I had a bad day today. Firstly my computer problems continue. My desk top internet is not working with the new wireless hub, despite being attached to it by a wire and my laptop now cannot send emails, keeps cutting out and does not operate with any other wireless system outside of my house at all - which is a bit annoying. I have been forced to connect up my old modem to my desktop and work from there, but where's the wireless based fun in that? It's all too complicated to be dealt with over the phone, so some poor chump is going to have to come over and explain to me where I have gone wrong. This was all supposed to be easy. My life is ruined.
It's another thing to do on my lengthening to do list and it's something else to distract me from the script that I have to write for the BBC by the end of last July (now the end of this month, as i don't have time to invent time travel - still nothing concrete down on paper though, but don't tell anyone).
Then this morning I was to appear on the BBC7 show "Serious About Comedy". It's recorded in advance and goes out on Friday at about 8.30am if you want to listen to it. I had written down the correct time in my diary, 11am, but for some reason got it into my head that I needed to be there at midday. So at half eleven I was getting calls asking where I was and I had to jump into a cab and dash across town to make it for the second half of the recording (the studio was only booked for a short time and there were other guests to think of anyway). I got there for most of it, but was really annoyed with myself for making such a stupid and unprofessional error. I hate being late for things at the best of times and this was a stupid oversight on my part and the dash to get there in time to even take part a bit exhausted me. It's horrible to inconvenience others due to your own incompetence - well it is for me, some people I've worked with don't seem to give a fig about it and never seem to suffer any kind of emotional repercussions, but I can't do that. It depresses me all day. The others took is well.
I headed to the British Library to fail to write.
And just outside I was cheered up. There was one of those men who hold big signs pointing you the way to a local business. Usually it's a golf sale, or a car wash or something, but this man's sign was advertising "Piano Sales". That's right, he was advertising a shop that sells both upright and grand pianos.
Now how much casual passing trade do you suppose that a piano shop might get? How many people are going to see that sign and think, "Ooooh, that reminds me - I must buy a piano. I've been meaning to for ages. I'll pop in now and get it and then drag it round with me til home time. I should be fine getting it on the tube."
Yeah, OK, so they'd probably deliver it, but it seemed an unusually exclusive and high brow item to be advertised in this way. I guess they only need to sell one piano a month to make this form of advertising cost effective, and of course there is always the chance that a passing comedian will stop and take a photo of the sign and put it up on his blog, which will add to the possible market, but even so.
Even the man holding the sign looked a bit embarrassed as I stopped to take his photo (well I guess that would make anyone self-conscious), but I felt he was aware that he was the laughing stock of blokes who hold up those big signs. And they're not exactly the most impressive members of society as it is, so to be the laughing stock of them is doubly bad.
Or maybe he is just really brilliant at holding up big signs and so other businesses are hiring him out, aware of how much golf equipment he shifted by just sort of standing there with a pointy sign. Perhaps this is the job he was born for.
I don't know.
But it at least gave me a chuckle on a difficult and annoying day. And in return I promise that if I ever buy a piano, I will buy it from the shop in Cromer St.
Or possibly over the internet from their excellent piano-based website.
Life ain't so bad really.
