Blog: The Return To Croydon

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Leaving work last night I got myself a bit CONFUSED about how to get to Croydon. I needed to get to London Bridge station but, as usual, TFL LIED to me, trying to get me to go pretty much round the ENTIRE CIRCUIT OF TUBE rather than just change at Bank because there is "limited access" to escalators. When i eventually GOT there (having gone the wrong way at Tottenham Court Road to start with...) I managed to go the wrong way AGAIN and discovered that, actually, there is an AWFUL LOT of ways to walk around the corridors at Bank, and took about 15 minutes to change lines. It was HARD!

Thus I rolled up at The Green Dragon fairly late, to find Mr T Eveleigh, organiser, looking POORLY as he was, well, a bit poorly. As with most times I've played Freedom Of Expression he said "It's looking a bit quiet tonight - but the last two weeks have been packed." I nodded sympathetically, hoping he would continue not to TWIG the CONNECTION between me playing his gigs and nobody coming.

I got myself some food (lovely) and some beer (DELICIOUS). They really REALLY have some nice beer at The Green Dragon, I had Freedom Beer, Hopback and Autumn Ale this time, and it was ALL fantastic. YUM!

There was some small negotiation re. running orders and then I went on FIRST and did THIS:

Mental Judo

The Peterborough All-Saints' Wide Game Team (Group B)

My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once

It Only Works Because You're Here

Payday Is The Best Day

We're Old And We're Tired (and we want to go home)

Billy Jones Is Dead

The Lesson Of The Smiths

I must say I rather enjoyed myself, tho it did begin with an alarming realisation. The landlady's son, Sam, always does a spot at the start of these gigs, which consist of him giving some advice. He's about seven years old, i think, so this is always fairly WISE, and this time he had his MUM and his NAN watching him. As they said "I think that's enough now Sam" I realised this was like one of my recurring ANXIETY DREAMS... except Sam managed NOT to burst into a volley of SWEARS and shock/stun/upset his Nan, preferring to go round the room and whisper secret numbers to everybody before retiring to his lego. It seemed a much more sensible reaction.

This REMARK didn't go down as gently as I'd thought, as I realised that being told you remindeded a 38 year old of HIS Nan, and that this was a NIGHTMARE, was perhaps not the greatest compliment. Still, the rest of the set proceeded calmly and very pleasantly, with me managing to bridge a MENTAL GAP in the lyrics of My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once (i forgot the line "... when he started working here it was meant to be a temporary gig while he reassessed his rock career") by stopping, GRINNING FOOLISHLY, then carrying on. Watch out for entire SETS to be like this in the future!

Job done I settled back to watch the other acts, particularly enjoying Mark The Soundguy stepping into the BREACH when Tim had gone home, FAR too poorly to continue, and ending up doing a 10 minute, very funny, MONOLOGUE about his job in a second hand music shop. It was GRATE! I also had a chat to John from 10 Foot Nun, who had rather FREAKED ME OUT by suddenly APPEARING. It's always weird when that happens, when somebody from one SPHERE suddenly turns up in another. We weren't in Lewisham! And here was one of The Lewisham Posse! Despite his protestations that, actually, he just lived round the corner, I still found it all a bit confusing.

It was a slightly confused evening all round really, so on the way home I took the precaution of asking the ticket barrier guard for advice on how to get back. "That depends on where you're getting back TO" he said. GOOD POINT, I thought!

posted 15/10/2008 by MJ Hibbett

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Comments:

Can't believe i missed Mark's monologue. I hope you keep coming - I will have an audience for you soon, HONEST! - Tim
posted 17/10/2008 by Tim Eveleigh

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