My mother is an optimist – her permanent mantra to me is “if you think that’s the way it will work out, then that’s the way it’ll work out”. I’ve no idea what this means. But I’m pretty sure that if I think a trip to the Tesco’s will end with me being lofted on to the shoulders of a gaggle of busty cheerleaders, I am going to end up disappointed. 9 times out of 10.
My Dad on the other hand always describes himself as a ‘realist’, which is basically a pessimist who’s too stupid to work out how bleak things are. I’m quite often a pessimist. It’s not that I am a glass-half full or a glass-half empty person – it’s just I believe someone has stolen my glass.
But this is all about to change, the reason I am a pessimist is because quite often things do go unexpectedly and farcically wrong for me on more occasions than are plausible. After some careful thought I’ve decided that my decision-making is the common denominator. If I can remove that, everything will be peachy.
So, from now on I am crowd-sourcing my life. You get to choose the level of tedium I expose myself to from this point in. It’s a big step, but I’m not daunted. I was having a pitiful amount of success with my free will anyway. So, from now on I am handing over the co-ordination of 16 hours of my day to anyone who wants it. I am kind of contracted into something between 9.30 and 6, but outside of those hours my world is your oyster.
My fashion sense rotates through cycles that bare no resemblance to the needs of the season. I saw a man walking down leather lane who had a cardigan on that pretty much rocked my world. I really want his cardigan. I think I actually probably want his girlfriend, who was walking alongside him at the time, but let’s start with his cardigan and go from there.
It’s a lot more straight-forward to have a gut-curdling envy for an inanimate object, in my experience. I bought that transformer (when I was 9) within a fortnight. Susan Tindell still escapes me and I’ve being saving up for her for years.
Maybe the purchase of his cardigan (from a shop or from him, whichever it has to be) will place me in her league. Her league being defined by the type of pullover she dates. At the moment, she is out of my league - and I play in a very respectable division, certainly higher than the idiot she was walking with.
I just need to get my hands on that bloody cardigan, find out where she works (be this by stalking, stake-out or any other method that would get a less discrete obsessive locked-up) and pass through her lobby a few times. I’m assuming she has a lobby (or hope she has, I don’t want to date someone who spends their day doing something manual). Then she’ll spot me, see the cardie, see that we are registered for the same sporting contest - and the rest will be history.
Every day for the last eleven years, my mate Alex has been single. And I don’t mean loner-maverick-type-single. I mean full on-blind panic-last dodo on the island-single.
You can see his sense or urgency when we are in a night-club and towards the end of the night the quieter songs come on. DJ Tiesto, that sort of thing. He bounces round the dance-floor like a wasp in a jam-jar. Ultimately getting nowhere.
He has two great tactics for dating. Firstly, he has business cards printed with his name and mobile number on one side. On the other, the words “Take me to bed, or lose me forever.” Which on the one hand, is a fairly tragic gimmick. But, on the other hand is an amazing way to cut out the bureaucracy of flirting. Cut to the chase. “Here’s my card, here’s my face, what more is there left to say.”
The other tactic, is that he plays percentages. And what that means is he will talk to anyone. His only criteria for a soul-mate is proximity. When he was younger he used to be a romantic, looking for his perfect match no matter what corner of the universe they existed. These days it’s fate if they are less than seven places away from him in the taxi-rank.
Look out for him.
We got a lot of things wrong last night. Principally amongst them was assuming Cabaret Voltaire would be an arty and intellectual place to be at midnight. It wasnt. It was full of plebs dancing like someone had borrowed their spine.
I had genuine doubts on the way in. Maybe it was the look of the bouncers, or the poster on the far side of the entrance titled “DJ Mo’Focker” (or similar). My friends and I are not a DJ Mo’Focker crowd. The bounder saw this, well done him. If I was any more of an actor I would’ve purposefully put on a stagger or a slur - just to try and throw our entries inro doubt.
We did get in. Horrid luck. A very aggressive ‘crew’ inside. The men looked particularly menacing. I’m not. In my case, the ‘First rule of Fight Club’ is ‘Don’t go’. The men all looked like they’d all walked off a scaffold and arrived on the dance-floor, without breaking stride.
The women were only slightly less intimidating. A hen night turned up, and hung around the bar. I was petrified. Which was unfortunate, because hen nights are like sharks - they can smell fear.
It was either crawl up in the corner in a collective foetal position, or get the hell out of there. We got the hell out of there.
Edinburgh has been dreary today. Result, flat-based boredom. I ran so low on things to do I Googled myself.
Nothing.
My Facebook profile, this blog, then a stream of awkward-looking men pretending to be me.
I’m seriously not getting the search results credit my life to date deserves. I once scored the winner in the quarter-final of the Reg Vardy Used Cars and Spare-parts Trophy. Fuck all. Not even a match report.
There appears to be even less clamour to report on the night of two times with Mel Richards back in my uni days. I’m pretty sure browsers of the web deserve to hear that story. Just as much as my sexual prowess that evening deserves some online recognition.
Google is ignoring me. I’m used to being over-looked by people, that’s subjective. But Google has an algorithm, it’s ‘supposed’ to be scientific.
Google, let’s strike a deal. You throw me a bone where publicity is concerned. And, in return, you’ll forever be my engine of choice when searching for smut. I’ll obediently punch in the URLs into your search-bar, when both of us know full well that I’ve got the whole lot book-marked.
When I turned 26 I wrote a list of things I wanted to achieve before I turned 30. Complete Call of Duty (check), find myself (which I did and it was a massive disappointment) and stop setting myself targets. I can remember the exact moment I found myself. I was preparing a meal that consisted of microwave winter vegetables, corned beef and cous-cous. I thought “this is who I am”. “it’s pointless trying any harder, this is the hand I’ve been dealt”. I live in a universe of people who have nailed their 5-a-day by the time I am sitting down to watch Deal or no deal. The first time I heard about the 5-a-day rule I genuinely thought it was a joke. Another disappointment is that there’s far less chance of being called ‘precocious’. When I was nine I was Sensible Soccer’s Daddy Big Bollocks, beating players twice my age. Now I’d only be considered precocious if I somehow managed to run a stupidly profitable allotment. I might just try and do that. I could be the only man of my age who has the ability to recall which months of the year sprouts are in season. Then plan accordingly. Go me.
I have spent the entire day irritating my Edinburgh flatmates by referring to myself in the third person. As ‘She’. She’s had a lovely day. She’s had spaghetti carbonara. And she is now spending some time on her own because the others don’t want to speak to her anymore.
I think my peculiar mood has been brought on by my first improv experience last night. Which coincided with my first failed improv experience. The coincidence was uncanny.
Among other things I’ve learned this week, I’ve learned that improv is hard. Despite constantly doing improv. After all, nine out of ten conversations I have are almost completely unscripted or pre-rehearsed.
I’ve also learned that drunk improv is really bloody hard. I was hammered, leaning against the back of the stage. The angle between my forehead and the floor becoming ever more acute.
I am doing it again tomorrow. I will get good at improv. Starting tomorrow though. She drafted and edited this post seven times.
Edinburgh properly rained yesterday. It wasn’t messing around. No-one else seemed to be bothered. I was devastated. I think it singled me out because I was carrying a newspaper.
I was carrying my notes as well. New stuff. Gold. All turned to mush. So I did old stuff, from my head, where it’s all nice and dry but lacking in ambition.
I stood in front of the audience and slowly drip-dried my way through my stuff. On the plus-side, it turns out it’s much easier to be self-deprecating when you look like you are melting.
Afterwards I holed up in a bar with my soggy paperback and a stupidly fruity cider. I got speaking to a guy who has just come back to Edinburgh after working abroad, in which he claimed to have lost his accent. He definitely has not lost his accent. I couldn’t understand a word he was saying.
I did mention that he still did have a slight ‘twang’, he denied it in the most stern and incomprehensible terms.
The free fringe in Edinburgh, I’ve noticed, has lots of bizarre venues. Street corners, restaurants, and in last night’s case (my free fringe debut) a burlesque bar.
It wasn’t ‘art-house’ burlesque either. This was full-on. Neon lights, poll-dancing, and hairy-palmed bar-men. The girl prepping to get up first was very ‘homely’ looking. Very much the girl next door. If you happen to live next door to Castle Greyskull.
There was an audience of two teenagers and a half a dozen aggressive looking Edinburgh gentlemen. None of whom were there for stand-up. Not my sort anyway.
A German couple walked in, just to stay long enough to turn a full circle, and fuck off out of there. I truly envied them.
Now, I’m my own worst critic. Which is pretty impressive, because I have some excellent competition. But I chose to do a story about an embarrassing erection. I’d surprisingly forgot that this was a place where men came to get aroused.
I certainly hope I didn’t arouse anyone. If I did, it wasn’t my intention. And I apologise.
Gig in front of parents, I can’t be bothered with the back-story.
Because I analyse myself too much, I can sit in a conversation for over an hour with little or no verbal input. Best to stay silent and look or fool, than say something foolish and lose four friends.
I actually think that 90% of mutes have perfectly functioning vocal chords, but are just plagued by self-doubt.
It’s not just what you say. It’s what you do. I’d seem far more exciting if I spent my time at gigs and evening parties. But, in the meantime, I’m just embellishing my status updates.
Last Saturday, I checked into Fortnum and Mason’s then three exhibitions at the National Portrait Gallery. While lying on my couch, cleaning out my nose, and watching re-runs of Columbo.
Tonight, I’m probably not going to gate-crash a wedding with a party-keg and one of half of the Cheeky Girls. But that won’t stop sixteen people liking it on Facebook.
To be honest, I’m off to watch Ed and Sunil head each other off on stage after threatening to burn the Voodoo Rooms down.
Ed, do you think Scottish people take their lunch to work?
I’m on the train to Edinburgh, in first class, no less. Actually, it turns out it’s a good deal less. The meals ran out half-way down the carriage, as did the biscuits.
The wi-fi is free, but only quick enough to send one binary digit to or from the interwebs every hour. A world of information and celebrity gossip is just beyond my fingertips. If I ever do connect I am going to tweet the fuck out of GNER. They will rue the day they sold me a first-class ticket then forgot to re-stock the salmon.
In lighter news, I don’t think anyone is talking to me. Sunil is playing Sim City 3000 on his laptop. Kieran is listening to some hip-hop, which is a song by Kool and the Gang. Ed is trying to think of Tom and Jerry plots while listening to white noise. And Mina is ignoring the whole lot of us.
I think in the main people are ignoring me though. Maybe I am over-analysing. I say maybe, I definitely over-analyse. Believe me, I’ve thought about it.
I’m sitting with a white wine, safely returned from a trip to Sainsbury’s to buy supplies for Edinburgh.
In three orange plastic bags I am carrying my life for the next fortnight. A box of wine, two small bottles of wine, alka seltzer, Rennie, Tunes, razor blades, Schleor, one moleskin pad, three pens, Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity, toilet roll, cotton buds, toothpaste, shaving foam and two packets of fig rolls.
I feel domesticated. That was an all round, very successful shop. I must look like a very happening young man. Because, in the toilet, just now, a man (while having a piss) offered me ‘a pinch’.
I’d no idea what ‘a pinch’ meant. I certainly didn’t want to find out in the gents toilet. I didn’t get a chance to explain my hesitance, because he pulled out a tiny packet of speed, then in a broad American accent said “you look like you want some”. Of course, I was very flattered, but declined. After all, I have fig rolls.
Edinburgh tomorrow.
So, I performed on stage in front of my parents last night. Of the 70-odd spots I’ve done so far, this was the first when the front row had a young fella and his parents. The MC spotted this, and decided to ask “Anyone else in with their parents tonight?”.
My mother found her voice, for the first time since she forced her way on stage to sing “Dalila” at my Grandad’s retirement bash, starting a cataclysmic chain of events that lead to Ashington Comrades Social Club closing down, 7 years later.
She screamed, “Yes” – that was ok – “…my son!” – that wasn’t.
I was on last before the break, and it went well. Particularly the round of applause I manufactured for my parents. A nice moment.
I must’ve done well. I got offered a gig at another night. At a gay bar in King’s Cross. (I refuse to discredit that sentence by even giving it a punchline.)
Afterwards, my parents and I went to some dive of a bar in Liverpool Street and my mother spent the next hour trying to get me to chat up the bar-maid. The woman’s a menace.
