When I decided for a fact that I was going to move to London, I told everyone who would listen. It was an excellent tactic: by sharing my ambition with others, I was forcing myself to go through with it. I knew if I didn’t then I’d forever be asked about it, forever have people go “what happened with that London thing?” and no one needs constant reminders of their failed dreams. So I told people, and I got here.
Then when I was here I decided I wanted to do comedy. This was something I’d been toying with before I moved, an ambition I’d only really shared with my best friend Nidal. I never knew how much I’d love the experience of watching comedy, having only gone to the occasional show back home. I never knew that it’d become my favourite thing in the world to see excellent comedians try out new material. I never knew that I’d end up going to the same pub nearly every Monday night because I’d found a night I liked so much that it didn’t matter which specific people would be there, I’d always enjoy it.
But here we are.
My emotions have been all over the map lately, and I’ve been feeling a bit lonely and a bit homesick. There’s a bitterness that’s boiled up in me about certain things and I’m trying badly to get rid of it because bitterness is like poison. I’m a positive person! I make lists of positive things when I find happiness hard to come by! I try to find the positive spin to everything! But there’s no rhyme or reason to emotions, really, and I was bound to feel homesick eventually. Home was wonderful. I just need to be in London.
But I try to drag myself out of that sort of sadness, and when I was feeling sad in late 2011/early 2012 about being so far away from my dream city I turned to Muppets (yes, you read that correctly). Bright colours and soft fabrics. Positivity and absurdity and something irresistibly joyous. And yes, I’m obsessive, and yes, I may have spent time on Muppet Wiki (a thing that exists), but it made a great distraction at the time.
Recently it’s been makeup. I’ve stated many, many times in my past that if I could be glam for a living then I absolutely would. This remains true. I’ve even figured out how to tie it into my other aspirations. I just take such great enjoyment from playing with makeup, and have for years. It came with confidence, really; it came from reaching the realisation that it’s better to be stared at on my own terms (elaborate makeup, rainbow hair, flashy outfits) than it is to be stared at because I’m enormously tall. There’s no invisibility for me, so may as well give ‘em a show.
And give ‘em a show I do.
So I fell into a stronger obsession with makeup for a while. Makeup and nailpolish. If I wasn’t feeling fully myself internally, I figured I may as well overcompensate externally. Surely it had to even out somehow.
I’m not a makeup blog, don’t know enough about makeup to talk about it really. I like playing with it. I like bright colours. I really, really like Urban Decay’s new Electric palette, essentially my holy grail of makeup things.
And because I own the holy grail of makeup things, I find myself ever-so-gradually shifting my attention over to clothes, to shoes, to the most glorious boots ever to exist. I’m going to be so goddamn glam.
Money can’t really buy happiness, but it helps sometimes.
There is nothing that can possibly force a person out of a funk so well as the night I had Monday, though. Because I have gone to the same pub nearly every Monday night for just over a year now. Because I’m their regular. Because I’m made to feel so very, very welcome. Because I love watching comedians do new material, regardless of who they are.
Imagine my excitement when the secret special guest on Monday was my absolute favourite. You know who I mean. I can’t hide my ridiculously obsessive nature, although I try to play it cool. It’s part of who I am that every now and then something or someone will take over my brain, and this particular someone has over the past four-or-so years influenced my life in a remarkably positive and overwhelming way. But I won’t go on about it.
Noel Fielding was at Old Rope on Monday.
When I’d decided that I absolutely needed to try to do comedy, would regret not trying it, I used the same tactic I did to make myself move here. I told people. I told my friends, then I started to tell the comedians with whom I have the best rapport. Knew that no one would rightly go “but you’re not funny” but still felt impressed that they didn’t. Sure I haven’t gotten in front of a crowd yet, but I can talk up a storm about comedy. That has to count for something, right…?
I’m telling you now, again. I’m going to do comedy. I’m going to. This became an absolute certainty the moment my glorious comedian pal Tiff Stevenson told my favourite human being (but I won’t go on about it) that she was trying to get me to do comedy. Essentially told him I’m amazing. And he, in turn, was encouraging.
The typical response to my telling people that I need to be something is “but you are something.” and I know I am, but I’m not enough. I’m not everything I want to be. But I will be. And I’m getting there. I have, for instance, spent time in the presence of my favourite comedian. He’s indicated that he remembers me from our previous meetings, which was a marvellous revelation.
I’m not going on about it!
I said before that one of my new year’s resolutions was to be comfortable, though, and I was. In that most insane of interactions, I was more or less okay. I didn’t leave feeling foolish about anything I said. I was content to sit back and witness a conversation in progress instead of needing attention. I was present, and it was an impossibly amazing experience.
That’s all. That’s all I have to say.
…
Okay, one more thing: I’m just stunned at my London life. Absolutely stunned that I could move to a city with ridiculous daydreams about what might happen when I got there, and have them all come to fruition. I have dedicated a previous post to this topic (I do want to visit all my previous incarnations and give them a heads up of what’s to come), but it’ll never seem normal. Never. But who needs normality?
And hey, here’s a photo of Noel Fielding and Tiff Stevenson from Old Rope’s Instagram, because it makes me happier than anything rightly should:
Leslie Ewing-Burgesse* 