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To Belfast today, so all the fun of travelling by plane and idly wondering if all the strangers around me will have the same death date as me. It’s the only time this group of people will be all in one place, so if Death wanted to take us all out in one fell swoop, this was the perfect opportunity. To find out if our gravestones all bore the same end date (and our graves just contained a few charred remains that DNA experts had claimed belonged to us - but seriously, who could be bothered to do all that work for such a pointless reason - it’s just a bag of whatever was found at the crash site) then keep reading to the end. No spoilers.
I get free lounge access with my bank account, but it’s a kind of halfway house lounge - nowhere near as nice as those lucky enough to travel business class are getting, conferring status on the people in there, who are actually pretty much having a worse time than the people out in the proper airport, who will have more space and access to Pret a Manger. It’s called Aspire, because the people inside it are aspiring to be in the British Airways First Class Lounge, but they never will be. It feels like you’re getting something better than the non-lounge scum, but I think the non-lounge scum might be in a better place. And that maybe the Aspirers are the scum after all.
But there are some free cakes and pasta and a bar where some of the drinks are free. It always seems a shame not to take advantage of that - my mindset still stuck back in the 1990s when I was poor and had to take every opportunity I could to eat or get drunk or steal toiletries. With regret I decided 11am was too early for a beer and that I had to be professional and try and get some work done. I had two coffees instead, but the machines in the purgatorial lounge were a bit faulty - one cappuccino tasted weird and the other had no coffee in it. I would much rather have paid two pounds fifty for a proper coffee. Who would imagine I was the kind of person who could complain about an airport lounge? But I am. So deal with it.
I think I am better than you. But I am much, much worse.
Some people with the air of reality TV stars were swanning around and showing off, one asking the other if he would “perform” on TV (I am presuming sexually from the tone of voice) saying he himself couldn’t do it, but he thought it would be good for his friend’s profile. I had no idea who any of the people were, but they were all shouting at each other like so many pre-fall CJ from Eggheads. But given they were in the same lounge as me, they can’t have been doing all that well.
Once in Belfast I was too tired for sightseeing and tried to rest up a bit before the gig. I wheeled my suit case up to the venue at 5.30, travelling solo for these next two gigs. I missed the reliable Bex who does a great job of prepping all the gigs and making sure everything runs smoothly. I did a sound check and things sounded OK, but when I got on stage it felt to me like the mic was cutting in and out and that I was having to shout to be heard. Was it all too toppy? I didn’t know. Bex would have done though. I questioned it, but everyone else thought it was fine and I wondered if my ears were still a bit fucked from the flight, so I soldiered on. It was only when I moved to the side of the stage in the second half that I realised there were fold back speakers in the wings. That’s what had confused me. I don’t know why anyone speaking would want these. You know what you’re saying and don’t need to hear yourself in the same way as a musician. The bizarre mini-echo in my head had been putting me off for the whole show.
I think I played this venue with Christ on a Bike (though I may be mistaken). The Belfast gig of one of the COAB tours had been a weird and silent affair, only perking up right at the end when I suggested that I might have solved the religious divisions in the city. Today, with a full audience and a lot more confidence, I did a lot more piss-taking, saying how I’d brought my own potato to Ireland because the supply here could be a bit unreliable and questioning whether the wine being literally or metaphorically Jesus’ blood maybe not being that important as to create all the division between people who essentially believed the same thing. It went down well. It’s great being long enough in the tooth (and to have earned a city’s respect) to be able to lay into such huge local issues in such an offensive way. It was a scintillating gig from my point of view (apart from the echoes in my head) and lovely to meet the audience afterwards.
After the show came the afterparty (me packing up my stuff) and after the afterparty I headed back to the hotel for the afterparty party (having a wank). Usually there is fun to be had at the comedy festival, but I wasn’t really in the mood and I wouldn’t have known where to go to have fun even if I’d felt like it. I went back to my room and listened to the chaos going on in the streets below. The Belfast people enjoy their Saturday nights. Somehow I managed to get to sleep, though was woken by some raucous singing at around 2am. I think I made the right choice to stay in bed, though might have contrived another fight story had I ventured out into the night.
The plane didn't crash. Me and those people will die on different days. Unless the world is destroyed before any of us individually die.
