“I have a heart condition,” Ali tells me. “I’m sixty five. I have three grandchildren. I am told I must not work, but still here I am, I’m working. My friend who normally does this, he is on holiday. So here I am.”
This is Jaflong. It’s a little place in Ham. It’s very much geared to takeaway but they have a few tables beautifully appointed to catch diners. No licence to sell booze. This is just good quality Indian food at a good price in London. And Ali is great.
My friends have had another row. It’s a bollocks row and they both look foolish to me in it. One of them expected the other one to remember something but they forgot it. Rather than sending reminders and easily preventing it they let it happen so they could sink into the sweet sweet feeling of being right. The other half of it then realised they had fucked up and reacted like a teenager instead of taking account. It’s doublebullshit. We aren’t fifteen anymore. I went for curry. “Keep the places made up,” I said to Ali. They might show.
They didn’t.
I’m home now. Off to bed. Earlier than usual but I’m still on continental time. I start to get sleepy earlier than I’m used to these days. Likely that’s helpful as I’m just about to go to Lou’s and she is early bed early rise.
A proper weekend beckons, with a proper week thereafter, pushing this strange thing into reality in a museum in Southwark. There’s still work to be done. There’s maybe some writing to be done too. We are making up a thing but we need to know we can fill the time. There’s a lot put on the creativity of the individual humans, and we can’t afford to book them for more than one week so it’ll all be made at last minute.
But we work with the constraints we have. Ali has his heart condition, but there he is helping people like me to have tasty food on a Friday night. I am healthy. I can hopefully find a way, with a good team, to bring some form of joy to the people of Southwark.
I’m a bit tired and a bit bilious. I’m off to bed and a long long sleep. Nothing but weekend for two days. Oh joy.
zzz
AlBarclay 