Wow! A day off!
Aside from a meeting about the forthcoming Ha Ha Hammersmith gig (less than 70 tickets left,
Book Now to avoid disappointment) I was free to slouch around, drinking coffee, go to the gym and play poker (an extraordinary game where I came back from the dead three times, twice on technicalities, only to blow it all just as I was on the cusp of winning some money, but I have learned not to bore you with the details). It was cool to relax, though can't take it too easy as there's the small matter of an Edinburgh show to write in the next two months. That's plenty of time.
In Starbucks I sat watching the world go by. A glamorous woman in her 40s in expensive clothes and jewelry was arguing on the phone about some contract involving her freehold. I wanted to borrow her Daily Mirror, but she was too intently in conversation for me to ask and what if
she hadn't finished with it? What kind of face would I pull.
Over the way a mother was sitting with her son. He was around about 11, smartly dressed in his school uniform, with his tie tied neatly and his top button still done up, even though he had clearly finished at school. He was engrossed in a thick book, sitting up straight and when his mother talked to him he replied crisply and precisely, showing off his impressive vocabulary, demonstrating a politeness beyond his years.
It made me smile, but also feel slightly sad. It's a shame when kids aren't allowed to be kids and I guess that he slightly reminded me of myself at the same age. Uncool, swotty, eager to please, wishing that he knew the secret of what made the other kids cool, not yet having the confidence or even the notion of rebelling against the strictures of the rules of schools and parents. I think I maybe wasn't quite as smart of swotty as this kid, but I still identified with him and liked him, the big, little nerd.
He went up to buy a panini, coming back to his mum for the money after having found out how much it was. Later when it had been toasted he was eating it and a big strand of melted cheese sprang back all over his chin. He tried to suck it up like a piece of spaghetti. Suddenly he was no longer a little man, but a child. Let eleven year olds be eleven year olds. If you have an eleven year old. There are plenty of years to wear ties and blazers in the future and if he's anything like me then he will end up doing a job where he never has to wear a tie again.
The posh woman finally left. I got her Daily Mirror without asking. Result.
