After having been woken up by God's furious celestial firework show I couldn't get back to sleep and decided to go for a run before breakfast. The hotel was out in the country and so at 7.15am I turned right out of the gate and ran up the hill to see where I ended up. I had little to no idea where I even was to begin with and no idea of what I might find.
It was a steady incline up to a small town. There was little traffic, but at the top of the hill a lorry with one of those tanks for carrying liquid was reversing out of a farm. I passed it and entered the sleepy town. It felt eerie and odd to be up this early in a place I would otherwise never have seen, but my senses were alive and I enjoyed observing what was around me in the crepescular light. There was a war memorial with a statue of an officer standing proudly in his brimmed hat and his uniform. I noticed his legs were wrapped in cloth. It made me think of the way that as a kid my grandad, who had lost a brother in the war, would try to make me understand what people had given for the freedom I enjoyed. It must have been hard to see the carefree lives that we had, as compared to the tougher childhood he had endured and I am sure at times he felt we were spoiled. But I reasoned then, and to extent I did again today, that surely those men who died in those terrible wars would be pleased that their descendants wouldn't be called on to do the same. Wasn't it our duty to enjoy those freedoms rather than feel guilty about them? I am not being glib about the sacrifices that were made all those years ago, on the contrary I appreciate them and such war memorials make me sad.
Further on I saw a house that was to let and stopped to look in the window at the tiny, empty lounge. I thought about renting it out and how different my life would be if I made such an unusual and unexpected life-style choice. Would I be happy living in this town, wherever it was (I couldn't even have told you what county I was in)? I wondered how much the rent was, knowing full well that I had no intention of following this up, although laughing to myself at the madness of giving up my house and life in London to live alone in... whatever place this was. The census envelope lay unopened on the window sill. There was no one here to fill it in.
Most of the houses were quiet and the people still in bed, though a couple of doors down the TV was on and cartoons were playing. If I had kids I would be up at this time every day no doubt. It was a sharp contrast with the grey stillness of the empty house. Next I passed a bakery. The lights were on, but there was no movement inside. I thought of all the people, like the tanker driver, whose jobs require them to get up in the early hours of the morning in order to ply their trade. I wouldn't like to be up at this time every day and would expect to be paid handsomely for making such a sacrifice, but I acknowledged that the person who had turned on the lights at the bakery and the man driving a tanker of (maybe) milk across the countryside would not be millionaires.
A row of houses on the other side of the road had their windows bricked up with big concrete blocks and a sign saying they were up for auction. I wondered what had happened to them and why they were left vacant and so securely closed. Would anyone want to buy them? What was the housing market like in this town? Were there opportunities here? I guessed not, but it was only a guess.
I got through the town and ran down the hill at the other end. But that had taken me 15 minutes so I turned around again. I saw the sign with the name of the town on it. It was called
"Coundon" and I thought of writing to Richard Whiteley to tell him that if he just added a t and a w he would have the name of his TV show. But Richard Whiteley probably wouldn't be interested in such stuff any more. It made me think of
how I had heard of the death of Whiteley, being told by a stranger in the street, which reminded me in turn of the Paul Simon song where he is told by a stranger that John Lennon has died and the two of them go to a bar and they stayed to close the place. I regretted not doing the same with the man who had told me about Whiteley. But then laughed at the idea of someone writing a song about that, but also was impressed that Whiteley was a big enough public figure for strangers to tell each other of his demise is shocked disbelief.
On the way back up the hill I saw that the people working at the bakers were now in the shop. They were three laughing women, with hair nets on, sharing a joke despite the early hour of their job. They looked content with their lot. The kids in the occupied house were watching Scooby Doo and when I passed the pub on the corner I saw that they had a hand drawn photocopied poster for an upcoming singer who was playing at the pub, who was described (presumably by himself, as I can't imagine anyone else made this poster) as fantastic. Thay one poster with its felt tip drawn stars on it, made the whole of showbusiness seem as ephemeral and ridiculous as it is. My posters might be a bit more flash, but ultimately me and that man are just performing one night stands, little lightening flashes in people's lives, which fade away and disappear. That singer, just like this insomniac comedian and like the laughing ladies in the bakers was just doing his job.
I passed the war memorial and thought about stopping to look if anyone called Herring had died in the town (it would be possible that some relations might be up here, my family were originally from this area), but it felt a little ghoulish. I thought of the ordinary lives lost to keep the ordinary lives of others going. In a way it was all pointless, but in another way it was more important than anything.
Nothing could be more unexceptional and ordinary than Coundon, but somehow this chance encounter with this village at sleep made it seem a little bit mystical and magical. I ran down the hill, somehow missing the road down to the hotel, meaning I took a detour that made my run last over 40 minutes.
Breakfast had now started, so I had a shower and dined uncharacteristically early, desperately trying to make a mental note of all the unexceptional things I had just seen.
For some reason we were staying in Middlesbrough tonight (rather than Saltburn where I was gigging). This really is the land of my fathers,
the town where my grandparents lived and my parents met. I was too tired to go out and explore and stayed in bed all afternoon, though not getting much sleep.
Once at Saltburn I headed down the hill to the beach to buy some fish and chips and to search for some heart shaped stones for possible inclusion in my photoshoot on Monday (I am going to be shown with my chest opened and my heart being removed, and one of the possibilities is that there will be a stone instead of a heart). It seemed dumb that we weren't staying in one of the hotels in town and I would have liked to go for a walk along the cliffs, but there wasn't time. The fish and chips were very impressive, even if I felt my trousers tighten almost immediately.
I felt tired on stage which is unusual and a little light-headed. It's twelve nights in a row now without a break and whilst the performance was acceptable it was a little workaday. In some ways this might make for a better show. I cut right back on the improvised bits, which made it much tighter. The audience seemed happy afterwards. For the sake of those young men on the Coundon war memorial and the millions like them, as well as for the millions who like my grandad didn't die in the war, but had limited opportunities for their lives, it would be churlish not to do the best I can with the ridiculous freedom I have somehow ended up with.
But still I am looking forward to getting home. Just one day in Middlesbro and a gig in Darlington and a long drive to go.
