DAVE

 

“This is DAVE,” says S____. “He eats too many crisps.” “I only eat two packets a day,” says DAVE. “And he likes to play chess.” “Oh right,” says DAVE, “so I’m the crisp-eating chess guy.” Everyone laughs.

“Is that it?” says DAVE later. “Am I just the crisp-eating chess guy? Is that what they’re going to see me as now? An old guy who eats crisps and plays chess. And did she say ‘too many’?” “Yeah,” I say. “I think she did.” “I mean, what she’s playing at?” “It was a bit...” “Am I just a joke to her?”

“It’s funny the way,” I say, looking at S____, “you’re kind of giving a little summary of everyone.” S____ laughs politely and then I swear she flashes me a look that says “I hate you and everything you represent to me which is slow-talking, open-minded, soft-headed liberalism.” “And this is A___,” she says. “He’s written a book, though I can’t quite remember the title...” “That’s OK,” I say. “I prefer to remain anonymous these days.”

You see DAVE and I aren’t like normal people. We aren’t really even people. We’re characters. Each day we just make ourselves up. 

“I can’t believe K___ said that I only make friends with men,” says DAVE. “Yeah, I know, but you did say that men and women can’t be friends,” I say. “Well, have you seen When Harry Met Sally?” “I think so. But I can’t really remember it, I have to say.” “I love that film.” Yeah, I don’t know. It didn’t really make much of an impression on me.” “But, is that OK, to say that? I just don’t know if it’s OK to say that?” “Does it really matter?” “They just think I’m a joke.” “Who cares?” I say. “I do,” says DAVE. “I just want everyone to like me.”

“Are you coming tomorrow?” I say. “I don’t know,” says DAVE. “Why not?” I say. “I just don’t want people to think I’m only doing it because you’re doing it. I just don’t want to be that guy,” says DAVE. “Would you rather be the guy who doesn’t do it because he doesn’t want people to think he’s that guy?” I say. “Yes,” says DAVE. “I would.”

I don’t give up. I’m not giving up on DAVE. He’s a project. I leave a note on his car. It says, “See you tomorrow!” I reckon it’s 50/50. But if you press me, I’ll probably say I don’t think he’s coming.

A note about our cars. Both DAVE and I drive cars that didn’t initially belong to us, and in which the driver’s window is broken so when we have to present our ID card to enter the car park we have to open our doors. We both use our boots for storage. We have much in common. We are quite a sight.

It took a few months of role modelling and gentle persuasion and piss taking, but I finally prevailed on DAVE to stop wearing a tie to work. He doesn’t wear a tie any more. He used to. For all the twenty-seven years of his working life, DAVE wore a tie. But not any more. Not any more. 

ADULT STUFF

I read recently that in the nineteenth century, when the use of hashish paste had become common in western European cities, and its possible therapeutic uses were being explored, that the only recommendation that could be made for its use was that doctors should take it so that they know what it feels like to be insane. I could relate. I started smoking cannabis regularly, in one form or another, at the age of thirteen, but recently gave up when I came to understand the role its use had played in what I call My Mental Breakdown. I started smoking CBD instead, like an alcoholic drinking non-alcoholic beer, and felt much better for it.
  But then tonight I got spiked. I was drugged. I’d just smoked one of my CBD “spliffs” when I began to feel a bit strange. At first I thought I was having some sort of mental break. I thought about the project I am currently working on – promoting the tape I have made by releasing it a track at a time online – and I felt, suddenly, for pretty much the first time, self-doubt and uncomfortable levels of self-consciousness about it. Anxiety, I suppose. I thought I was having a mental break. Then I remembered that I’d forgotten to take my happy pills. 

  I spiral. 

  I think about going to work in the morning. I feel panicky. How can I stand there – me! – in front of a room of mostly sullen teenagers and teach them something, and make sure they behave sensibly at the same time. How are such feats ever achieved, I think, let alone by me. Oh shit, I think. I’m going to have to call in sick, I think. People are going to worry about me, I think. Maybe I really am quite a sick person, I think. The kids were having a bath. Focus on the kids, I think. They are none the wiser, I think. They haven’t got a clue, I think. God, they’re so beautiful, I think. I love them so much, I think. I study their faces. They are a part of me but so much more their own. They are speaking some complete and utter nonsense. I’m high, I think. J___ asks me for a cup and a person. She says she needs them. The cup is no trouble, but the person proves more difficult. Wife gives me a figure. The absurdity of it makes me laugh. Like, she "needs" a person and a cup, I say. I offer the figure to J___. Thanks, she says, but no. Why not, I say, what’s wrong with it. I don’t want to get it wet, she says. Why not, I say. It might get mouldy, she says. I go to get a different person. Try this one, wife says, handing me a figure. I offer it to J___. Thanks, she says, but no. Why not, I say, what’s wrong with this one. Nothing, she says, put it somewhere safe. It’s important, she says. Important, I say. Yes, she says. Right, I say. You’re not going back a third time, are you, says wife. Yes, I say, I’ve got to get it right. There you are, I say, offering J___ a third figure. That’s perfect, she says. Wife is making the beds. I think I got stoned off that last thing I smoked, I say. Wife explains. She’d used my grinder for her real stuff. She thought she’d got rid of it all. OK, I think, that explains it. I’m not having a mental break. I’m not going to have to call in sick. I laugh. I thought I was having some sort of mental break, I say. Wife laughs. You spiked me, I say. Take a deep breath, she says. When I was younger I used to pass out when I got too stoned, and I hear that old note of worry in wife’s voice. I go back to the kids. Focus on the kids, I think. They’re happy. I pick up a figure and start playing. The kids laugh. I laugh. Wife starts playing my song, HIGH, that I just released a couple of weeks ago. I don’t want to get high any more, go the lyrics. I’ve done it too many times before. I cringe. Is it really bad, I think. But I ease into it. I’m quite enjoying it by the end. Wife comes in the bathroom. I’m sitting on the floor. I stand up. We laugh. I guess the kids don’t see us laughing like this very much. It freaks them out. Why are you laughing so much, says J___. What are you laughing about. Nothing, says wife. Adult stuff, she adds. People used to say that to us all the time when we were kids. Adult stuff.

ZOOT MONEY

ZOOT MONEY AT THE JAZZ CAFÉ, POOLE – 14/07/23

“They’re packing them in tonight,” I say, squeezing myself into my chair, which is just inches away from the stage. Most of the gigs I go to these days seem to be populated by octogenarians, and tonight is no exception. Even the man himself is eighty-one (“on Monday”, as Al Kirtley corrects him at one point) and can be seen falling asleep in his chair while everyone else is packing themselves in. Another old man – at least late seventies – seems quite worried. “He barely responded when I spoke to him,” he says. He shrugs as if to suggest great uncertainty, as if the future is a perilous place. Eventually, however, ZOOT MONEY is roused and shuffles off to the toilet revealing a stoop, which seems to have developed since we last saw him here a year ago. He seems older, like time has finally caught up with him, and I understand at once the old man’s concern. To look at him and watch the effort it takes to put one foot in front of another you can’t help but wonder if he’s still got what it takes. But, somehow, as soon as he sits behind his keyboards and positions the microphone the concern dissipates. He’s still got it. The music is so deeply embedded and his mastery over it so complete that it seems he could continue to perform even if he were asleep. He plays at times like someone might wait for a bus or decide which underpants to wear, which is not to say that his playing is thoughtless or mindless, but just that it seems so natural, such an ordinary thing for him to be doing, and it reminds you that this is someone who has devoted pretty much their whole life (“sixty-four years” as Kirtley reminds him) to doing almost exactly what they’re doing right now, which is playing a uniquely distinctive mix of rhythm and blues, soul and rock and roll. No one else does it quite like Zoot.

Waiting for the bus

In the interval I ask the bass player – or “Chaucer” as Zoot refers to him – if they need to rehearse for a show like this. “There wouldn’t be any point,” he replies. “Zoot does it different every night anyway.” “So, you just have to keep a close eye on him,” I say. “Exactly.” And the band certainly is doing just that after the break. While Zoot seems at times in a world of his own, his bandmates follow his lead, or just keep quiet as the songs or his meandering mood requires. “Thanks for still being alive,” he says as the evening draws to a close, “and for coming out to see me after all these years. It’s wonderful.”

Wonderful

After the last song, Big Time Operator, has finished, Zoot takes a sip from a cup of tea. “Ugh,” he says, “no sugar!” Al looks at him with a kindly expression. “Sugar’s bad for you anyway, George,” he says.

WANG/LUFT/FÄLT TRIO

WANG/LUFT/FÄLT TRIO AT THE GRASSHOPPER, POOLE – 29/06/23

“I’ve never seen a queue in a pub before,” I say to the old guy in front of me in the queue to get a drink. It’s like the kind of queue you’d get at the tobacco counter in a supermarket. That kind of queue. You don’t normally see tobacco counter queues in pubs, do you? The old guy looks at me with what can only be described as mild surprise. “The English do love to queue,” he says. “Are you here for the music?” I say. It’s an attempt to start a conversation. “No, no,” he says. “I don’t think so.”

They’re a little late opening the doors, so there’s a queue to get in the room too. But I don’t mind. Actually, I quite like it. It gives me a chance to watch people and listen to their conversations. Inside, they’ve printed out everyone’s name and placed them on the chairs, in the order that the tickets were booked. “You’re at the front,” says J___, checking tickets on the door. “You must have been one of the early ones.” I pick up the piece of paper with my name on it and sit down. Later, I wish that I’d taken a photograph of all the printed names sitting on the seats. It’s just something I’ve never seen before. 

Then N_____ arrives. “Hello N_____,” says J___. The room is warm and smells like old people. Then K____ arrives. “Hello K____.” 

N_____ comes to sit next to me. “I’ve been told to sit here,” he says. I take my name off the seat (I’d booked two tickets but in the end wife, who I’d booked the other ticket for, couldn’t make it, and D___ just point-blank refused to come) and he sits down. N_____ has just got back from Turkey where he’s been on holiday. He’s eighty, a walker and a climber, so he tells me, and goes somewhere different every month. “Good for you,” I say.

The WANG/LUFT/FÄLT TRIO play gentle and intricate music that reminds me of swimming, for some reason. Not that I’m really much of a swimmer. I just kind of splash around and throw myself about when I’m in water. You wouldn’t call it swimming. But it reminds me of what swimming might be like if you were a dolphin or a mermaid or something like that. It’s such intimate music as well, so that the title of their LP – CLOSENESS – seems really apt. This is the last night of a UK tour and they look like they really enjoy playing together, and I think about the connection you must feel to someone you’ve been travelling around with playing such beautiful tender music, and I wonder if maybe that is the point of music, or at least one of them, to bring people closer together, or at least make them feel less apart. It’s a kind of magic, I think, as my eyes fall on the picture of Paul Daniels, hanging on the wall.

Magic

“That was lovely,” I tell ELLEN ANDREA WANG in the interval. “I’ve listened to your record a lot,” I say. “It’s a really special record.” She smiles politely. I’m sweating profusely. I’m really good at sweating, I’m ready to say, if anyone comments on how sweaty I am.

While we’re waiting for the second set to start N_____ tells me about the “boy band” he used to play drums in in the fifties, and about how his doctor told him he had to stop playing because of something to do with his thumb, and about how quitting the band was the best thing he ever did, because now he’s eighty and happy and most of the band are dead, apart from the guitarist who’s still playing, and played on a cruise ship not so long ago, and they were also quite immoral, he tells me. They took drugs.

The second set is a bit looser than the first, as second sets often are. I rise for a standing ovation after the encore. I don’t look around but I think I’m the only one. I don’t care. I think when people have put such love and thought and craft into their performance, the very least you can flipping do is stand up to applaud them. Jeez, what the hell.

Jeez, what the hell

N_____’s off to Mexico next month. “That’s fantastic,” I say. “I’d love to go to Mexico,” I say. But, actually, I don’t know if I would. I don’t know, actually, if I’d rather just stay at home. He tells me that he listens to music all the time, whatever he is doing, even when he’s writing letters. I tell him I’m the same. “I’m the same,” I say, my eyes falling on a picture of Houdini hanging on the wall. “I think music’s a form of magic,” I say, and N_____ nods in agreement.