I Need To Phone Mercury Records.
Which isn’t necessarily the best place to start but it’s as good as any I guess. Outside the window the sun is high in a perfect blue sky and I’m feeling sort of relaxed because I did the hoovering this morning and that always makes me feel human.
Back at home for the first time in a couple of days and I’ve basically spent the morning replying to emails, mainly about Hallo Panda, the short film that is currently taking up most of the space in my head were thoughts normally go. In between that I’ve been feeling guilty about not yet ringing Mercury Records (to ask them for the VAT that we should have claimed from them a year ago but couldn’t because we didn’t have a VAT number) and about Chris and mine’s combined failure to write anything funny yesterday.
We’ve got the sniff of a chance to write some sketches for a TV show but as usual when asked outright to be funny we both look a bit doubtful and go to the pub with our mate Adam Brown. He is also under pressure to be funny because he’s arranging a stag do for his mate and between us we did come up with the idea of getting the groom-to-be staggeringly drunk before their flight to Ireland and then replacing all of the contents of his suitcase with jelly.
Originally it was going to be something obscene or gendered instead of his clothes, but jelly just seems wonderfully wrong. I don’t think they’re actually going to do it and will probably, by the sound of things, go down the more usual stag route of ritual humiliation and physical abuse, but I do love the idea of his bag going through the scanner in the airport and the screen coming up with nothing but jelly and the guy with the moustache looks up curiously at the hungover man swaying unsteadily in front of him – “Did you pack this bag yourself sir?”
But we didn’t write any sketches. I did however slightly ease my guilt at spending an afternoon drinking Guinness and eating salt and vinegar crisps by actually having money on me and so not making Adam sub me.
I’m not tight, just very skint and consequently I’ve developed the usual post-millenial sickness of only being able to happily spend money when using a small plastic card that doesn’t look like money and doesn’t noticeably change when money is ‘taken’ from it. Using this unchanging piece of plastic I’m able to get things seemingly for free – which rather appeals to my innate sense of being King. However last week I was hanging around in Bethnal Green to see my girlfriend in an improv show and realised that I needed to finally give in to the pain in my guts and buy some dinner. Since most of the eateries outside Bethnal Green tube tend not treat electronic or plastic payment with anything other than contempt I tried to get a small cash sum from the ATM machine in the HSBC. As usual it pointed out that I may be charged for the transaction that was to come and asked if I wanted to proceed. I pressed to confirm that I was resigned to this form of daylight robbery only for the button to stick and for the machine to automatically flick over the page where you choose how much money you actually want.
Sick to the bones I watched as the machine spat £200 in folding cash money into my hands and left me to spend two hours sitting in a grim pub drinking stout and trying not to think how easy it would be for the fat necked group of racists at the bar to take all the money away from me.
So for the time being I’m back in the straight, stand-up world of cash which in one way makes me feel sort of good and honest about myself, but in another does add an extra layer of actual depression to every transaction I make.
I must ring Mercury Records.