Day 337
Thursday June 6
All very cool as we play our first headline show in London today with that 45 minute set in Ten To One. And yes, we go with exactly the same set we dress rehearsed in the Japanese live stream we did in this same venue a few weeks ago. Den is in here to open for us tonight, and I’m also reunited with Dan tonight who is going to go on second with his own set of originals. It’s really great to hear those songs live again. Brings back a few memories of when it was me and him going round playing full cover sets, but also every now and again going off to play an open mic to bash out a few of his. A few real gigs with those as well. And here they are tonight. Beforewhich we get to hear a whole load of Den songs which we haven’t heard before and it’s an absolute joy of nostalgia and surreal whimsy. Even a comical zombie song. What else?
And then we get to do our thing and for the first time he gets to hear us do our thing which I’m really pleased about. And we really do smash it out. But unfortunately, not the greatest of turnouts with Ant saying there was a party in here tonight which a lot of locals came to so it’s unlikely they’ll be in here again tonight. And no they aren’t. We’re assured that this won’t be the case next time. Because once we’re done, Ant says he’s really up for doing this regularly with us. Every two or three months or so. Oh wow. Just like that we have a regular full gig.
Grassroots gigs. Small audiences can happen. It’s a thing and part of what you buy into so that’s fine. You hope to build on the smallest of beginnings. That’s what it’s all about. The real minor downside from tonight is that we get no useable video. That’s because there’s one table in here that just constantly talks all the way through. And loudly too. Also kinda close to where our camera is set up. On the video it just sounds like they’re totally competing with us all night. Through every single song. For the full duration of every single song. Even during applauses they continue shouting across their table at each other, completely oblivious to the fact that there’s a gig going on in here. Oh well. It’s a public bar, they have every right to use it as they please. But…please. The thing is, there are two back areas they completely could have taken over if they’d wanted. It would have been quieter and therefor easier to talk in those places and they still could have heard the show if they’d wanted it to be a kind of background to their own thing. But no. They had to sit in the middle of the audience and right near our camera and do it. So yeah. No useable video from our first London headline. Shame. Thanks guys.
Day 339
Saturday June 8
One of those kind of lovely days we haven’t been massively Diarying so I thought we’d get one in here. We decide to take a walk into Soho. From our apartment in Camden, a brisk walk can get us there in about half an hour. Once there we head into Chinatown where we find a nice Korean restaurant for ramen. Then another walk down the street sees us discover a great sports bar for the main event of the day. The women’s French Open final. Which we get to see in our new discovery Clubhouse 5. A just about everything sports bar which has a variety of sports on all its TVs downstairs, and has dedicated its entire upstairs area to today’s final. Result.
Day 349
Tuesday June 18
Maja was away with work last week so we didn’t do our Tuesday Ramshackle thing. We’re back tonight though, and with a brand new song. Till Sunset Burns. This is not one of our explosive songs. Instead it’s a slow burning, almost singer/songwritery thing which winds its way into an epic chorus, hits a few patches of light and shade, and then launches into a huge, wandering and building outro which rises to quite a few different peaks. It’s a really good feeling to have a new song worked in and in the actual live repertoire now, and it gets a very encouraging reaction. We’ve got a lot of new songs to come, of many different styles. Slow burns like this one, a few big ballady type things, a few out and out rockers and, frankly, metallers, and a few of the happy-go-lucky whimsical type.
Day 353
Saturday June 22
We get a message from Gabriel today asking if we’re interested in playing the bar of his friend Anna, who we also met when she came to his event that we played a few weeks ago. We spoke to Anna about this bar at Gabriel’s event and there was talk of us playing it at some point, maybe. Well, here we are. Brilliant. We get right back and say yes, absolutely. We’d love to. It’s put in the diary for Friday July 19 at bar Cava-Ri in Norbury, south London. So that’s a trip across the river to play a gig. That will be the first time that’s happened.
I’ll cover this bit now. We see the bill a week or so later and it looks really interesting. A comedian, a belly dancer, a compere duo featuring Gabriel, and ourselves. This looks like a really cool event to have been asked to be a part of.
Day 354
Sunday June 23
Me and Maja have been playing pool every now and again at a few bars in Camden. And Maja’s also been recently introduced to snooker on the TV, mostly with the world championship final a few weeks ago in May. We got to talking about snooker and she said she’d really like to try it. Even if just the once. Just to see a real table. Maja’s never seen a full size snooker table.
At a Ramshackle event one evening a while ago we mentioned this to Ant in conversation and he was like, ‘I play snooker all the time. Give me a call sometime and we’ll arrange it.’ Wow. Did not see that coming. So yesterday I messaged him to see if he was up for it today and he was. Which is how we’ve now come to find ourselves in a snooker hall in Finsbury Park, a place he comes to regularly. He leads us in, asks for his usual table and we go out the back of the bar to enter an old style theatre type venue. We’re not going in there though. Instead, we take a side door which leads to a staircase, and upstairs a large room containing four full size snooker tables. And we have the place all to ourselves. Maja gets a brief introduction to the basic rules, which is pot a red, then a colour – black if it’s on as that’s worth more – then a red and so on until you stop when you reach a score of 147. Although that last part might be for the slightly more advanced players. For the likes of us, I warn Maja that the pockets are lot more unforgiving than what we’re used to in pool. If the ball isn’t headed directly to the centre of the pocket, it’s probably not going to go in. There’s very little rattling in off the jaws like there is in pool.
Rather than winner stays on or anything like that – because games of snooker can take ages – we’re all going to play in the same game, taking it in turns around the three of us. Ant breaks, because he knows how to and it’s a good opportunity to introduce us to that element. He does it expertly, gently separating a few reds from the triangle while bringing the white all the way back down the table to near where it started. Maja’s up next. Now, I’ve played a fair amount of pool with Maja, including on a few tables we’ve found around the bars in Camden. She’s not the best. And now here she is taking on snooker. With the nearest available ball far further ahead than the longest pool table she would have played on. The white is somewhere around the still spotted green and brown. She bends down to the table and gives it a good whack in what looks like the general direction of a loose red sitting off to the left central side of the pack, somewhere between the zones of the pink and black. Not only does the white smash the red with full force, the the red then goes bounding off to make that lovely snooker whacking sound to go directly into the bottom corner pocket. Maja’s first ever shot on a full size snooker table and it’s one that would have been applauded in The Crucible. For those not into snooker at all, that’s the traditional venue for the world championships, and having to explain that has forced me into a somewhat unsatisfyingly clunky ending to a wonderful little anecdote. It’s a shot that causes all three of us to reverberate in wonder and takes a few shots to calm down from. Not those kind of shots. We have a serious game going on here. But seriously, I think we could all just call it a day and go home there and then. Peak reached. Job done. There’s only one star of today’s outing.
But we stay and put in a few really fun frames with Maja, if not quite pulling of that level of shot again, sinking a few very respectable more balls nonetheless. Who knew a low to middling clumsy – if we’re being fair – pool player could come and boss it like a natural on a snooker table? She has snooker veteran Ant quite speechless quite a few more times today, but never moreso than that first shot. Sorry for going on about it, but I think it’s one of the most remarkable moments of sport I’ve ever seen, certainly among friends.
That wonderful little adventure done and we’re off for Sunday part two, which is to find a lovely pub in the area and have a beer garden Sunday lunch and a few early evening summer beers. Which we also achieve quite spectacularly. Yes. This is a Sunday that’s been totally Sunday’d.
