I went to London yesterday. I thought I’d do a stand-up gig, as I thought I should probably practice for Sunday, when I’ve got another, bigger gig booked. Unfortunately, it’s a night where it’s very much first come first served in act terms, and I got there late because I was too busy buying some Monster Munch, so wasn’t allowed to perform as they were already full. I then had to spend my time just ambling around London on my own, which was pretty depressing really. I usually don’t mind it, and I’m usually quite entertained by London, but for some reason I just felt really down. I’m not really succeeding at anything at the moment, and I wasn’t even sure whether I wanted to do the stand-up gig last night. I nearly just stayed at home because I’ve become so wracked with self-doubt that I don’t think anything I do is any good and nobody will enjoy it. To be honest, I suspect I’ve made a complete hash of my life and I’m not sure what I can do anymore, however having just said that, Spotify seems to have taken the time to recommend drug trials to me. I’ll be honest, selling my body to science in the hope that I’ll become the next Wolverine does appeal somewhat. Though being the idiot that I am, I already consider myself to be a modern day Wolverine, based only on the fact that I’ve never broken a bone. Now, I’ve never seen my bones, but I can only assume that this is because they’re made of metal. Maybe I’ll enrich a shark with uranium and let it bite me. At best I’ll become some kind of superhuman shark beast, and at worst I’ll get some kind of advert out of it wandering about with my shark bite visible to the world while people scream about seeing my true colours shining through. Just like a rainbow. A scarred rainbow.
To cap off a fine day yesterday I thought I’d go and cheer myself up with some ice cream, so I went to the special ice cream shop and asked, quite clearly I thought, for some rum and raisin ice cream. You can imagine my surprise then when the man at the counter instead decided to get me pomegranate flavour. How do those two things even sound the same? Rum and raisin. Pomegranate. I was too polite to say “How the hell did you hear that as pomegranate?” instead assuming that the mistake was mine. I’m not sure anybody can actually understand what I’m saying, leading to the tremendously unique situation of not actually having a first language.
“Somebody call 999! My house is on fire!”
“Hey everybody! There’s a pomegranate party at Andy’s!”
“No you berks! Call the fire brigade!”
“He says there’s bobbing for apples as well! I’m there!”
I saw an interesting family though. They were stood in Leicester square and performing to a crowd. I say performing, two of them were stood there looking sinister while the dad kept dancing with people. They were kind of dressed like the Addams family, indeed, I think that’s who they were meant to be. They were cool. This was very much the high point of the day. I also gave some money to a beggar, and less impressively, some other people who just asked me if I had a pound. They said it was so that they could get home, though in retrospect I’m not overly convinced. When one of them saw that I was willing to dole out pound coins so freely, she then asked whether her friend could have a pound as well. I gave her 30p, pretending that was all the change I had, then stealthily jingled away with my pocket full of change into the night.
I’ve got two more stand-up gigs booked at the moment. I think after that I’ll see whether it’s something I really want to keep doing. I can’t be sure whether I’m doing it at the moment because I genuinely enjoy doing it, or whether I just think I could be quite good at it, so keep doing it to see whether that’s true. I’d really like to be the best at something, or at least know that people thought I was good at something. These companies I go to think I’m completely inept. I never did get feedback from the company I went to, even though I emailed them and left a message on an answerphone asking them to call me back. I thought about turning up to the office whilst I was in London and forcing them to explain to my face whilst I peeled an orange in a sinister way, but unfortunately if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the past year, it’s that I’m completely incapable of peeling an orange in a sinister way. Usually I just sit there spraying citric acid all around, sometimes I blind myself with it, that’s not sinister at all.
“So tell me Mr Binns… what was it that made you rej- ARGH! Hold on, hold on, I can’t see! My ey- ARGH! Wait, just stay there, I’ll be with you in a seco- oh for fuck’s sake it’s on my jacket now. I just washed this this morning! Are you still there? Mr Binns? Mr Binns?”
On the other hand, my citric infusion does mean that I am kryptonite to cats. I’m not entirely sure how this will come in handy, but one day I’m sure it will.
Well this has been fun, even bordering on the slightly therapeutic. It’s really gone on for quite a while though. I’m going to go and eat a yoghurt now. Bye.
