Maybe it was the sunshine, maybe I had eaten too much sugar, maybe someone had slipped some LSD into my diet coke, but as I sat in the car park of Sainsburys in Vauxhall tonight before my gig at the Lost Theatre, I was overwhelmed by the beauty and wonder of the world. I don't know why my brain had chosen this moment to be flooded with endorphins as the surroundings were mundane, even ugly: a supermarket, a car park, a tube line running over the raised area in front of me. But still I felt glad to be on the planet earth and fortunate to have surmounted the impossible odds that would allow me to witness this.
The sun was setting behind the tube trains, families were strolling past to their cars. I have no idea why I should have an epiphany at this moment and feared it might be the first step in my inevitable decline into mental illness. Like Tweedledum in Colditz I have faked madness for too long and eventually it will surely overcome me.
But I seemed to hold on to my sanity and just feel content and warm. Maybe the world is more beautiful when we see it through its own mundanity. Maybe I was just a bit tired and hungry. Maybe the sudden exposure to sunlight had set something off in me. Maybe it was just because I'd jut had a relaxing bath. I still think the LSD option is the most likely.
I am reminded of the Simon Munnery joke about him observing how beautiful the world is and asking why anyone would take drugs, before him remembering that he is on drugs.
But whilst life is bad, life is good. How cool that we get to stay on this planet for a few years. How funny that Vauxhall Sainsburys carpark can sometimes floor you and remind you of what it means to be alive.
Ah, what sweet madness.
As much as I am pleased to be getting out of town just as the Olympics gets under way I do love my stupid town. A few weeks ago I found myself in the company of one of those right wing gentlemen who was bemoaning the multi-culturism of our capital and claiming that Enoch Powell had been misquoted and was right. I wasn't really in a position to tell him to go fuck himself, even though everything he said seemed to be for effect. He said that if you got on the District Line in Chiswick that you would no longer hear anyone having a conversation in English. It was such spectacular bollocks that I am glad that politeness forced me not to rise to the bait. But today as I walked around Shepherd's Bush - a place that is genuinely multi-cultural in a way that Chiswick certainly fucking isn't (in fact in that posho area you can be pretty sure that anyone not speaking English on the tube is only in the area because they are cleaning the toilets for someone who does) - I was really happy to see the diversity of race and religion. It's fitting the Olympics is coming here because the world is already here and we're living side by side and mainly getting on. And we were all happy to see the sun and have an ice cream. Maybe I needed to spend some time away before I remembered what was great about it.
