I'm sure its a case of having a vivid imagination but last night's journey home, and in fact most of the evening felt like a minor version of Final Destination. I like to persuade myself that by avoiding injury/insult/other things beginning with in, except insulin which I need, I build up that bad karma for later so it will come back and get me. Then if I make it through the entire day without dying that I am definitely the champion of things. Its a pretty good target to not die during a whole day. I think it puts me ahead of everyone who does die, but also means I achieve winner status on a daily basis so far. Last night, as I drove me and Carl Donnelly home through a maelstrom of winter weather hell, we tempted fate by speaking of the worst car crashes we'd seen, and times Carl had nearly killed himself through drunken idiocy. I don't have any of these times as when I'm drunk I tend to operate in a way that means I will avoid all deathly possibilities and instead aim to find somewhere to sleep. My interesting drunken stories mostly end in me trying to sleep in a skip/doorway/cupboard/nightclub/bit on a train where people keep their bags, which is no way as exciting as Carl's tales of nearly falling of the 7th story of a hotel. Anyway, this chat was happily had despite the snow pelting down and occasional road skidding in the slow lane as the fast and middle lanes were snow and slush respectively. I can't help but doing such things is tempting fate. Its pointing out to Sod that you are clearly there and that his law is bound to be inflicted at some point soon. Whilst I am, in most respects of the word, an atheist, I do truly believe that there might well be a deity called Sod, who spends his days in a warehouse in East London, clicking away on a computer that allows him to puncture a tyre there, get someone splashed by a passing car here, or fall down a manhole where ever possible. Despite these beliefs we defeated the snow and rather enjoyed driving through its oncoming frost. Once into London I dodged several arsey taxis and then as a coup de gras, was just three minutes from dropping Carl off, when I nearly killed us both by driving into a the path of an oncoming bus. I couldn't see out of the passenger window and as I edged out past a give way sign I asked Carl if he could see anything coming, and he made a very timely yelp of 'A Bus!' which caused me to brake just moments from getting ploughed down by an angry beeping bus driver. I was very grateful Carl noticed the bus, and angry that out of all the road vehicles that could have been approaching, I failed to notice the largest and most obvious. It was lazy and stupid and I've never been more pleased to get all the way home and not be dead. As I descended the small stone steps to my front door, I slipped on the last step and grabbed the handrail just in time to stop me having face and back ruin. Close but no cigar Sod. Close but no cigar.
The day up until that point had been nice but mostly uneventful. My last nightime gig pre-Xmas was nothing special and the crowd were, at most, adequate. They sat there. They laughed sometimes. Some were slight dicks. Nothing to hard to deal with, nothing too fun. In fact it was no way as interesting as earlier when I had stomped around pet shops with Layla's brother looking for a new rat cage for her nephew. After several failed attempts at big retail park pet shops such as Pets At Home, we stumbled across a little shop that smelt funny. Thats the way you know a pet shop is proper. The big shops were all clean, the staff knew nothing about animals and the shelves were mostly empty, but as we stepped into this little foul smelling, dark grotto of a building, it was obvious they kept animals. One of the staff spoke as though he had the mind of a six year old, but the body of a man, grunting out words in broken sentences. He was clearly the sort of bloke that spent more time talking to gerbils than people. They knew everything about rats and every other creature. I was tempted to spring an odd question on them about caring for a duck billed platypus, but I felt they would have batted it down with ease. They had whole shelves of 'spider water' which I assume is water for spiders and not water that has been pre-filtered by tiny arachnids in Buxton, and bags of blood worms which looked like a swimming collection of paper cuts. The one item that truly intrigued me though was the bottles of Dog Beer. They were proper glass bottles with a picture of an overly happy alsatian on the front, claiming that inside was special beer for dogs. This poses many questions. The first being who on earth decided that dogs might want beer? Not being a dog owner I don't know if they stare at owner's alcoholic beverages with a sense of want. Perhaps they do. But even so it can't be good for them can it? I know St Bernards wander round with a little barrel of rum but I didn't think it was for them. Maybe I've had it wrong the whole time and dogs are infact huge pissheads? This would explain the expression 'hair of the dog' and also 'sick as a dog'. Dogs have possibly set all standards for alcoholism. If this is the case then I fully applaud them having their own beer and look forward to seeing ranges of different types of dog booze in shops soon. Especially the single malt range of Whuskie. Or Alesation. Or...no that's all of them. Sorry.
I'm doing a gig this afternoon, then that is it. No gigs till Xmas which is stupid exciting. The gig this afternoon should be lovely too and with any luck I wont nearly die from buses on the way there or back. If you live in or near Brixton and would like to come, see details here:
http://www.redgategallerylondon.co.uk/
And I shall leave you with today's Wordia word, which is once again, me doing something:
Meaning of mistletoe
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