Brownian motion
Brighton Early 12 May
Well it has been a while since I wrote a blog. Forgive me if I am a little rusty at the start.
I have been meaning to start one for a long time, but I have never found the right topic to blog about. So now I am going to be thoroughly egotistical and just write about the stuff that I end up doing at weekends. I call it Brownian motion as I seem to spend my life ricocheting from one thing to the next. But enough introductions, let us begin at the beginning
It began with a bingo call, “59 the Brighton line”, an hour and a half from London to the coast for my debut on the Brighton Fringe! Surprisingly, given the recent news coverage of southern rail my journey was smooth and on time, even the loos worked… well one of them did. It was just a shame I forgot my life motto, “a wise man pees when he can, a fool when he must.”, leading to some rather undignified haste wile signing in to my accommodation. But the accommodation can wait. For now let us turn to the venue at which I would perform stand-up comedy at 11:30on both Friday and Saturday night, the Quad. A traditional local pub, mismatched furniture ranging from shoulder to shin height leaving me uncertain of where the next sharp corner is coming from.
I arrived early enough to put up my posters before the evening rush, then settled in with a soft drink and some Ross Noble YouTube videos for the long wait. As the night went on the bar became busier, each show had better crowds and I started to feel the buzz that precedes a big night. I was the last act of the night, so it was no surprise that the previous show was packed. Much of the audience from that gig stayed and bought drinks building my hopes of a large rowdy crowd up to a crescendo. Making the actual audience of one man sitting in the back corner something of a disappointment.
My grand entrance from behind a curtain, wizard of Oz style, was greeted by what I can only describe as the true sound of one hand clapping, which is to say, two hands clapping but in a decidedly half-hearted way.
This isn’t the first time I have had one person in an audience, it’s not a major problem, every comedian who has ever performed at a Fringe has stories of small gigs and I am no exception, I quite like joining my audience member in the seats and having a chat.
Just slightly disappointed , I went home consoling myself that things could be worse, a fact that I now know to be true since that night things did get much worse.
Brighton is a remarkably expensive place to stay, so the only bed I could afford was in a dormitory at a hostel, 21 people all in bunk beds. As the quicker mathematicians among you will have noticed, 21 people wouldn’t fit in traditional bunk beds without sharing. Fortunately this problem was solved without the need for a bowl of keys as the bunk beds were In fact triple decker beds. I chose the top bunk for security purposes, reasoning that no burglar has ever been motivated enough to climb for their dishonest prize. Upon returning from my gig at one A.M. I was dismayed to discover the reason for the popularity of this particular hostel, its’ extreme proximity to the nearest nightclub. The hostel was positioned on the upper floors with a nightclub on the lower, meaning any self-respecting raver could be thrown out of the club and stagger up the fire escape to their room. It also meant that my dormitory was literally buzzing due to the base. I may agree with Meghan Trainor on many things, however when it comes to a lullaby it certainly is not all about that base, bout that base no treble. At one point, a particularly low note caused my skyscraper of a sleeping compartment to literally oscillate, rocking at a rate just a touch to fast to be soothing. in all it was one of the worst nights of my life, kept awake by disembodied base rhythms until three in the morning and then so incensed with the injustice of my situation that I lay fuming for another 2 hours before sleep could part me from my self-righteous anger.
Three hours later I was rudely woken by the alarm that some fool had set on my phone, in full expectation that I would be keen to be up and active at 8 in the morning. Cursing my younger and more optimistic self I decided that sleep was gone and wouldn’t be returning soon, I got dressed. If you have ever tried to get dressed on the third story of a bunk bed, with the ceiling less than a metre above your head, plastic walls on three sides and a curtained cliff to the fourth, then I urge you to try it when blind and severely tired. The trousers were every bit as awkward as I expected, acrobatically balancing on my shoulder blades as I pulled up my jeans, but the surprise was that the shirt was somehow more complicated!
Having dressed I decided that the toast and butter breakfast that the hostel described as “complimentary” was more suited to the word “insulting”. So I went in search of the only place to go if you are down depressed and lonely, which contrary to the Iron Maiden song is not 22 acacia avenue but a Weatherspoon’s.
On my search for the pub that you can count on at 8:30 in the morning, I asked a local for directions, at which point he revealed something of the Brighton philosophy to me by asking a curious question at 8:30 on a Saturday morning.
“So what are you going to Weatherspoon’s for? Is it a business meeting or something?”
I would like to meet the Human Resources team who worked out that the optimum time for a business meeting was at 8:30, on a Saturday, in a Weatherspoon’s pub. Is this normal for Brighton?
It may say something of my mind-set at the time, that the bizarre question felt like the most exciting thing that could possibly happen. Then I checked my emails.
I play goalball for the London elephants goalball team, I shan’t go into detail about goalball here but if you stick with the blog next week you can learn more. The important parts are that goalball is a sport played by blind people wearing blindfolds to keep everything even. In my emails I found the minutes for the London Elephants AGM, in which the chair mentioned the possibility that the club may be getting new sponsorship… from the worshipful guild of spectacle makers! I can only assume that the guild sponsorships are assigned by the worshipful guild of irony mongers.
After a long hard day’s work, (watching YouTube videos in the pub), I came up with an improved advertising strategy. I blue tacked my last poster to the envelope I transported them in. this acted as a portable billboard as I moved around, canvasing the crowds offering late night comedy at the Brighton fringe. Surprisingly, this actually worked! People liked having something to look at while I talked to them, eyes were court by my tag lines and one young lady commented that I was better looking than my poster photo. But the success of an advertising campaign is not who it reaches but who attends the event. I’m delighted to say that I had a 2400% increase in my audience from the Friday night gig! 25 people who were lively and ready for a night of comedy which I duly gave them.
After the show I hung out with the audience, living on free beers. I decided that I wasn’t going to get to sleep before three in the morning anyway, so if you can’t beat them, join them. I headed out clubbing with a group of young vibrant Brighton clubbers including the student who had earlier complemented my real world appearance, (or insulted my photo, depending on your perspective). The rest of the night is a blur until I leave the club and make my way home alone, that was when I met Rachel. Rachel is a young woman, about my age, who mentioned that while she is currently fully sighted, she has a condition that means she will go blind over the next few years so I offered to stay in touch and she immediately added me on Facebook. I made the offer because I know just how lucky I am that I had a brain tumour and went blind at the age of 5. Obviously it wasn’t exactly what I was asking for on my 5th birthday but I know just how much harder it could have been. Growing up I learned how to be blind, how to enjoy inaccessible TV shows like Strictly-Come-Dancing through other people’s reactions, bang my shins on a coffee table without it hurting and guide four blind friends back from the pub late at night, (the solution to the final challenge turns out to be a conga line and it is exactly as much fun as it sounds). The point is that I lost a lot of sight when I was 5 and had the rest of my life to get over it, but for others a diagnosis is like the sword of Damocles, (pronounced dammercleese), a shadow that hangs over them, knowing they might wake up any day with reduced vision and a sense of loss. I don’t have any specific agenda while writing this but if you take one thing away from this blog, then take it from the blind guy who had childhood brain cancer, never forget how lucky you are, and always be prepared to offer help where you can.
After another night on the bunkbed of Babel, this time mercifully quiet since I had outlasted my noisy neighbours, I completed my trip with another pub breakfast and, exhausted, set off for lunch with my family to doze through wedding plans. But those plans can wait for a future weekend. For now I need sleep, so I’m off to bed. So until next week I bid you good bye and good night.
Good bye.