, What I Did Last Night - The Tubs at Zerox

 

'You've been reading some old letters. You smile and think how much you've changed. All the money in the world, wouldn't buy back those days.'

Live in the now. That's never the worst idea.  Doff your cap to the past. Luxuriate in it occasionally. But don't let yourself get dragged down a rabbit hole. There's danger in the past. Meanwhile plan for the future. Keep feathering your nest, But live .... in the now. 'Gee thanks Grandad! Why don't you stick to the music and skip the philosophy. ,'

I'm not a grandad. Nor a father. I've no regrets on either front.Yesterday  I'm awake at six.I  lie in bed looking at social media. There's a post from a friend that takes my fancy. About a band advertising themselve a Neurodivergent Post Folk. This confuses me in any number of ways. 

Why would anyone want to be Post Folk, even if they could be. I won't go into the  'and how can this process be Neurodivergent bit. When exactly do we get to the 'Post' Folk Label stage and how can this be a desirable thing. Perhaps I should just keep out of this altogether. Everyone else seems to enjoy this state of affairs.

When I was growing up om the Eighties Folk was something you recoiled from in horror or gazed on in uncomprehending stupefecation. Why would you want to grow a beard that appeared to have living matter in it. Go to a bar and sing hey nonny noe when you were still in your twenties. Times changes and things come back. Best to go with the times, the flow of history if you can. There's a time for every purpose under heaven .

I get up and put Lankum's Livelong Day on my headphones as I plan my lessons and prepare for the coming day. Prepare my powerpoints. Send them to my students in advance of my lessons. I'm settled in a nice routine now, a year into doing this.I'm in flow motion, Know how I need to prepare. Cut and paste, make sure the date and the company logo are correct and I'll be ready when the time comes and I need to click on Google Calendar, adjust my backdrop and prepare myself to be admitted into a virtual classroom in Dussledorf, Hamburg or Wuppertal. 

I'm relaxed now. I smile and think how much I've changed. My day is becoming more natural to me with every passing week. Unwittingly I get involved in a Social Media conversation with a good friend from my university  days which drags me momentarily back to the most traumatic days of my entire lifetime. My university days,.Boy, those were experiences.  I cry a bit but this isn't a problem anymore. I've learned to cope with it, been helped to cope with it by a very good friend who I'll always be grateful to. Anyway, time for that bath. 

While I'm in the bath I think of what record to play. This is important. I have a cover class at 10 this morning but regardless of the time I like to listen to an album in its entirety before I start my working day. When I was very young I had a bedtime story. Now I'm, err 'old', I'm at least entering that vicinity, (60 later this year) I have a morning album.Nothing stands between me and it.

I try not to repeat myself but I look for something to set the tone for the day. I generally attempt to settle on something in the bath but its open to late change if I flick through my albums and something takes my fancy at the last moment. I don't like to conform to a script. Least of all my own. This morning it's Cat Stevens Mona Bone Jakone I put it on. Lady D'Arbanville, that dented dustbin on the sleeve. Good old Cat. He's one with more than nine lives.

I'm dressed and breakfasted. My blog posts are posted and I'm bright and bushy eyed when I go to my cover class at ten. There's always a moment of suspense when I click on Google Translate and am sent to the virtual waiting room and then I wait for admittance. I love this moment. Of indesicision and anticipation. Who will let me in. If it's one of my regular groups will it be Rainer, Or Patrick. Barbara. Or Axel. 

If it's a new group who will I teach. I wonder what will they be like. It's much better than teaching a class in the flesh I've come to realise. There's enornous potential, possibility just in the distance, Those teachers who cling onto the face to face teaching are often struggling with control issues I suspect.This is the Post Lockdown world. Get with the beat baggies !

Suddenly I find myself in a room wuth R*****. She works for Deichmann, the German shoe guys. She works in Dussledorf and is in her fifties I'd say and it is immediately obvious we have ninety minutes together as no one else in the group seems likely to show. Get in.! She's a charming, lovely lady with big glasses, great English and a big smile.She trained as a Fashion Journalist. It's immediately clear that I will learn more than I need to teach. I just need to tweak the paperwork to keep the surveillance middle managers happy.

How should I put this, surveillance middle managers are never happy and you can never keep them satisfied. They hate their jobs and often hate their lives. Their emails often come across as cries for help. Distress signals. They will blame you for things whenever they can. Never mind, I have the best of the deal right now. I have 90 minutes with R****.

We talk about Sicily. We talk about the differences between the Italian and German mindset.We talk about fashion. We talk about the Zeitgeist. We talk about Vladimir Nabokov.  She's been reading Lolita. I recommend Pale Fire. I recommend Mad Men. 

She tells me that Influencers she suspects are on the way out.You heard it here first. In return I talk about the Unreliable Narrator. Vladimir Nabokov, Gunter Grass. The Catcher in the Rye. We end with Breakfast In Tiffany's. Marilyn Monroe was originally cast for this role but then she died and Audrey Hepburn made it hers. 

Good thing all round we decide given what Holly Golightly did for a living. Something that is artfully glossed over. Both with the book and the film. With Marilyn it would have been difficult to gloss over so artfully. And frankly might have made for a much darker cinematic. experience too.

The ninety minutes speed by like the intercity from Dussledorf to Cologne. We say , 'see you next week.'  I put Scary Monsters on and make myself a cup of tea wondering at how I get paid for this and hope that this turn in the road can continue on straight open highway until I retire and beyond. 

My next class, some lovely regulars is more smooth driving. We talk about driving accidents. I realise I need a business twist in the lesson for the pen pushing surveillance prison warders who check my work records for crossed 't's and spotted 'i's. With this in mind I get the students to describe work processes so I have something that will make them think I'm doing what they have told me I need to do. They don't realise that I'm half way through the tunnel and on my way to the beach, Good luck to them on their own tunnels. I can't help them with those I'm afraid.

My teaching is done and once my paperwork is too I'm off to the pool. Every day if I can. Sam is there at the desk. He's not happy because Newcastle United have won their first domestic trophy for 70 years and he's from the Sunderland area.A Mackem. Mackem's are not happy. They haven't been for a while now. And I suspect never will be again really. I can't do anything about that either..

I do my lengths. Have some time in the jacuzzi and sauna and make my way home. I still have a couple of hours to kill.  So I put on Michael Clayton and heat up a pizza. There's something really satisfying about watching a film you love for the umpteenth time. And they don't get better for me than Michael Clayton. George Clooney fighting for truth and the little man. Tom Wilkinson running naked through a parking lot and buying lots of French bread. Tilda Swinton being a psychotic corporate witch and getting her comeuppance. Those horses. Sorry for the spoiler. Why haven't you seen it?

Once it's done. I'm off. Downtown. The twenty minute walk down the hill to The Quayside and The Crown Posada, the most atmospheric pub in Newcastle. There are plenty of wondrous pubs in Newcastle but The Crown Posada is the most atmospheric. No need for further discussion.

To take a liberty with Television's Venus, one of the songs for me, 'Newcastle looks so Medieval. It seems to flap, like little pages.' Newcastle is some gorgeous city. There's no other description of it. Especially in the early evening as the days lengthen and Spring approaches on a daily basis The way the light falls on the gorgeous Georgian fronts as I make my way down Grey Street. You can have that London Put it in your pipe Stick it.... Let's leave it at that. 

I get myself a non alcoholic Erdinger and take a place in the front bar, under the paintings. An elderly couple come and take a seat next to me and chat together in happily married communion. I text nonsense to friends and enjoy my beer. As they get it up to go he elderly man gives me a glassy look, leans across to me and confers. 'They'll all be wanting to sit next to you before too long you know.' I nod back and smile. In a short moment this encapsulates exactly what I love so much about this city, 

My beer is sunk and after a brief trip to the gutter I'm off round the corner to Zerox. Mt.Misery will be due soon. Zerox is pretty in pink but crouched in scaffolding. :Like a pretty teenage lass in intensive braces. It's better in the long run.. I head inside, head up to the Shooting Gallery.

Walter is there at the door of course. Walter is pretty much always there. He's a fixture of cool events. He checks my name on the list, waves me in. It's early doors. There's plenty of room. And plenty of appreciation for Mt. Misery. Hartlepool's finest. Hartlepool may have many greats band but Mt Misery will always be its finest in my book.

I've seen them a few times. They're nice lads. A tight quartet with jobs to maintain but who just love doing this. They're between albums one and two. They're tight as newlyweds , they jangle like it's 1981 and Postcard Records are still putting out singles. They sing about love and they have a lovely sound. Shame the sound desk at Zerox is so poor and the distortion approaches dangerous levels.I need some earplugs.

I leave before they're done. I enjoy the set but hey my ears! My health. I need a break. A cool Scouser comes past my table downstairs. He's come down from Edinburgh where he works just to see them though he's staying from the rest. He's in the process of rolling a tab. I ask him if he'd mind. Hey, I know I'm a bad person. Don't worry, plenty have told me. He obliges and we go out. Not really for fresh air but to attend to a bad habit. A taste for poison. 

I don't get the guy's name but he's a lovely bloke. We talk about Glasgow V Edinburgh. Everton V Liverpool. He's an Everton fan. I sympathise with him.  This is blokes talk. I'm sure women's conversations rarely follow this pattern. We chat a bit to the Mt Misery guys who are out for the same reason as we are. R.E.M. Vs The Smiths. I tell them that I saw R.E.M. Several times. Very early on. Not only am I a bad person. I'm a dull one. Hey! Sue me. 

Back upstairs Stannington the main support are on. Their reputation proceeds them. At least to my ears.They're a local five piece and they're sloppy in the way that support bands were back in the day and I think always should be. The lead singer is wearing a ragged, lived in blue pullover that seems in danger of untangling and wraps the microphone so frequently arounnd himself you wonder whether it might be prudent to call 999.

 Yes folks! He loves Morrissey. The rest of the band don't seem to mind The Smiths either. They're not quite the finishhed article. But I expect they'll blossom and bloom in the coming seasons. They're ones to watch.

Two bands down and one to go. I'm starting to wane. Hey. I've had a long day. I go and plonk myself in the dentist's chair opposite Walter as the Shooting Gallery fills up. Word is out about The Tubs. This can still happen, even in 2025. Their's is a wave building and they're clearly preparing to ride it.

I hear shrieks and scowls and twangs from iside the darkened Shooting Gallery. The Tubs are doing their soundcheck but I also suspect they are highly inebrietad. Stannington's vocalist was swigging from the bottle when not attempring to aspyhxiate himself with his microphone cord. It's so confusng being young. Anyway, more drinking onstage I say. Putting on a a show is something more bands should aappreciate and take responsibility for. These are tough times lets face it. 

As soon as I get into the Shooting Gallery I realise I will not be here for the whole set. The Tubs are clerly a formidible proposition. Muscled, boisterous and extremely exhuberant and committed. Richard Thompson fronting the Smiths with Mission of Burma and yes early R.E.M. to boot. 

But the room is close, the sound is problematic and I'm tired. The Scottish drummer is absolutely shitfaced. Although he keeps time and is very funny, his diatribes between songs trying to encourage us to buy merch get repetitive as drunks always do and he starts to embarrass his bandmates increasingly. Anyway I've seen enough to wonder whether The Tubs might indeed be the future of Rock & Roll. If such a thing is possible in 2025. Some things were simpler in Bruce Springsteen's youth. I head home.