Psycho (Geography or Otherwise)
Bristol, after seven months away. Familiar but no longer mine, my tenuous grip on the place long since removed.
The bed I slept in now twin cots, my winter clothes covered in dust and last year’s memories.
My friend had travelled down from Swansea, me up from Brighton. It had been too long. It is always too long.
This was a new location for us to spend time together in, but in a joyful and natural way. Not like the writers of the Simpsons desperately trying to think of where else to go.
We walked the streets and markets that I had walked, many times, alone. And the simple things, those over-familiar sights, in good company, became joyous.
Most of us live our lives within tiny radiuses, wallpapering memories over memories. In some places, the wallpaper is so thick it’s hard to find the writing underneath, if it was ever there at all.
I do love a city with a clear periphery, with hills I can see and will one day visit, or a sea with a horizon I can dream of knowing.
Brighton has the latter, and I was there on my birthday. An autumnal evening, a sunset thwarted by scattered cloud. An offshore windfall shimmering in the gloaming.
And the reminder that a life shared is a life with meaning, and that those hills and horizons won’t be there forever; and that this is righteous and beautiful.
The two gigs of October
I’ve had a heavy cold the last few days, which meant I missed the Next Level Sketch show with Siblings and Steppendad. I was very sorry to let my sketch friends down via my last minute withdrawal and I hope they can forgive me. It looks like it was a cracker regardless.
I have two shows next month, one singing in Brighton with / near MJ Hibbett and one doing Factually Inaccurate in London with some comedians I have booked and some k am yet to book. Details below.
Factually Inaccurate Stand-Up Tickets, Wed 12 Oct 2022 at 19:45 | Eventbrite
Silly lectures, character comedy and alternative stand-up at this owl-run comedy venture
MJ Hibbett performs in Brighton - with special guests and assorted antics Tickets, Wed 19 Oct 2022 at 19:30 | Eventbrite
Indie pop titan MJ Hibbett plus support from James Walsh (not out of Starsailor) and Simon Topping
Send me a postcard
For my 40th birthday I asked for postcards. I received many and many were wonderful.
Since then my correspondence has faded. I want to start writing to people regularly again and I’d like them (you!) to write to me, particularly now I have an address that I should be living at for at least another six months.
Email me and I’ll tell you where I live, though I think the newsletter already makes that clear.
That’s it for this week. Be well!
J x