Cleaned myself: good run
Monkey see, monkey do: good luck is holding. Resist.
Tics: No, but …
Believe in God? Apart from the made-up story of Advent, obviously not.
YTLH: will address shortly.
I can’t deliver on the boyfriend deal, and it’s time to set out the case – no money, no job, no home, no hope; all put together with the need to fight the good fight on my own with no assistance from anyone else. Definitely not with Big Tooth. Let’s be honest, she isn’t my thing. I’ve always known that. But just when the moment comes right to say it all, we find ourselves in my cubby hole at the village hall, drawn into a repeat of the Round the Horne on Radio4Extra on my digi-alarm, where Big gets to run through her repertoire of impressions.
She was doing this sort of never ending Kenneth Williams-Piccadilly Polari thing, then, just as it looks like it might finally end, and I start to prepare myself for the speech, Johnny Carver turns up, in breach of lockdown conditions, and we’re forced to scurry to meet him on the other side of the curtain which defines the boundary of our camp. We are still we for now, and we don’t want lepers scaling the city walls.
He says, ‘Oh,’ like he expected perhaps to find just me alone, and he takes a while to recalibrate his equilibrium. I fancied that he might be building up to a resignation as he mumbled and bumbled round to the point, and I found myself wondering whether I would consider it a victory or a defeat if he did; and if that were to be so, whether I should interrupt him to beat him to the point. Anyway, when he finally gets round to it, all he does is ask if we’ve heard of this ‘new brewer on the market’ – then he said their name, but the way he speaks is so far back I didn’t get it – Dog’s Bowl Beer or something like that.
Instead of listening to the plain words he’s saying, I’m analysing angles and motivation – there will be no more notes and corrections from his quarter – not while I’m Lord Mayor of bed blanket Babylon.
But I should have just listened, Eggo was to be taken on his own terms it seems – a mere envoy on behalf of someone smarter, like a dog or something. Perhaps it is Dog’s Bowl Beer? Apparently, he is very close to the fellas (new word, buddies and guys seeming to have dropped out of vogue) that run it, and they’re looking for local ‘quirky’ sponsorship opportunities; then he said something that was half way between guerrilla and gonzo and added a phrase like soc-med-organagrowth, which he deliberately fumbled – like the way John Prescott used to speak when he came across long words*. He’s untypically reticent somehow, but when I say, ‘how would it work,’ just as Big Tooth says, ‘sorry, daddy’s doing it,’ he returns to form by smirking and saying, ‘highest bidder always wins where I come from.’ That’s round the corner from me by the way, where previously a big mouth and an irrepressible ego did the same job.
We look at the floor, and he adds, ‘they love Alan’s advert, might be good for you to meet them.’
Personally, I’m in Eggo’s camp now – Roger will do no more than begrudgingly pay the bare minimum, item by item, will want his name painted everywhere and won’t appreciate what we’re doing; whereas Buddy Guy sounds like he’s about writing a cheque and better still, possesses a healthy disregard for the sensibilities of the general public. Proprio su longo mio strasa [sic].
Rarely sensitive, Eggo gets that we are perhaps divided, and says, ‘I’ll leave it with you. It’s a nice cheque for a few banners – which they’ll send; oh and they’ll do all the cameras and streaming for you too. I’ll call you later to see what you think.’
When he went, Big Tooth says to me that we can’t go with him because it’s her dad’s thing, and sensing the chance to kill two birds with one stone, I say, ‘yes, but he’s a miserable, ignorant, arsehole.’
Then I went for a walk to buy a lottery ticket – it’s that one where there’ll be no more roll overs, and they divide up the dosh between whoever does best. I sense that the wheel has just started to spin back in my direction.
* for observers from overseas: there was a time in recent history in the UK when we had an acting Prime Minister who did not know how to read and write.
Thanks to Brett Jordan for photo.
Dickie White's Diary 
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