Simon Waldram (check out his back catalogue here)

Late last year when I went to see Sleaford Mods at Rock City I tweeted about how nice it is to see that it is a curfew gig so you can get home at a reasonable hour. Once upon a time I would have wanted to stay out partying all night and getting home in the morning to sleep all day, although I somehow had the strength to get up for work the next morning to do a full day before doing it all again. When does that go? I realise that we deteriorate with age but at what point did getting home and sitting down with a cup of tea become as exciting as (if not more exciting) the night out itself? Even better than a gig that kicks you out in favour of a discotheque for the youngsters is a gig that you can enjoy and get home for teatime. 

Bodega has hosted these Saturday afternoon acoustic sets for a while but yesterday was my first one. Simon Waldram was on first, who had drawn my attention to this show in the first place as I haven't seen him for a long time. He is always great company to be in and I hope to see more of him socially in the future, we are actually approaching the anniversary of our first meeting when he appeared on my radio show, the same applies to Lisa (deVille) Shepherd and Cibele who were also in attendance. It's scary to realise that I probably haven't seen Lisa in the two years since we filmed an episode of The Random Saturday Sessions. 

Simon was followed by Holly Fallon who it was nice to see again as she was in the final of Notts Factor the last time I was allowed to judge (I'm not what you'd call a safe pair of hands, much better to replace me with someone who wouldn't say boo to a goose). She is on my wish-list for The Random Sessions and as I think she has a big future ahead of her it would be cool to have her film an episode before she gets too big. Simon then joined Emzae on stage during her set, someone I've heard a lot about due to her work with Simon but have not seen live before until now, she has a lovely voice and it would be nice to film with her at some point too. There was also someone I only met for the first time yesterday, a French singer known as Deylise who I exchanged contact with to hopefully film her in the future which all in all makes for a productive day.

Best of all was the fact that this all took place during the day. All gigs should happen during the day as far as I am now concerned. I saw a great line up of acts, had a few drinks (daytime drinking has a slightly better effect than nighttime drinking) and was home and in my pyjamas and eating a pizza by seven o'clock. Let the louts have the night to drink as much as possible, piss in doorways and fight over a woman, I'm at home. 

===

Please make a donation using the PayPal button at the top of this blog. It all goes towards making films, comedy sketches, podcasts, documentaries and more. In return for your generosity I will make everything I create available for free online so that everybody can enjoy it.

My Twitter bio contains the word 'underfollowed', let's try and get rid of it by following me here.

Photo from Papa John's website

Yesterday was one of those days were very little happens besides some bumbling around trying to get some work done and after a long and tiring day we felt like having a takeaway pizza, something we don't do very often. I have a collection of leaflets that have come through the letterbox advertising various takeaways ranging from pizza to Indian via Chinese, fried chicken and kebabs that I keep in a drawer in my office so this should not have been such an ordeal. Next time we decide to have a takeaway we are going to need to start earlier as this was in danger of turning into an ordeal, and the more of an ordeal it became the hungrier and more irritable I became. Incidentally, the reason I am keeping all the leaflets is for an art project that I will probably never get round to doing but it doesn't seem to have stopped me from hoarding these things. Maybe in the future someone will discover them all and write a detailed history of Nottingham's takeaway emporiums of the past, or maybe they'll just dump them in the recycling bin where they probably belong. Part of the ballache of finding somewhere was the fact that a lot of places either had closed down or changed their phone number, and another was sifting through to try and find somewhere that wasn't doing Halal meat. The payoff was that the only suitable place finally provided us with the pizzas we wanted did not sell Coca-Cola, only Pepsi. Why on earth anyone still sells Pepsi is beyond me as it has never happened the other way round where someone has had to tell a customer "I'm sorry we don't have Pepsi, will Coke do?". A similar thing used to happen with pubs that didn't sell Guinness but would offer Murphy's as a shitty substitute. 

Still from the film The Invention of Lying

Another problem I have is nowadays you don't get that little plastic device on top of your pizza anymore. I don't know what purpose this thing served but it looked like a small table from a doll house. Every time, and I mean every time, I got this I would say in a disappointed voice how I needed chairs for my collection and already had a table. 

===

 This week's edition of The Sunday Alternative is here. 

Thank you in advance for donating using the PayPal button at the top of this page. It all goes towards creating podcasts, sketches, documentaries, films and more, all of which I will make available for free in return for your generosity.