‘A Note’

I’m in a perpetual state of fug today. You can go for days not having enough sleep and feeling tired and then one day, like today, have too much sleep and feel tired. Is this just how its meant to be from now on? Trying desperately to work out the exact right amount of sleep to have to ensure that I don’t wander around aimlessly for hours with a constantly confused look on my face wondering where I am or why I am. Today’s state has so far caused a small moment of neighbourly awkwardness as I was caught out trying to put ‘a note’ on a car blocking our driveway. I put ‘a note’ in inverted commas because it was one of those notes. The notes that without actually containing any rude words, seems to hide the venom in the spaces between words or in other hidden methods. Mine today had three exclamation marks at the end of the first sentence and no punctuation at the end of the second. I like to feel that this denotes my sheer rage at first, followed by my anger peaking so much I can’t even bring myself to end it correctly, deeming the recipient not worthy of correct grammar.

There seemed to be a good reason for ‘the note’. I loathe making ‘notes’. They embody everything petty about the world and leaving one means you’ve lost being able to cope with things but are too chicken to do something proper about them. I once left ‘a note’ for my flatmates in my second year of university on account of them having no idea what cleaning was and two months of washing up had begun to move in ways crockery shouldn’t. I think it was the point when I found maggots happily creating a homestead amongst some old cuppa soups that ‘the note’ was made and left duly on the stairs as you walked in whilst I left the house in protest. Sadly I returned later to find the washing up not done and ‘a note’ directed towards me from the flatmates telling what a cock I was for leaving ‘a note’. It took about three weeks for things to be resolved during which time the maggots took over the kitchen, set up their own community and I still ended up having to deal with them whilst retching continuously over a four hour stint. Somehow, I had totally lost in every way, proving to me, that ‘notes’ were a tad overrated.

However, in recent times they have appeared again. This is because myself and Nat use our driveway all the time, everyday, and yet people insist on parking right in front of it meaning I have learnt reversing manoeuvres that combine skills only expert snooker playing cab drivers have previously discovered. So, finally, after telling people again and again not to do it and yet still seeing them do it when there is more than enough adequate parking space nearby on our non-permitted road, ‘the notes’ have returned. Often starting with a ‘please’ to disarm them following with utilising exclamation marks where needed and occasionally following up with a guilt laden extra sentence explaining why they are irritating dicks of human beings. In the last three weeks about 4 notes have been placed and nothing has changed. So today, when myself and Nat walked out of our flat, up the hill, and we saw a flash silver car (this is the extent of my car knowledge. It was nice looking, it was silver), the pen and paper appeared.

I had scribbled half of my note when the car beneath my pad clicked and unlocked and I noticed a cheery looking woman staring at me in a bemused fashion as she returned to her car. Myself and Nat began to defensively explain why she shouldn’t be parked there, only for her to apologise profusely, and explain that she lived across the road but the branches on their tree were being cut so she had parked it across the road for 15 minutes. A perfectly reasonable excuse. One so reasonable that I found myself back tracking, complaining about other drivers while screwing up the note in my hand just out of her eyeline. One again ‘the note’ has failed. I honestly feel like today I have entirely validated the phrase ‘you snooze, you lose’. Big stupid loser. Sigh.

Blog History

May 2012
M T W T F S S
« Apr    
 123456
78910111213
14151617181920
21222324252627
28293031  

Grumpy Old Man

I am a grumpy old man. Here’s proof:

 

TRYING TIMES

Of all the days I’ve chosen to drive to Wales (I say chosen, but there is a Comedy Club 4 Kids gig there that needs hosting and whilst I may have had some part in choosing the date, I can’t take all the blame) I appear to have picked the one day Wales is playing France in the Rugby World Cup Final. Sure, I suppose that means the roads will actually be empty as everyone is stationary watching it, but it could also mean if they win, all my audiences (including the kids) will be mental. If they lose it could mean that all my audiences (including the kids) will be mental. It really feels like I’ve done this badly. It doesn’t help either that I have no interest in rugby at all. I mean, I prefer it to football on account of the fact that it seems to happen less, requires men not being all pathetic if they get hurt and the players don’t get paid such ludicrous amounts.

Thing is, I don’t think I can ever like rugby that much after having met the rugby team that went to my university who’d spend a large amount of time making an effort to be a massive bunch of dicks. Every year they’d do an initiation ceremony whereby they’d all have to dress up, mostly as women which I’m sure actually confused several of them being only 18 and not fully aware of who they are, and then run around with bananas between their legs stealing various things from campus to earn drinks rewards. Traffic cones, road signs, the usual banal toss. The only one I ever respected was the one player who was dared to steal a monk from the nearby monastery and he did. With approval from the monk. Seeing a bulky lad run across the uni walkways with a man in robes on his shoulder, fireman lift fashion, was fairly entertaining. Its just the group mentality I don’t like and never have. I’ve dealt with rugby teams at gigs who seem to need to prove that they have muscles and brute force by being loud at every opportunity and generally they aren’t my favourite people.

So today, much like every busy sporting event, while I hope Wales win with the tiny bit of loyalty I have to them being a) part of the UK and b) my grandad being Welsh, I also just wish they’d do it smaller, quieter and on another day. Or at least involve stealing monks as part of the process.

 

DOG SHIT

Two days ago (yes I meant to write about this then but Andrew Lansley got in the way) as L and I were walking past the driveway by our flat (driveway. I know. I know. We are Flash McHarrys) a family were walking past in the opposite direction with their whippet dog. The dog was sniffing around a small patch of grass near Nat’s car, and then, without hesitation, proceeded to shit there. The family gormlessly smiled as he did so and I stood in a slight state of shock that in lovely Muswell Hill people would have such a disregard for property. I decided to exclaim very loud ‘oh no, not in our driveway’ as someone doing this were I the culprit or culprit’s owner (the former sadly is more likely) that I would be so overwhelmed with guilt that I’d definitely remove my pet’s faeces from someone else’s home area. Instead they just continued to grin like moronic automatons, as the whippet continued doing the shit of all time. I walked past certain they’d do the pooper scoop thing most honourable people would, but instead they carried on smiling and just walked off. Yes, I should have said something more along the lines of ‘oi you fucking dickbags, don’t let your mongrel shit on our turf’, but if they were good people, that wouldn’t have been needed. Sure, maybe there’s some misunderstanding. Maybe hearing me say ‘oh no’ in such a negative way was translated into them thinking that I loved it when dogs shat in our driveway. Perhaps it was some sort of bourgeois code for ‘oh wait, I fucking love nasty dog turd right by our house and where our cars drive.’ Or maybe they were just the embodiment of evil. If you see three grinning idiots (mum, dad, and baby) walking around North London with a whippet, beware, they are merely there to shit on your doorstep.

 

LABOURING

I did a gig for the Labour party in Crystal Palace last night and bloody lovely it was too. Of course I omitted my ‘Ed Milliband is shit material’ and proceeded with 20 minutes having a go at the Tories and Lib Dems instead. All round lovely time. Then as I got in my car, I realised that what I had just done was comedy to order. Had I been less of a chicken I’d have explained to them that whilst I hate the coalition, I think they’re bloody useless too and I wouldn’t have pretended to have any such allegiance to a party who’s original morals have gone quite horribly array. But, y’know, I didn’t want to get heckled or die on my arse. Life’s tough eh?

Stealing Time

I wasn’t going to blog today. Today and tomorrow were going to be blog free as I’m currently in the midst of my early Sept hibernation period whereby words are hard to fathom as everything in me post Edinburgh Fringe has shut down. Instead of typing I should be lying prone, staring at the ceiling, drooling a bit and scowling at my phone when it rings. This is generally what I need to do every year until Bestival (which occurs next week) where I ruin my body again and I end up back at square one. Yet instead of me doing such things (and yes I am typing this in bed in my PJs) and gaining the rest that’s due, I’m here hacking this blog out. Why? Well because after 4 and half hours of train journey plus a further 45 minutes travel lugging a huge suitcase on top of a whole month of endless performance, I returned home yesterday evening to find our flat had been burgled, again. Some of you may remember this:

LETTER TO THE BURGLARS OF METHUEN PARK

Back in early June some pricks broke in and nicked Nat and my laptop and Nat’s iPhone. Finally managing to get things back through insurance we had locks changed and generally though that despite being in a vulnerable ground floor flat with loads of big windows, they might have learnt that self-employed people have little to give and hopefully would never return. However at some point between Nat’s house sitting friend leaving our abode on the 27th and us getting back yesterday, someone had got in, rummaged through all the draws and cupboards, threw back all the bedding and had a proper scour for valubles. They didn’t get anything I’m pleased to say, completely over looking items I thought may be of worth like my satnav, my superman fronts and my collectable Radiohead albums, because luckily we had anything that was of worth with us in Edinburgh. Its just bloody horrible though. Once again someone we don’t know has been in our flat touching our stuff.

Even more unnerving is that we can’t work out how they got in. No windows were broken or forced open. All the blinds were still down, and the door was double locked. This leads us to believe that either our burglars have keys to the flat or we were robbed by Eugene Tooms from season one of the X-Files who has stretchy limbs, could fit through air vents and ate people’s livers. I’m not sure which outcome I like most. So now front door locks are being changed, me and Nat are being even more vigilant and I guess we’ll have to start looking for a new flat soon or really reading into how much damage you can do to a burglar under ‘reasonable force’.

On the plus side, we are getting quite good at dealing with this. Nat was straight on the phone to the police. I was straight on the email to the landlord. Between us its all getting fixed pretty quickly and I’m starting to wonder if we could become professional victims of crime. If any of you, for example, think you may soon be subject to criminal activity, why not contact us and see if we can take your place for a day for a fee? We’ll endure all trauma and misery involved, sort out all the damage and you can return scott free of despair just in time to collect your new laptop via insurance. I’m sure it’ll be more profit making than my current career and I may end up actually owning stuff robbers might want to steal.

I’m going back to my coma now. Wake me up when they invent burglar alarms that shoot lasers at people.

And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of The Bread

A few small thoughts today, mainly because the sun has melted my brain. It doesn’t help that for some unknown reason I decided I’d try and walk to the Southbank from Muswell Hill despite it being hotter than the surface of the sun and me not carrying any water, whilst wearing jeans and a bright red tshirt. Red, as it it well known, is not one of the colours that’s qualities contain repelling the sunshine. Far from it. If anything it just attracts angry bulls, and at a push, still looks ok if you get knife wounds and bleed on it. Neither of these properties were of use to me yesterday due to a distinct absence of large male bovines and a need to enrage them, nor a want for severe violent injuries of a cutlery based sort. What I did need was appropriate wear for intense sunshine heat. As a result I smelt so bad that whilst sitting on the quiet carriage of a train I was sure I was irritating people with my hum, and I have a glorious builder’s tan that makes it look as though I have had a surgically transformed neck, head, face and forearms whilst maintaining my emo’s envy skin tone everywhere else. Naked, it looks as though I am the human equivalent of when on certain bits of a plant die whilst other remain healthy.

 

So 4.5 miles of sun in the face, three cans of diet coke, one bottle of water and a kit kat ice cream later I got to Caledonian Road before working out that a) this was not fun, b) I hadn’t written any material which was the point of my walk in the first place and c) if I didn’t get out of the sun soon I would probably ignite. I instead chose to get the tube which was very much jumping out of the frying pan into a hot metal tube containing temperatures even regular denizens of Hell would find questionable and sweated my way to see the Incredible Edible Gingerbread House in The Brunswick. An interesting idea, artists and architects have designed an actual fairy tale house that for the mere sum of a donation of £2 to Great Ormand Street you could visit and have a bite of. Now naturally this was aimed at children, but no one told me that I’d be the only adult standing by himself with a beard and soaking wet with perspiration. I’m not sure a man could look more suspicious than when he emits the aforementioned description while small children run around his feet and he follows them into a room with a marshmellow waterfall.

 

Luckily the combination of feeling awkward and a man in a red wig and chef’s hat who kept singing about ‘I must make a cake, bake bake bake’ and other such patronising shit, ensured I didn’t stay long. It was his comment on ‘turning on our gingerbread smelling noses’ – I have never turned my gingerbread smelling nose off – and the realisation that to eat any gingerbread would require me completing his tour for 4 year olds, that encouraged me to sneak out and run away. I was tempted to announce that I was a diabetic and this was a suicide attempt but I worried no one would care.

 

I wish I was 4 again for things like that. At that age I’d have happily sat and listened to an am dram actor tell me about his friend Shirley Basset as I stuck flumps to my forehead and sang about culinary skills. Sadly, despite years of wanting a gingerbread house, it occurred to me that my longing for fantastical adventures has been long superseded by my intolerance of the world. I quietly found the trail of breadcrumbs I had left on the way in, thanked the witch who was holding some suspiciously large cutlery – child sized I’d say – and high fived a wolf dressed as a grandma on the way out.

 

I think this sun has definitely gone to my head…..

Innocence Of Youth

There are occasions when I very much envy children. The ability to walk around public areas dressed as Spiderman or a tiger or something without anyone batting an eyelid. The sheer skill at shouting bizarre noises at the top of your lungs when sitting down for dinner and having no judgement made upon your sanity or chomping down on burgers and chips followed by ice cream and jelly and never having anyone tell you how many carbs are in what you’ve just consumed. These are all things that I sometimes still very much wish I could do. I say sometimes, I mean nearly all the time. As a very young child I relished in being carted everywhere in my pram whilst wearing a yellow potty on my head because I was ‘a fireman’ and it was my ‘fireman’s helmet’, much to the detriment and embarrassment of my parents. I can’t now just parade around Muswell Hill wearing a bucket on each foot because I am a fawn, and dancing around Marks and Spencers singing songs about heros of old, without the police being called when I tell someone about my furry nether regions. Yet aged 6, these things are possible. They are possible all the way until during teenage years you become overly self conscious and this travels into adulthood making us far more ashamed about doing bonkers fun things than we ever should.

 

Yesterday was a prime example of me feeling envious of children being children. At the end of Comedy Club 4 Kids at the Udderbelly, Abandoman did their superb improvised comedy hip hop track, ‘What’s In Your Pocket?’ This is a piece that revolves around Rob and James making up lyrics based on what people in the audience have in their pockets and hold up in the air. Usually, having witnessed this many times at adult gigs, they get a bevy of Oyster Cards, money, receipts, and bits of pocket fluff. Abandoman, being as skilled as they are, still never fail to make this exciting and work brilliantly with it. However, it transpires that when you ask a bunch of kids what they have in their pockets, a whole different game begins. A flurry of arms reach into the air holding everything from balloon animals, a lightbulb, a shoe, a nerf bullet and a plastic snake. This is why I am jealous. I would never even think to take that sort of stuff to a comedy gig, let alone then be proud enough to hold it in the air and wave it around. A nerf bullet with no nerf gun? That boy couldn’t care less if you questioned why he was carrying that around. Why did another kid have a lightbulb? We will never know. And it sort of bothers me. A lot. Not least because I’m really sure a child of 8 shouldn’t be carrying around a lightbulb. But also, and mostly because, I’m fairly sure he just decided he would carry a lightbulb and so did.

 

I recalled doing a kids show where two of the children in the audience were waving lightsabers about. When I enquired what the lightsabers were for, they replied ‘hitting stuff’. Brilliant. If I ever attempted to go into a bar, club or even show waving a lightsaber around, I think it would be seconds before I was turfed away. If I even made to them questioning as to why I was carrying such a thing and I openly told them it was for violent purposes, I’d then be in a whole different bag of trouble. I wonder if criminals should use children to carry these sorts of things all over the place without consequence. 7 year olds could smuggle arms across London by simply carrying them with the safety on and telling everyone they would shoot them with it. It’s fool proof.

 

I’m off to go find some excitable children and a vicious criminal industry and get making money.  Then with my money I will be a yellow potty and be a fireman wherever I go once again.