All started well yesterday as I set off to York to meet Mick, June, Laura and Danny. On the train, I decided to visit the loo before we arrived, and found myself locked into one of those electronic tubes of horror. Normally, the fear is that the door will decide to open midway through the process, but on this occasion the door simply wouldn't open when I tried to unlock it after I'd finished. Conscious that we were quite close to York and not wanting to end up in Newcastle (the final destination of the train), I pressed the driver alarm button. I thought long and hard before doing so, but there wasn't any other option. The driver was actually really nice, but the conductor who let me out wasn't at all. More training (sic) needed, perhaps.
Meanwhile, and during all this, the support act for Thursday's gig in Glasgow had to pull out for health reasons. Thankfully, Kenji suggested that we show the film instead, and after getting permission from Gina and checking with the venue that it would be feasible, that is what will be happening.
We had such a nice lunch in Betty's in York, sitting on podgy corner seats and gorging on food that you really can't get anywhere else. Our waiter was a budding photographer, who told us about walking around with different friends getting them to notice things that interested them for him to photograph. What an interesting idea. It was great to catch up with them all, and hear about Laura's music career, which is really flourishing. Next time!
I'd been planning to attend Nick Page's memorial meet-up in the evening, but instead had to go back and re-jig the information about Thursday's gig. It's almost all done now, with Kenji finalising the new poster later this evening.
Today, I was on the way to the Curzon cinema in Camden, which was proving to be extremely elusive. I took my phone out to see if I could find it on the map. I heard whirring behind me and the phone was snatched out of my hand in an instant by a robber on an electric bike.
F*ck. My heart nearly beat itself out of my body.
I didn't know what to do so I carried on walking, feeling glad that I have zero banking apps or indeed any others on the phone- just hours of crap song ideas and pages of crap notes that mean nothing to anyone except me.
I collected my thoughts. 'I will need to get a new phone tomorrow', I thought; 'I can manage without one today'.
I walked around the corner and a young woman ran across the road. 'Have you just had your phone stolen?' she asked. 'Yes', I said, expecting her to maybe say that she'd had hers stolen too, or to tell me which direction the youth on the bike had shot off in.
'It's on the pavement', she said. And it was!
He must have dropped it by accident. What a bloody relief and what a stroke of luck. I told a few people to put their phones away after that. It just happens really quickly, and it's not worth using them in the street. Ask for directions, and don't text in the street (I broke my elbow a few years go when I was texting and I slipped on drizzly tarmac), and generally do as I say, not as I do.
You know.
Really, I would like a little less drama in my life. I've bought an HDMI for Thursday which I'll test for screening the film, purchased leads to run music off my computer, fixed up my acoustic guitar for the songs I'll play live, and started to learn the words. I hope the audience forgives me if I need to use printed lyrics for at least one song. In my parallel universe of a broken finger, disappearing support act, escape from a train toilet and boomerang phone crime, I could use a little tranquillity.
I really could.
