When I run, it disappoints me that even in the summer, when I might’ve done a 15k, the sweat never really kicks in until I’m home. I want to be sweating profusely while I’m running. I want the t-shirt caked in sweat as a I lap the park. I crave that masculine moment.
I’m still a little on edge waiting for some big news on a personal level, which means having my phone on vibrate. This isn’t the way I want to live. For over twenty years my mobile has remained on silent. I get to notifications when they come, though I’ll admit I tend to move quicker these days if it involves the offer of a gig.
I’d rolled up in the café early yesterday morning after several errands. Partly because it’s my favourite time of day writing and café-wise, and partly because I knew by the afternoon it was likely to be so hot that it would look odd if I ordered a latte. There’s only been one occasion maybe either side of the pandemic in the last three or four years where I remember that happening. It takes something extraordinary for me not to have my coffee. And remember, these days, I’m mainly on the decaf. I can feel self-conscious ordering a hot drink in this weather and find myself wondering if Seb K, Phil Collins, The Beard or The Mullet, as they take my order might be thinking, “This man, even in this heat, he wants the coffee.”
Watching people having beer at all times, even early morning, in the café, in this heat, has given me a mental craving for a beer. Having been teetotal for 12 years now, obviously that’s not happening but the option of a non-alcohol cold bottle of Sagres or Superboc is there, two lovely non-alcohol beers, but the biggest plus for me of being teetotal, well, joint biggest plus alongside always being clear-headed, is that I never feel bloated. So I passed on the non-alcohol beers and stuck with the coffee past lunchtime. It was a reasonably productive morning.
Seb K, the café’s greatest coffee maker and a fixture in SW8 since 2004, was unusually off his coffee-making game yesterday morning. His first two lattes arrived with oversized heads, particularly the second one, (see my Instagram). K recently seriously injured the index finger of his coffee-making hand and early on, he was making his lattes sinister-handed and making them well. An ambidextrous coffee-maker surely has to be worth a pay rise? Recently he’s gone back to the right-handed coffees, and yesterday was a rare off-day for him. Don’t get me wrong. The coffees tasted absolutely fine, it’s just the level of spume was too much and at a time when my favourite yoghurt shot up in price by 85p, and the lattes have jumped to £2.50, I’m all about value for money.
Morocco and Not Mick (Fleetwood) were in the café by the time I arrived around 10:21hrs, arguing, as they often are, whilst still talking about their holiday to Morocco that I can’t see happening. They’d have killed each other by the time they reach North Africa. Morocco was telling me he came to London in ’89 because Morocco was too hot for him, and now he says, this week at least, London is hotter than Morocco.
A couple were in with whom in recent years I’ve managed to get a greeting going with one half. They gave me the ‘Morning’ as they came in. Seeing them leave, I saw they were ready to exit without the ‘Goodbye’. I did my best to give it. That community interaction feels incomplete to me without both the ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’, but I failed. I’ll admit, I was disappointed not to get it.
After posting this, I’m going to make myself another decaf, open the front room window and start on the new material again.
I have three big stand up gigs this week, posted below. Tomorrow I’m at Comedy in Your Eye in Camden. It’s the one night I’ve been to as a punter and felt so much energy in the room that I wanted to perform there and then. That’s very unusual for me. They have some weird forfeit system for stand ups if they do some particular material. I’m not too sure what that involves. I’m hoping I’ll be okay with the particular set I’m doing there.
On Thursday 21st, I’m doing my first gong show. That involves going to Greenwich. I’ve not knowingly been to Greenwich since singing for the school choir at an old people’s home in the 80s. I suspect that I’ll get lost along the way. My limited understanding of up the Creek’s ‘Beat the Blackout’ night is you get two minutes’ grace and then if three audience members raise their cards, the stage blacks out. I’m not over-confident I can beat it, but I’m confident nevertheless. It might be easier to simply say I’m not daunted.
Normally I would never have considered these nights, and I’m also doing the Vauxhall Comedy Gong show on Sunday week which is supposed to be really brutal. I don’t think these nights attract a regular stand up crowd from what I’m told, more a baying, often pissed-up mob, but at my age, anything where a good performance can lead to progression through the levels on the circuit, I have to take it.
On Friday, I’m back for a third appearance at Comedy Bandits in my old, long-gentrified neighbourhood of Clapham, south London. These are all big nights at this level, with Comedy in Your Eye being the current flavour of the month on the circuit. It’s not been easy getting a spot there and even then, I had to wait for sundry dropouts. It’s an opportunity but unfortunately, I need someone there with me otherwise I can’t perform. While I have left the bulk of bringer nights behind, having either done them once or twice or dismissed them out of hand, I can’t afford to ignore the big ones without playing them once, and Comedy in Your Eye is one I really need to tick off.
If anyone can make tomorrow night in Camden, do message me on social media or drop me an email. Likewise, I also need someone for this Friday in Clapham. Someone that turns up on time too…my last guest at the Clapham gig turned up three minutes after I ended my extremely well-received set. I should add I was the penultimate act that night…
So if you fancy seeing some stand up, supporting me and supporting comedy at grassroots level, please contact me.
Twitter: @1607WestEgg
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