Inside the living dream

I worked from home again (under orders from my Line Manager) on Monday, so went out for a brisk walk around the cemetery afterwards, to ensure I had actually left the house, before coming back to have some food and join D&D online. I went back into the office on Tuesday, having piled up my appointments, then headed on to visit L in Harlesden afterwards, as she hadn't been well. We had some simple take-out and played a couple of games (Dark Tomb and Legion) that her reorganisation of her home had unearthed. I was back working from home on Wednesday but was at least heading out to the Shacklewell Arms in the evening for a gig: I got there during Mercury Fix, a young 5-piece who were pretty chill, playing songs with lots of niddly instrumental sections then occasional indecipherable vocals, which seemed to go through several seemingly unrelated stages before finishing. The other support act were Cracked Lime, a male/female duo who both sang and played guitars over a laptop track and modular synthesizer twiddling- they were inexpressive and achingly cool; the music was absorbing but something I felt myself admiring more than enjoying- the crescendoing shouts of "Is anyone having a good time?" in their last song perhaps rather too pertinent. I was there for City Dog, whose unabashed punk came as quite a contrast energy-wise; there was a decent sized crowd, but it was much more static than when I'd seen them recently at The Sebright Arms although the singer (Deri) recognised me from there and said hi, which was nice.

On Thursday I headed on from the office after work down to Richmond where I met up with Ketch: her parents had bought tickets for us to come to the theatre with them but unfortunately had had to pull out, so we were just going by ourselves. Even more kindly, they had paid for us to have dinner beforehand, which we did at a nice Italian more of less next door to The Orange Tree Theatre, where we were going. I'm not sure if I'd ever actually been before, despite having lived down there once upon a time, and it was a wonderfully intimate space: we were seeing a production of Strindberg's A Dance of Death, an intense and charged three-hander the the production (directed by Richard Eyre) was compelling, with excellent performances, especially from Will Keen.

I was on leave Friday and heading up to Manchester to visit Lovely Joe for the weekend: I caught a coach mid-morning, which was going great guns until we got to somewhere near Stafford where some kind of engine trouble (lack of coolant?) brought us to a halt by the side of a busy road. We sat there for about an hour until another coach with capacity to take the remaining passengers appeared, just about the same time as the recovery vehicle showed up. Having missed the infrequent train out to Patricroft by the time I got into Manchester, I ventured onto the tram, which turned out to be a pretty easy way to get out to The Trafford Centre. J came out to meet me but there was quite a lot of faff (confusing The Trafford Centre with The Trafford Palazzo, both of which had blue domes, then discovering car parks which looked like you could cross from one to another had unhelpful fences around them, necessitating a lot of doubling back) before we managed to meet up. We walked back along the canal to his, where his housemate C had cooked a roast in their Esse. We hung out chatting for the evening and I ended up crashing about midnight.

On Saturday we got on with the job in hand, which was to alternate between their living room and shed watching endless episodes of old TV shows: we finished Freaks and Geeks, which had kept us busy the last couple of times I'd visited, then moved onto Knott's Landing, which I was less fussed about, pausing only for J to cook us a fry up in the morning and for a take-out curry in the evening. This time it was J that crashed out about midnight, I hung about for another hour before putting myself to bed. I was heading off Sunday morning, wonderfully relaxed, and walked to the end of a different tramline (at Eccles), which I caught into town for a smoother coach journey back to London, getting home late afternoon. We had some food N had cooked and did a crossword before I had Family Zoomtime.

I was back with the D&D group online after work on Monday, then Tuesday I came home for food and headed out again to Camden, where I met up with Ketch for a gig at The Elephant's Head. The gigs are all free there, you can register for a 'ticket' but it seems to carry on functioning as a normal pub and this time it was unpleasantly full but we managed to wedge ourselves in. We heard the end of Ina End (from France, apparently) a one-woman-with-electric-guitar artist, who I would like to have been able to pay more attention to from what I could hear from the back of the crowd. We managed to shuffle forwards a bit for young psych-rockers Bitter Pearl, but we were there for headliners Another Day: their poet guy was more integrated than last time, delivering sections of vocals on some songs and playing tambourine on the rest, rather than just bookending the performance. They somehow made space for their backflips as well and impressed again. I was back out and meeting up with Ketch after work on Wednesday too, also with A, who had been having dinner with her grandson T locally before coming to the Old Blue Last. The singer from the previous night's headliners, Another Day, was in the crowd although Ketch wasn't feeling great and bailed before we got through all four acts. First on was Anthony Ferreira Cullen a guy sitting down playing Brazilian-tinged tunes that were alternately sunny and soulful; I think those in Portuguese were covers and in English originals and at its best he was spellbinding. Next up came Leo Walrus, playing with a band, who had strong 60s vibes and I'm pretty sure I've seen before. Beth Jones was accompanied by a bass and a cello (at one point a dulcimer came out) and I found her music haunting and beautiful. We'd come for Adult Cat, who played some new songs that seemed a bit less country than recent tunes, although they then smashed out a full-on bluegrassy cover of Let the Cocaine Be.

My gig-heavy week continued on Thursday when I headed straight from work down to Peckham and met up with A's friend Mark at the Peckham Arches, a cool little outdoorsy space where we had a drink and tacos before heading on to a venue called Vespers, which was only just opening shortly after we got there. It looked more like a club venue, with a raised area around the dancefloor in front of the stage. The first band on were Border Widow, two women, one singing with a guitar and one singing with a stand-up drum and cymbal, performing to a backing track, who had a pagan, mesmeric energy to them. I was there for House Arrest, playing their last gig before two of their members moved on, and many of the Windmill Crowd had turned our for it. There was great crowd energy, although it seemed to drag on and become a bit self-indulgent, no doubt the departees keen to drag out their final moments. This meant that the headliners, Spanish Horses, who Mark had been most interested in, came on pretty late: they were a five-piece, originally from Paris, who definitely had more musicality woven in to their urgent guitars, but the vocals [provided by Jarvis Cocker's son] got rather lost. Conscious of last trains, Mark had to leave before the end and I headed out with him. On Friday I came home and cooked then once more headed out and met up with Ketch, back on form, this tim at the Water Rats. We were there for The Great Malarkey, playing without a support, but with a break in the middle of the set, accommodations to age and Alex having to get the train back to Ramsgate. She constantly gave shout outs to all her mates in the audience and the whole performance was exactly the kind of glorious chaos we have come to expect from them.

At the weekend I was due to meet up with K, getting away for her imminent birthday: we were meeting in Farnham, although she got held up so I had the chance to have a quick poke around the town, which seemed nice, then we were going back to The Princess Royal, close by, where we'd been a couple of times before. The Fullers pub was busy for the rugby but we went straight up to our little suite and holed up there for the duration (I only ventured down to get some wine and crisps K had delivered via Uber Eats): we didn't have a Murder Mystery this time, but an online escape room kept us busy, alongside our usual distractions of cards, word wheels and dancing to the songs of our youth, before crashing out at about 4am. I made it down for the complementary breakfast and K dropped me back to the station after check-out. Back in London I went to Sainsbury's then had a nap in the afternoon, waking up in time for an earlier-than-usual Family Zoomtime at 5pm, then heading in to the Shelter (at the Church of Scotland) as it was my week and this was the only evening I had free.