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Due to me largely being an idiot today was a stressful day involving a lot of slightly unnecessary travel. I came in this morning to the Pinter theatre to do my photo shoot for the upcoming RHLSTP tour. The face of Tim from the Office stared down at me. He is the star of the sitcom that I wrote that failed script for. So it was nice of the Universe to conspire to rub that in for me. I was still excited to be standing on the stage where he is performing with Danny Dyer and to see their props littered around me. It’s not Tim for the Office’s fault. Even if he did read my script and then pull a face at the camera.
Good to be back working with Steve Brown who’s been taking my photos since he did one in a church hall for Collings and Herrin. He gave me the first hit for free and has ended up getting work almost every year since, doing all my poster images since Hitler Moustache. The Pinter theatre was a beautiful backdrop and I hope we’ve got something good.
Originally I was going to stay in London as I was recording someone else's podcast tonight, but my daughter has been taking part in a drama club and parents were asked to come along this afternoon. I thought she was going to be doing a line in a little play and I didn’t want to miss that, so having failed to have time to grab some lunch with my wife, we dashed back home through bad traffic and made it just in time. As it turned out the parents were just sitting in on the end of the lesson so we could see how things worked, so on balance I might have been better off missing this. My daughter couldn’t even appreciate what efforts I had made just to see her dance a bit and look a bit embarrassed when asked to say what made her special (in the end she plumped for saying that she helped her mummy and daddy and I nearly stood up and shouted, “No you fucking don’t you liar. If anything you just make more work for us. You’re not that special.” Then at least she might have remembered this moment and at some point long in the future actually appreciated the sacrifices I had made for her.
Then, as the rest of them went home, I got dropped off at the station and headed back into London to guest on this podcast. I was exhausted and had to contend with rush hour tubes and find my way to a pretty inaccessible venue in Poplar that was going to take me two to three hours to get home from. I think I thought that this gig was in Kings Cross (as it usually is) when I took the booking and didn’t know I’d be doing podcasts in London and Bath this week as well and was just left wondering when I was going to catch up on sleep.
The walk from the DLR station to the gig was quite long and through dark streets in one of the many areas of London where you can get a proper glimpse of the inequalities in our society. Those who talk about Londoners as if they are some kind of elite know nothing. It’s expensive and over crowded and unpleasant and a powder keg ready to ignite if, say, the government were to institute some kind of policy that would cut all our trade agreements and cost billions of pounds.
The gig was fun, but possibly not worth the six hours it took me to get there and back. I have been trying to say no much more this year and in hindsight this is a gig that I should have said no to. But also it’s nice to support the medium of podcasting and this one is a neat idea that’s well produced. It’s called The Break Up Monologues with the very funny Rosie Wilby. But as I walked through the marijuana smoke, past hipsters with guitars and geezers carrying weird bits of furniture through the streets in the dark, I resolved that I must get better at turning stuff down.
I won’t manage to though.
And at least I shared a nice moment with the cab driver who drove me back from Stevenage, when he stopped to let some fawns get out of the road and we connected with the beauty of nature.
