I’ve really got to get this Global Hangover document finished before I go to London and meet with Wade and others about it on Thursday but it’s taking me longer than I thought and just when I see a lovely Lovejoy-free few hours of time ahead of me to really crack on with this, other things crop up.
I’d arranged to meet K for a cup of tea in town at lunchtime and whilst it was theoretically possible to cancel this, it would mean putting it back a week and we’ve got work to discuss too. And so even though we’d probably not talk too much about furthering our respective careers and instead just slag off other comedians, it was still a valid reason to leave my desk and wander to the Soul Café on Bold Street. I was on time and ordered a pot of tea, taking the cups and sausers outside to sit in the sun. After ten minutes or so K still hadn’t arrived and because I deplore lateness in any form this began to irk me.
I am impossibly intolerant with lateness. Anything over five minutes after the agreed rendezvous time with me I consider late. Because it is. Anything over fifteen minutes without an explanatory phone call is the devil’s work, and anything over half an hour really should see me leaving. But it doesn’t. My friends, K being an exception to this, are generally the latest people in the World, with Renata being the queen of the group. She can be anything up to an hour and a half late. So I have all these late friends, but I never make a stand and simply leave, I generally sit with a paper, and accept their withering apologies whenever they do feel like turning up.
Yet I am never late. True, you might argue that this is because I don’t have a busy life and therefore have less to distract or postpone me, but I do have several appointments to keep in a typical week (as well as, say, trains or planes to catch) and I pride myself on being a punctual person. I don’t have many qualities, but this is one. Truthfully, I don’t even understand casual lateness. I can’t understand someone agreeing to meet at three, and at five minutes past three still being in the shops, a good ten minutes away. I don’t understand how that can ever happen.
My worry is that I am never late because I fear people wont wait around for me. Even ten minutes. I think they’ll leave. People know I wont leave because they’ve been late so many times with me, and so they have learnt to be relaxed with time. What I should do, of course, is just leave after 15 minutes unless I’ve received a phone call but then I’d get a call later saying “Where are you?� and I’d have to explain angrily that I’d left, which would damage the friendship, and also I’d ultimately miss out on whatever it was we were meeting for. I’d miss out on tea. Conversation. The Cinema. And so I wait, and I’m wrong to do so.
After fifteen minutes of waiting for K, I got up from my seat to cross the road and buy a paper. Which is when I saw him, standing with his shopping, on the other side of the café. “I’ve been here twenty minutes!� he said. “I was wondering about you, because you’re never late.�
“I’m sat around the side, I’ve got us tea.�
And so we both laughed and realised that we were both on time, and neither was to blame. How nice it was to both be in the right, when normally it is only I. Only joking.
You’d hate to hear comedians chat. Dreadful bitching. It goes on in comedy clubs too, but it’s best to steer clear of that and not get involved in the character assassination of an absent colleague because it will come back to bite you on the arse when you next see them at a different gig. These things always get around. But between friends whom you know hate dressing room gossip as much as you, it’s fine to slag anyone off you like, and seeing as we generally slag the same people off, it’s funny and without risk of repercussion.
It’s always great seeing K, and more of a rarity these days, but I was pleased I made a stand and said I had to get home and do some work. I popped into the Bang And Olufsen shop first to talk to the manager about this corporate gig I’ve got to do there tomorrow. He hadn’t planned on me having any microphone or amplification and so I’m glad I popped in.
Bang And Olufsen, the makers of the world’s most expensive hi-fi equipment, couldn’t provide a speaker to talk through, which is ironic. It’s like doing a gig for Typhoo tea and them saying “Sorry we can’t offer you anything… would you like a coffee?�
I’m not particularly looking forward to tomorrow because it’s going to be so different to a comedy club, my usual stamping ground, but I suppose I’ll learn something from it.
And there’ll be no other comedians there so I can bitch about them as much as I like. To confused faces.
- Post to:
del.icio.us
Digg
Newsvine
Nowpublic
Reddit
« Previous | Home | Next »