Happy long shift

The staff at Birch are awesome. Management allow them to have personalities, which means we, the guests, are relaxed as well. One guy keeps breaking shit while flaring. He will eventually be a NINJA. Others shine brightly in other ways. There are some really gorgeous hearts working here while they sort out their brilliant self employed careers. Great people. Some of the staff have now cottoned on that I’m mister Panda though and not just a guest. I have to ask them not to blow my cover. “Pint of IPA, Mister Panda?” “Shhhh”

The artist was here today with her small daughter who used to be scared of Panda but now comes into the store with joyful confidence.”I’m trying out a new shop assistant,” I’ll tell the punters, and she adds a brilliant sideways angle, gleefully hitting random buttons on the till while being obviously a child. If she’s next to me and someone asks me a question I’ll bat it to her and whatever she tells them I’ll augment. It might not always be the perfect answer but the delight is in seeing how much more confident she gets every time she does it. It’s nice to see her grow in that way. “She’s learning chutzpah.” I think that’s part of the draw people have to parenting. You get to watch a person realise things, and see what happens when you expose them to different stimuli. Awesome to have a mum who converts trauma into colourful mad joy. It’s a dynamic I recognise from me and my mum. “What the fuck are you doing here with your boys, Thérèse?’ “I’M MAKING MEMORIES.” She taught me freedom from convention brilliantly.

This is fun and freeing, being mister Panda, despite long hours in a constricting head. Three long shifts and Ava and I are knackered. I’ve got the playlist going round and round in my head. But I’ve had some very weird and fun chats, and I’ve had some glorious moments of spontaneous playfulness. This has felt like a healthy relationship between us and Birch despite the fact that I’ve mostly been so tired at the end of the day that all I’ve got left for the blog is bitching about rooms or some cunt that wanted an inflatable carrot. All of that was just fleeting.

Which reminds me, broccoli lady came in today and played a little bit with her nature-averse child. That felt like closure of sorts. If you don’t know who I mean by broccoli lady, don’t worry too much. On the first full day I forgot how people can be and went in unguarded and a few people were a bit weird and I wrote a long angry blog.

But it is hard to remember the details of these panda days in the evenings. For 9 hours I’m looking at people’s feet through a tiny gauzy window, while listening with every fibre of my being to loads of random stuff. I love the present moment, I love to be responsive and quick witted. It’s joyful but I can’t see people’s faces mostly. I just have to trust the mask and the fact that I’m surrounded by all of the gorgeous ridiculous stuffage that makes up this JoyBomb. I never would have put myself into this particular art if I saw it. “I’m too weird and hairy,” I would have thought. I get joy from this too, and I get to explode my own expectations and go in unexpected directions. Plus I can have all the milk I can drink. And occasionally they let me put a whisky on my tab.