life

duu

/ noeljames1

what a negative thing life is sometimes. but i can t work out whether it’s life as a thing that comes your way that causes the negative feelings, or if it’s a subjective slant on life that i have. The wearer of life.

Yesterday i took a few bags of second hand clothes to the cash4clothes man – he refused them, saying that the last lot i submitted smelt of cats’ piss….jeez, things are really hitting rock bottom when you get your old clothes rejected by the cash4clothes man. Apparently this was the message relayed by the main cash4clothes bloke in the area, based down by the liberty stadium. so i took the bags i had – about ten – directly to his shop. he of course had no idea who i was, and he took the clothes, all of them, weighed them, and have me 14 quid for them. The cats’ piss was a one off thing, and i felt a bit hurt by that stinging remark.

where i go with the clothes usually is down in llansamlet – a couple of blokes who also take in metal, in fact they specialise in scrap. so if any copper, aluminium, lead etc turns up i go down there. The blokes there often tease me, with weird shouts of NOEEELL!! It feels odd, i mean have they no idea how to talk to customers ?? to members of the public…? But there you go, if they know you do comedy they feel it’s okay to take the mickey.

another downer, but only slight, was a gig offered and then pulled from me. Mirth control. Eevr since they pulled my Jersey gigs in march, without giving notice, i ‘ve been a bit upset with them. they can’t be bothered giving me replacement work, and when i am offered something there’s usually a problem. There’s no doubt that my comedy world is turning to shit. Still, i did a coupel of great gigs over the weekend – one in hull and one in Peterbro, the latter being in a church on a sunday afternoon. The gig was family firendly and indeed there were a few kids present. i thought i pulled it off swimmingly.

shame i can’t get more work, but there you go, i’m not going to beg these bookers. Oh well, at least i don’t live in Palestine where my daily life would be a lot worse. at least i have food and water, and all that crap. See that bloke last weekend, he led a chant in glastonbury calling Death to the IDF. which was promptly called an antisemitic remark by the media and the politicians. What is going on? i mean, it’s a chant in a rock festival, not meant to be taken literally is it ?? it’s not like actually killing people.

I think we are living in a corrupt culture, the government don’t seem to be condemning Israel as much as they would another country using apartheid tactics. Fuckin hell, one recalls the whole shit show that was Iraq invasion, and then it was strange how Blair and labour seemed so keen on joining in with the invasion, despite there being no WMD. It’s like you really wanna know what exactly is going on in the background? what are the interests at stake ? money ? Oil? weapons? Talk to us world leaders.

USA has vetoed UN call for immediate ceasefire in Israel/Palestine. so what’s their game ? they must be gaining something from doing that. It’s fuckin despicable. Trump. the best thing he ever said was last week, talking about the conflict between israel and this time Iran : ‘They don’t know what the fuck they’re doing’.

sometimes it’s like all you can do is get down, cos there’s nowhere else to go

too late the renfrew woman

/ noeljames1

thought i had a lot to say, but maybe was wrong. Have read a couple of good books lately including a jeeves and wooster . It’s quite light actually, am amazed how people rave about his stuff. i mean i agree it is witty. also witty but in a different way is Diary of a Provincial Lady – very english, middle class, when people had servants, in the 1930s , but not much money. a lot of the humour from the latter comes from repression of feelings and superficiality.

everything changes, and the challenge is to adapt with the changes.

Aurora Floyd is an epic thriller romance from 1860, written by Elizabeth Braddock, it’s also a grand read, it was lying by my bedside for three years, idle. now finally i can give it to the charity shop, having been fully used and read. Which reminds me, went again to the cash for clothes, who also give money for scrap – made about 40 quid in the last coupel of weeks from various items, Have been clearing out eleri’s father’s shed, and found bits of copper, aliminium and lead, all worth a few quid. shame i can’t find any gold the price of which is currently flying.

Yesterday i went back to bed around 11 and slept for a coupel of hours, but as i lay there i tried to do a guided mediation, – or should i say beditation -and did in fact have a coupel of sharp dreams, which i felt could have been symbolic of something. One in particular.

Met dr geraint morris again a coupel of weeks ago, but get the feeling he don’t want to see me again. well, he’s a christian.

did a great gig in Tyldesley, the booker complimented me by saying how unpredictable my act/set was. but hell of a long drive. still it’s worth it to do these things if that’s the only thing you got in your diary that week. It’s not my fault, i mean, i am taking a break, but also those cornish gigs a fortnight ago disappeared, £600 down the drain, because the booker had a stroke, but then. also, the club owner apparently had cancer. i mean, what sort of excuses are these ! The bottom’s falling out of the industry, or is it just my bottom falling put of my pants ? forthright fortnight.

Went kayaking on sunday, have only missed one week this season thus far, my arms hurt as i use the paddle, but that’s probably a good sign. Went to see luke who was away for a week. talked about adult stuff, which i can hardly repeat here can i ? oh fuck it, he likes to go to orgies, occasionally, in cardiff. i mean, it wouldn’t be my scene, but am fascinated to hear the details. not really details about the u know what but more about the people who attend, who these people are ,where do they come from…? like, the organiser is a thoracic surgeon, which i find most unexpected, as i imagine, in an orgy, there’d be a bunch of lads, with beer bellies and tattoos, but hey my prejudices go back to the 70s, so i really aught to revise them. I mean tattoos are of course pretty common today, any cunt has them. And i guess if you don’t harm anybody else then what you do in your spare time is totally dandy and fine. But then i get confused ‘cos a man can’t dare say about a female prostitute (Sex worker/escort/masseuse) Oh she does it ‘cos she enjoys doing it, without potentially getting flack from others. But thing is the females at the centre of these orgies are not doing it cos they want money for drugs, they do it cos it’s their thing.

So anyway, my beditation made me feel a bit guilty but i felt it did me good.

since

/ noeljames1

being fucked over by a fellow- well, alleged- comedian i see no future for me with in the world of live comedy. it’s a mess, and anyway i have done everything i wanted to do. i have proven to myself that my father was wrong for a start, that i can make a living from my comedic talent.

so now i’ll go onto something else, why stay in a nest of vipers any longer?

And the boys from the problematic pub podcast have taken over the helm so to speak. they have become successful through their podcast, and, remarkably, have done that without leaving wales.

I get one gig after another pulled this year. Mirth control pulled the Jersey weekend, and don’t seem very keen to get me any replacement gigs. Poor Jon Keys of Paramount comedy has had a mini stroke. Jeez,,,have we reached a cross roads? A rubicon. (mind you someone form his company could have informed me that the Cornwall shows had been cancelled 😦

Had a weekend of gigs in Jersey cancelled in March – it’s enough to drive you to crime, rob a bank,

apart from these (usual) disappointments there’s other bookers out there – who i won’t name – who seem to enjoy breaking the hearts of people like myself, but of course they’ll never succeed in actually doing that. Not in my case. But what a strange business, the work you get depends not on any organised system, nor indeed on merit, but on some random whim and fancy on the part of a club owner. Half of them make decisions based on hearsay i.e. they weren’t actually present at your performance. They one day decide you’re not funny, that they don’t like you. In my case that’s compounded by the fact that a group of people, some of whom i’ve never met, decided to act like fascists, and accused me of shit. Where’s the honour in that ? where’s the community? shove it up your arse.

________________

MY friend on facebook is often posting videos of herself, crying a lot of the time. it makes me sad. But then it also makes me sad that i can never cry, even though i do feel some repressed grief inside.

today i am

/ noeljames1

alone in the house where i live. alone throughout the day until about 5pm, -it’s a state of being which i kind of like sometimes, when i’m in the mood. i sometimes feel that i can use the alone time usefully, to work out things. Things about my self and my own mental make up. of course i could be wrong, and the truth is i am just some kind of dreamer, who can’t really get anything real done. The great hope is to achieve some kind of if not nirvana then something approaching that; to be able to live every day without shame, without being self conscious around others, without….etc etc

having said that i hate being ‘lonely’, i do not currently live ‘alone’ but i have in the past and found it to be terrible. when i lived in a flat in cardiff for about a year i really wanted to get things done, but found myself caught up in my own cold cell of existance. the same feeling when i had a flat in woodfield street Morriston.

yesterday in morriston, woodfield street, i saw a classic Karen encounter, a woman refused to move here car – and the traffic behind her stretched back a ways. i was in the bus immediately behind her, a ringside first floor seat. if only i had a camera phone that would have made it on to youtube. on the other hand…blah blah

alone, there shouldn’t be anything scary about it. But there is. I can only speak for myself. It is something else to be gotten over. If i am transient, and alone for a night or two in a hotel that’s okay. it’s the prospect of living in a flat or house by myself that – well i can tell that i’d be crippled in a sense, not able to physically get things done.

Beatles

/ noeljames1

They lost the joy. you can hear it in the music. that’s not what i mean. i mean they lost the weird funny bubble-gum pop sound that they had in their first couple of years of fame. and never applied it to their later songs. becasue they never made any bubble gum pop songs after a certain time ? Or was it that they just didn;t want them arranged bubble gum. Bubblegum. what the fuck is it ?

joy.

Asimov

a robot lets me ask it three questions. any three questions. One – any three questions?

Is that a question?

No. i was just checking. am i supposed to ask the questions you give me ?

No. don’t be stupid. Ask any three questions.

I wasn’t being stupid. my first question is ‘ why don’t you set the questions?’

Because bla bla bla

Second question…why do you want me to reveal stuff about myself?

That’s a stupid question

why do you think i’m stupid?

Because.