Author: fatzorroofcato

So the problem for Sparky is being in a band with me. The bigger part of that is being in *two* bands with me, one of which offers him no protection from my whims (see “Whims“). And I’m on what can only be called a “hot streak” of whims right now.

First up: our friend Amanda called to ask whether, after the success of me and him playing for an hour to a largely apathetic summer fete crowd at her children’s’ school last year, I would be prepared to “host” the music stage at this year’s do.

My response: “it’s not really what I do.”

Her: “you’ll be great”

Me: “but I don’t like children”

Her: “you were great with them last year”

Me: “no, Amanda: I actively dislike children. They scare me”

Her: ” I know; you’ll be great”

Me: “you weren’t paying attention, were you?”*

Her: “well the committee took a vote last night and they think you’ll be great for it”.

Me: “that’s not how comm…”

Me: “Sparky: we’ve um… we’ve got this gig”

So, that’s the first thing.

Second thing happened last Friday. Got a message on the band Facebook page asking whether we’d play a 45 minute set on May 4th and then let the “second band” use our PA. Now: you don’t have to know much about the natural order of things to know that that’s not how it normally works. The big band brings the kit and any support just plugs in to that.

I knew something was up.

So, adjunct information: it’s our local pub; the landlady has told the gig organiser that we’re the sort of band who’ll do nice things for charity; it’s a great charity; who are we to let people down?

I know enough that the answer to “is the band available to turn up and play for 45 minutes” is “no”, without even troubling the Cato WhatsApp group. Not least because we have two gigs the next day (get us!).

But for a bunch of reasons, I figured that I could say yes for Fatzorro & Sparky:

• We like playing whatever
• 45 minutes is a good slot for us
• We get brownie points from the pub
• The woman organising it seems innocently lovely
• It’s for “Living without Abuse” which sadly is an important charity in Charnwood
• Sparky wants an opportunity to try out some of his PA with a full band

Sure enough, he’s game on. I let “Kez” know the band’s not available, but we are. Her reply?

“Have you got any video of you playing?”

So, now, we’re having to audition for a slot on a charity gig where they want to borrow our PA. I know all of my friends in bands would have cut comms at this point but I thought it was funny.

Some minutes later, we’re hired. Phew.

I get the number of the main act and I’m asked to contact them. I text Richard and he says that they have no PA, just a bunch of cables. And no microphones. I ask him what kind of band they are and he goes quiet.

Two days later, a message from Kez: “richard’s gone on holiday. Can you contact the drummer Ezra”. Sure. Yes, yes I can. I do.

Me: “hi Ezra: can you let us know the type of band you are, and your setup, so we can figure out what PA you might need?”

Ezra (who sounds delightful): “Excellent, we are a 5 piece and we play death metal with 2 vocals and we usually DI the bass, since he only has a medium small combo”

I had a moment where I thought he might be the funniest amateur band member I’d ever met. Then he sent me the link to this:

Two hours earlier, Kez had asked me to confirm what our act was called, so she could print the posters. So now we’re locked in.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how our acoustic duo got to be the opening act for the first death metal band to play Loughborough since the millennium.

I *might* need to learn to say “no” sometime soon. But not today.

I’ll let you know how we go.

*cut to us playing last year, for a field full of children and drunk parents:

Me: “You won’t know this kids, but do sing along and you can delight your grandparents next time you see them by singing this song. That’s if they’re still with us, of course. And if they’re not, sorry. But they will die one day, y’know”

Sparky: “stop it!”

So last night my band played its first ever Corporate gig. It was a 30th anniversary party for a recycling company held at a local football ground. A good friend of ours organised the whole thing and we’re delighted she invited us. We’ve never done corporate before and a bunch of heavy things needed to happen to enable it:

• we now have public liability insurance (though how we could do £1million of harm is anyone’s guess (Sparky says “fall on the audience”)
• we had to provide our electrical safety assurance to the venue.

Both of which were the kind of thing that people who take this seriously probably do to make themselves feel better.

Long story short: the day took us eight hours from set-up to break down. We played really well, a “best of” set for an hour. At five to eleven a Polish man told me that he didn’t know any of our songs and that if we played songs he knew then the dance floor would be full. I stopped the band as they were mid-way through the opening of “Monster” and asked the DJ to start playing.

We were clear of the venue by 1150 and on our way home. Sometimes gigs are euphoric and transcendental and sometimes they’re a transaction.

These are not our songs. This is our hobby. I doubt there’s joy in playing for audiences who are not ours. We’re deeply grateful for the opportunity to play at all, and to our friend Shirlene who booked us.

Needless to say, I had a great time and here’s a photo of me and their photographer, who’s also one of their drivers. If you’re ever at a “do” and there’s an amateur photographer, do take their photo: I’ve never met one who wasn’t deeply grateful to be noticed. I know the feeling.

I’m not sure we’re destined for the Corporate circuit!

Last week I was working in London in one of those anonymous meetings venues. Our group were the epitome of self-determining civil servants. They’ve been brilliant and conscientious and humane and thoughtful in all of our dealings.

On Thursday, we arrived at the venue and straightaway, one of our learners complained that the room was cold. Now, since 1999, I haven’t really thermoregulated terribly well, so I’m often the last to find out that a room is too cold.

Her peers confirmed that the room was cold.

Since I am in de facto control here (and either way, if the room’s cold it’s a rubbish place to learn and it’ll show up in the course evaluation) I announced that I would go and see what the options were for the room.

I met the two front of house staff almost immediately I left the room. They told me that the whole building was too hot, so the heating had been turned off. And since our room was cold, we were the exception. The building was full, so the option of a room move wasn’t possible. They were polite, apologetic, and clear that all that was on offer was a fan heater that they would bring to the room as soon as they could. I expressed my disappointment but recognised they had laid out the options and there was only one I could take. I am not a skilled negotiator, but I know when I have no cards left.

I returned to the room and announced my success. The learner in question told me that a heater wasn’t good enough. I told her that I was satisfied that I had gone as far as I could and that she was welcome to do better. “I’ll sort it”, she said with a purposeful swish out of the room.

Whilst she was gone, her colleagues agreed that they wish they were as assertive as her. I felt like a complete spanner, returning from a simple negotiation with a bum deal.

Ten minutes later, we had a fan heater in our room.

I’m going to suggest that it was a run-through for this week’s Brexit Stage 1 negotiation.

We ended up with the only possible option, but we had to wave our arms a bit to get the thing that was offered in the first place.

Onwards.

(Above is me standing in front of the EU parliament earlier this week. I think they’ve already moved our flag round the back)

We kept wondering what the National Guard was, for no big reason, the last two weeks whilst we were guests of America. 
Eventually, on the tram back from Tijuana, I remembered to check Wikipedia. 

Turns out it’s a set of state-specific reserve soldiers, who can be called upon to assist Federally but who are bound to their home state as a priority. Like a “well regulated militia, necessary to the security of a free State”. It’d be terrifying in the UK (Lancashire and Yorkshire would compete for stupid, Leicestershire would accidentally find it had an Italian manager and a mercurial striker, and Surrey would have bought a militia composed entirely of psychopathic Chechnyas and Jean Claude Van Damme). 

But it seems like a great idea in immediately-post-independence USA. 

That’s all you need, States, a militia. Just them. Probably best if you arm them: that was they can fight down when the people get unruly, as well as up if the Feds get a bit heavy-handed. 
And when you stop crying, let Jim Jeffries tell you what the rest of us did when this happened. 

Then buy a musket. 

Well. I know I said there might be problems, but in the end, it was the easiest part of the journey. 

After another run (this time along the harbour of San Diego) and, to counter that, the biggest breakfast burrito, we took the trolley to the border.

It was an easy crossing. 

Of course as soon as we were on Mexican soil, the selling began. Not as bad as Mumbai, but pretty bad. 

I got Mrs T all the way into Tijuana to the weird St Louis arch and back. This is her photograph

We stopped to have a crazy number of fabulous margueritas on the walk back to the border. Here are some of those 

As a child, one of the first records I heard was “This Guy’s In Love With You” by Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. I pinched the album from my father’s record collection and it became a favourite of mine as a student. I can’t help thinking that the Tijuana Herb was thinking of wasn’t the gaudy mix of dentists, cialis pharmacists and trinket sellers that we encountered.
As a twenty-something, I fell in love with the music of Tim Buckley. I’m guessing that his Tijuana Moon wasn’t written about the hurried tourist crossing point to get your gob or knob sorted before queuing to head back to California. 
So here’s the thing. For most of my life Tijuana was shorthand for the most exotic place on earth. Having been there twice, I can confirm that it’s time has passed. (I just sang along to the Herb Alpert version of TGILWY and Mrs T will tell you that I cried. Of course I cried. I’m Welsh and it’s beautiful). 

As it happens, our trip was as good as I think it might have been. We crossed the border both ways with limited delay, were bothered by street peddlers relatively little, and had the correct quantity of frozen cocktails that the border guards didn’t hear us slurring. 

Tonight we will head to a piano bar that I remember from last time I was here, and tomorrow we’ll fold up the tent and head to LAX, thence to our home. 

This has been just the most delightful trip. Everything we’ve done has been fun and mostly effortless. 

We spent another hour in our favourite bar talking to our favourite SD lawyer (Tim Richardson – look him up if you ever need a defence lawyer for a crime you’ve committed in Southern California). Here’s Tim with us, last night. 

We shared thoughts on sports, Brexit, Scottish Independence, and he was astonished that if we had a referendum on capital punishment, it would be a landslide for hanging. 
Bless you, America. We’ve had the best time. You’ll understand that we can’t wait to get home. 

 

So we treated LA just like the great big freeway that Dionne told you it was and San Diego has already turned out to be a great final destination. 

From lucking out in a legendary hotel (here’s us on the roof terrace)

 we had an amazing hour with a local lawyer discussing medieval England in a brilliant Sports Bar/microbrewery. Claire battled on points of history; I drank beer and occasionally refereed. Then we struck out for what TripAdvisor said was the best pizza in SD. 

It was 20 blocks away. 

It was a studenty takeaway place. 

I liked it. 

There may well have been better, closer. 

There might always be better. 

That’s the problem with the internet. 

Next month I’m away with Finbar, the man with whom I did this trip in 2000 (pre-smartphone). He and I were in Bruges a couple of years ago. The effect of tripadvisor on him appeared to be paralysing. Everywhere he found that we could eat, we’d agree on. In the time it took to get there, he’d have found three other places that might be better. He eventually admitted that even his wife wants to kill him when he does it. It’s like an addiction.

There may well have been better, closer. 

We’ll never know. And that’s cool. 

Here’s the pizza

The plan (you’ll recall the plan) had been to dally and then spend a day on a lazy river in one of the very very many water parks that encircle Los Angeles. It was a brilliant plan and it’s conception was from a coin toss. Couldn’t be more me. 

Then I checked and it turns out that, if you choose to holiday after the school holidays (for obvious financial reasons) then there’s a good chance that “seasonal” attractions may be closed. Couldn’t. Be. More. Me.

Anyway: the mooch down the SF to LA coast has been unbelievably lovely. Monterey and the 17 miles we cycled to and from Carmel were just unreal. 

San Luis Obispo was a staging-post for us to consider the last two live days of the trip. SLO (voted America’s Happiest City, apparently) is bloody lovely. I’m writing this in a bar called the Frog and Peach and they have sport (sports, if you’re American) live music and “pint night”. Yup. 

So, in a panic, I threw to Mrs T, who has had a rough day today. She woke up feeling a bit under the weather and has boldly managed through a drive south and a sit on Avila Beach. She consulted her phone. She decided that Disney was out of the question (horrific for a day-trip). And so, to my astonishment, she picked tomorrow’s destination. 

We’re going to San Diego, baby. San Diego. 

My original target. 

We may yet wander to Tijuana, if the winds are with us. 

So, here’s the thing: I bloody love a whim. 

It was a whim that we stayed in Monterey for another day. A whim that we rented bikes and had an amazing day pedalling to and from Carmel. 

And then when we look back (post-hoc rationalising again) it was whims that got us:

• A trip to Berlin because Lollapalooza was having its first trip to Europe
• A summerhouse instead of another shed
• Panda (by a mile our most popular cat; we’d only gone to collect two older cats from the sanctuary when his litter lifted him up so we could see him)
• Me in Loughborough after I’d left for London and then Jersey

And when I put this to Claire, she told me that the other whim in her life was the one on which she decided to marry me. 

No biggie. 

Anyway, did I mention that the hills around SLO are tonight being consumed by a forest fire?

It was tails. I was delighted. Tomorrow we dally to San Luis Obispo and we have a plan past that. 

Sorry to keep you waiting. 

I’m not a planner. 

I do have plans, but they’re typically extrinsic. I know where I need to be tomorrow (though very rarely the day after that), I know whether there are things that need my attention at some point in the future (but only if not fixing them will cause a problem: if the plate is still spinning that’s fine). 

At work I have grown-up colleagues who do all the logistics stuff. At home I have Mrs T who has taken, in recent years, to sending me calendar invites to even the most basic thing. If I reciprocate it will be because I’ve bought tickets to an event I hope she might like to accompany me to, or because Cato has a gig. 

Weirdly, I do the bookings for the band most of the time (just because it’s often me that’s asked whether we can fulfil a date) and the fixtures for my cricket club (a role I took on in 2002. It struck me as odd that every other fixture secretary was close to or well-past retirement but now I know that it’s a job that you never get to quit until you die). But both of these roles are “extra-curricular” and anyway, passive. 

So, this holiday had worked fine whilst we were heading towards the fixed point of Mrs T’s middle-weekend: Alcatraz Friday, Monterey Aquarium Sunday. I’d managed to get us to both in plenty of time, though as I mentioned previously, we probably could have done another day on the Oregon coast to do it justice. Now though, today, we ran out of plan. 

We have to be at LAX on Friday, sometime (by which I mean, a very specific time- Norwegian are unlikely to hold the flight for us, but that Mrs T will know what that time is and I don’t really need to, so I currently don’t). But between arriving at (the frankly astonishing) Aquarium (and if you go yourself, I recommend the fish.) (*boom, tish*) and heading out for dinner tonight, I realised I needed a plan. 

First part of the plan was sorted for me when Mrs T said that she could do another day in Monterey, so we booked another night at the hotel and made a (tentative) plan to cycle the peninsula to Carmel tomorrow. I’ll let you know how that pans out. 

For the rest of the week, there were three options (btw, I’m the king of options: they’re different from plans):

• Drive to San Diego and walk to Tijuana, as we had in 2000. Lots of driving, Tijuana is a tacky shithole at the crossing and there’s every chance that US Border policy might change in the hour we’re gone leaving us stranded with only 6-for-$10 margueritas and off-prescription drugs for solace
• Drive to Yosemite and spend a night near there. I’ve a feeling I’ve “done” Yosemite but I wasn’t paying attention at the time. I’ll ask Finbar when I return. Either way lots of driving. The *real* reason I was interested though was that the route would take us through the staging-post of Merced (Welsh for something like ‘girls’ I think; might be ‘clowns’) which has a suburb called Loughborough. Just so that I could ask locals how they were pronouncing it. 
• Dolly down Hwy 1, and tit about on beaches, scenic views and increasingly gentrified coastal towns before slipping into LA in time to fly home.

You may think that in this telling, I’ve already made my mind up, but far from it. I’ve certainly indulged in a little post-hoc rationalisation. For most of the day, the 900-mile detour to get a photo of a sign was way out in front. 

Here’s what happened. At lunch, Claire was torn between two menu choices: mussels and snapper. I suggested she toss a coin: she did, mussels won. When she came to order, the restaurant was out of mussels. She was briefly disappointed and then happy with the alternative. It was the perfect combination of free choice and destiny and one of the things that we share is a fairly optimistic fatalism about things in general: seafood preferences, politics, cat husbandry. But it reminded me of a study that I read about somewhere where folks were asked to toss a coin to decide on (moderately) significant life choices on the proviso that they would be bound by the outcome. The trick being that actually the study was looking not at compliance, but at the subject’s reaction to the outcome. So in fact, if a subject was delighted with the outcome, great; if they were sad or disappointed or even mortified, it suggested that actually it wasn’t the choice they wanted to make and so they were advised to ignore the coin flip and, I guess, flop, with impunity. 

Again, I may not have been paying attention to that, either, but it struck me that I could use the same process to help me settle on a plan. 

Now remember, this is about plans, not decisions. I have no problem making decisions: I do it plenty and increasingly and sometimes I’m wrong but always I’m happy I made the decision. This is about plans. And specifically a plan that affects how we end what has been a great trip so far. 

I had ruled out San Diego. My own caveats were enough to make it more trouble than it was worth. Also, since we hadn’t started by setting foot across the US/Canada border, it wasn’t as if we could claim to have done the whole West coast from soup to nuts. 

But the pointless but funny diversion inland vs the lazy coast road that loads of people had done was the coin-toss moment. Flip the coin, then decide how you feel about it. 

I needed a coin. Claire’s been custodian of the cash whilst I’ve marvelled at my Monzo card (oh my, how good is the Monzo card? You must get one). Consequently, I had no coin. 

I found a coin under the bed of our hotel room. (I found other stuff too but you don’t need to know what and the cleaner probably needs to be in a programme somewhere.)

• Heads, the lazy beach run to LA
• Tails (for Wales!), Loughborough, CA, we’re coming for you. 

Tell you how that went later. 
In the meantime, here’s a fish I thought looked like Mark King the singer and bassist with Level 42. (You have to imagine that he’s playing a bass, obviously)

Reviewing my photographs from a wonderful day in San Francisco (ran 5k, went to Alcatraz, walked 30,000 steps for the first time ever, had a very American comedy club night), Mrs Trigg picked this one and said

…that’s going to be a Cato poster, isn’t it. 

I have reached “predictable” and, d’you know: I rather like it.