I wondered up Cheddar Gorge this afternoon to do some idle research for the script I am writing (or failing to write) about a fictional Somerset gorge-based tourist attraction. There's a Costa Coffee there now, which shows how much things have moved on, though the loyalty card scheme doesn't work there, presumably because of the absence of telephones, internet and electricity in the town.
Things were pretty quiet up there today, though I suppose the holiday season is yet to get underway. There were a smattering of couples in their seventies and a coach trip of 14 year old French kids - with one boy slightly cooler than his others with his arm nonchalently draped over his girlfriend's shoulders. I envied him his cock-sure arrogance. He made having a girlfriend look like it was the most normal thing in the world. The 14 year old me would have been gurning and sniggering if he'd ever managed to achieve such an unlikely accolade. To be honset the 43 year old me isn't much better. This boy would never have continually mocked his girlfriend about being 5-7 minutes from their destination.
Although I had been to the gorge recently enough, this time I was alone and all kinds of memories were being stirred up. I noted that the wishing well which some of my friends attempted to rob one night, but which I was too scared to join in with, now had metal bars over it, presumably to stop any other mean-spiritied opportunists. I passed a wall where in 1988 a girl I had been chatting up quite successfully had been waiting for me, only to be pushed off by one of my friends as "a joke", giving her a bang on the head and a dampened ardour, ruining my chance of some snogging that night (which was my main concern, of course). I also passed the White Hart pub where we regularly drank from the age of 16 (take that the law). It seemed tiny. There was a barn at the back where some of my friends played a gig with their band. It seemed inconceivable that even someone with a set of drums could have fit in there, let alone all the other band members and a crowd of pogoing teenagers. A quarter of a century had probably passed since I had stepped through the door of the place and I had that all too familiar feeling of confusion and befuddlement, like my stomach had been beamed out of my body. I was filled with thoughts of missed opportunities and the rapid passage of time.
Kids were on their way home from school. Some lads were wearing the Fairlands school uniform, which hasn't changed in the 30 years since I wore my own version of it. Where did those years go to?
It made me sad and happy all at once, with a sense of negative nostalgia, furious and amazed about the way that life passes by, haunted by the ghost of the young me who walked these same streets, not knowing what his life would bring. Maybe I will be back here when I am in my 70s. I can't imagine how overwhelmed I will be by the past by then. It's all washed over me so far. I hope I get to appreciate something that is happening to me at the time, before I die.
I cheered up a bit by the time the gig came round and it was a lively audience, with one of the most audacious and funniest heckles that I've ever encountered, though it will lose something in translation (I will attempt to tell the story on tomorrow's Collings and Herrin podcast).
In other news you can now
buy tickets for my Edinburgh Fringe podcast at the Stand - a new show every day with prizes and gossip and guests - will also be available to download for free.
And Stewart Lee had prematurely let the news slip that we've bought Fist of Fun of the BBC to release on DVD via gofasterstripe. His mendacious and inaccurate comments
are reported here (in truth the people at 2 entertain and Chris Evans-not that one- have done all the hard work). But will keep you up to date with release dates etc, once it's all officially signed off and sorted. Lee will do anything to publicise his own TV show, even ride on my shirt-tails.
