I was gigging in Kentish Town tonight and as it was my first stand up show for a little while I needed a new apple and potato for my "pomme de terre" routine. The apple and potato tend to be good for about a fortnight, but then bruising and decay means it is time to replace them and I generally buy the new ones from the same little grocers shop which is pretty close to where I live. However it is not a shop I go in to buy anything else, EVER. Just once or twice a month I go in there and buy a single apple and a single potato, costing between thirty and forty pence. With expenses like this it's no wonder that I am almost broke.
But tonight I began to wonder what the people who run the shop think of me. A man approaching 40 comes in every fortnight and buys just an apple and a potato. Nothing else. What kind of evening is he planning? Why does he never buy anything else? Who is this person?
Thankfully if they have spotted this strange pattern none of them has been rude enough to say "Someone likes an apple and a potato and nothing else".
But if I worked there and I noticed a man coming in and buying such specific items I would be really weirded out by it. How could you make any sense of it? The best thing you could think is that the apple/potato man eats a potato for his dinner and an apple for his pudding every fortnight or so and then starves himself. And i know I have lost some weight recently, but I still think I'm substantial enough to make this an unlikely occurrence.
As I was buying the apple I noticed it was slightly bruised. I was going to ask if I could replace it, but then I thought, "Why bother? I am not going to eat it." So I didn't bother. But if the man noticed then he must have seen me spot the bruise and think about complaining and then not complaining. How would you make sense of that?
I guess if there is any message it is that we shouldn't attempt to judge people, because in this crazy world the true explanation is likely to be something that you can't imagine.
But I actually think there isn't a message to this. It's just some stuff that happened, that in the long run isn't particularly important.
And that's my 26th January 2007.
It's quite a typical day.
Maybe there's a message in that.
Maybe we should stop looking for messages.
