I have had two gigs this past week.
The first on was down in the Wandsworth area. And whenever I get to a gig and the stage area is in the main part of the pub, my heart does sink slightly. Then it sinks further when there is a bar in the middle of the room, with people sitting on the other side of it.
I would describe the gig as an upmarket version of my apathy fest in South Norwood a couple of months ago. It was actually a pretty nice pub, with a friendly audience, but I had to work quite hard in my five minutes spot and ended up hurting my throat as a result. My pain wasn’t for nothing, though, as I did get some laughs and my set probably went as well as it could have done under the circumstances.
I had another gig on Thursday, which was due to start at 8pm, but was put back for 15 minutes or so in the hope that we would have more than one person in the audience. Then suddenly, about 20 people all walked in and it was standing room only.
My set went okay, I was trying out some newer stuff that needs refining, which went almost as well as my tried-and-tested material. I don’t know if this is encouraging or discouraging, because my bankers didn’t exactly fly either.
Nevertheless, it’s good to try stuff out and when it doesn’t go so well it does make me the impetus to improve it.
In the real world, I went out on Friday night for the leaving bash of a couple of friends who are going travelling to New Zealand, where I was exactly five years ago. We went to a ridiculously expensive bar in Covent Garden, which was charging £4.90 for a regular sized bottle of beer. So I decided it would be more cost-effective to buy a bottle of white wine for £17 and drink it all. I hate white wine, but if it means that I can save some money and sort of beat the system, then I’ll take the hit and risk the sick stains on my clothes. But it led to this exchange:
Barmaid: How many glasses would you like?
Me: One.
The barmaid’s laugh may very well have been the best one I got all week. I was going originally going to write this yesterday, but that wine caused my head to hurt quite a lot.