Memory is a funny thing.

I was reminded last night by the very funny Robert White that back in '04 I did a gig holding a pool cue and waving it around at the out of control audience who, if my memory serves me correctly, didn't know comedy was on and didn't like that I was blocking the view of the cigarette machine. I vaguely remember grabbing the pool cue and shaking it whilst doing my gags because I was legitimately scared. Who knows maybe I thought the night needed it. I needed it.
The gig was so poorly promoted & run that, in hindsight, this made it the funniest aspect of the night.  The humour of which must have only be appreciated on the train home. Surely? I even remember hearing later that the headliner decided not to get up as the gig was such a shambles. It was no lights, no microphone bad. I like to think that the headliner was Lewis Schaffer but it may not have been. It's cooler if it was. It's all very vague. What I didn't remember, because up until last night I didn't know, was that the gig was held at a BNP pub!  Robert, who has aspergers and a memory for these things, suggests the gig may have been a lot worse and more dangerous than my memory lets me believe. How did this conversation come about? After not seeing each other for 8 years we met at a gig & had that moment of recognition before Robert smiled and said, 'Pool Cue.' What I like about this story is that my memory of Robert involves a gig in Crouch End where afterwards, we were both standing by the side of the road watching an old man drive his car up a hill completely unaware that one tyre was missing and sparks were showering the traffic behind. The poor guy kept driving with two hands on the wheel, eyes forward, wonderfully oblivious to the lack of tyre and the fact that his night time visual would be trumped by an obscured cigarette machine. 

Resurrection in the park.

I tell Boy Son that they’re simply called “Trees” knowing that greater men have walked this path and reeled off names like Almus Hybrid and Snowdrop and Flatspine Prickly*. I bet they had excellent posture and puffed on pipes whilst quoting Kipling. The leaves however, they’re just leaves & I take comfort in knowing that any man who deviated from this easiest of descriptions must’ve been an absolute wibberwasher**.  We push on. The yelling and thrilling of molly coddled children plays softly in the foreground as my boots squelch to the rhythm of avoiding puddles. I’m the forgotten warrior of the park, the man whose DNA once punched out a Yak but I’ve boiled down to sipping lattes whilst side stepping my own reflection. My DNA’s latest resurrection is having none of this and decides to chant at the nameless trees, throwing dirt into their face before running around each one, three times apiece. I secretly hope this crowd gathering ritual will unlock a tree Genie who’s been waiting for this exact pattern to unfold. ‘Finally I’m free! Thank you little boy. I thought the spell was broken last week but the little fucker only ran around twice… Not to worry, I’m yours forever. Lets grab dad and head to India. I’ve got a score to settle. To the spices!’ I squinted my eyes and crossed my fingers, hoping against hope that the oncoming floppy eared fuzz ball was in fact Mr Tree Genie himself. This was stupid and I had to unpack my mind bags. India would have to wait. Embarrassingly the futility of my squinting was highlighted by the sound of steamed up piss falling on my pram. But oh how we all laughed… ‘The dog pissed on the man’s pram… the inappropriateness of it all, that’s what makes it so amusing. Wibber, wibber wibber.’ I shot them all with my mind vibes and they vaporised into the kind of dust that only gathers onto broken dreams. Suckers. I sipped my latte and pushed on.

Boy Son opened the gate and stood mesmerised as fragments of the future ran around shooting each other with sticks. I laughed at the realities of playground war; A twenty second ban if you’re wounded, thirty if you die, forty if you die near family. These rules played underneath a far more depressing conversation, ‘Darling not too close to the edge you might fall.’ My parents would introduce me to the weekend by firing me out of a cannon with half an apple and a slap on the arse yet still, I’m a pale reflection of a Yak Puncher. Today’s darlings are shot well before they can strap on their boots.

Up he climbed and down he slid for long enough so that I might be considered a decent father. It’s 12 parts love and adoration, 3 parts stifling boredom and 6 parts hiding the 3 parts. Today I did it well. Tomorrow I don’t know? He may want details.

*Derived solely from Google; may not be the trees in my park.

** Wibberwashers are jowly grown ups possessing no sense of humour and often they sound like overly serious washing machines. 

So let me tell you about my week…

Context: When your wife is pregnant, as mine recently was, you lose testosterone so that you don’t beat her*. This may be controversial and I have no science to back it up but I have mentioned it at barbecues and it seems to hold up around salad. My testosterone is now bouncing back. But due to Lady Wife’s unfortunate C Section I’m house bound until she is strong enough to lift more than a baby.  Also, to add spice, I’ve spent the last 9 months trying to find the perfect segue between what my wife is talking about and convincing her to touch my penis. 

 I’m walking up the road on my way to buy cupcakes and my inner monologue is furious. ‘Cupcakes! Cupcakes!  I must be the only inner monologue bitching about cupcakes. ’ And so it went.  Meanwhile Lady Wife was talking about curtains. Not meanwhile back at home meanwhile, but rather, meanwhile by my side meanwhile. In context to banter about curtains, this is the worst kind of meanwhile.  (Curtains. Curtain rod. Emphasise rod and then look at your penis.  Avoid eye roll. Repeat.) The cherry: I’m pushing a pram with two kids in it. The kids are mine, they’re both under two and they’re just screaming ‘Be responsible dad! It’s embarrassing that you only have £13.25 in your bank account. Stop thumbing your cock during the day and get out there and bring home a slice of normal, at least until we get blinds. Step up and be a man dad.’ I love them but they’re little psychological bandits who know how to push my buttons.

I’m in the boutique cupcake shop, we’re buying some for the neighbours who helped with Boy Son during the birth of Only Daughter.  Just as we balance affordability with quality, in walks a guy ten years buffer than me, he’s holding a knife and he’s not happy about a previous cupcake sale. Finally I get a turn to shine. I take thirty-five years of anger and fear and crush this man with nothing but mind vibes. Mel Gibson in his hey day couldn’t beat my stare. Even as Riggs in Lethal weapon 1. My kids love me again, my posture improves, the cupcake lady dies because my vibes are new and need refining but no one cares because she died doing what she loved, combusting. As for Lady Wife, she tells me to snap out of it and open the door as ‘we have the cupcakes now Adam.’ Oh do we? Because from where I’m standing, we are a long way from cupcakes. ‘That doesn’t even make sense’ I know but this testosterone has got to go somewhere.’

And that was my week. No happy ending, not even a plot, just a man plugging along using his imagination to anesthetise the growing pains of responsibility. 

* Not so much her but the infiltrating demon that she never told you about.