Hopping in London (Blog 266)

As I’m anticipating this month will be pretty dull, I thought I’d blog about going to the London Comedy Writer’s Meeting, again. However, as the title suggests, there will be a twist: I will do at least one hop in the city. A bit of a dumb way to generate material, especially for the second time, but I don’t care. On the train journey, I found the London Bridge graffiti artist who likes painting loads of eggs, has extended his territory to more West London. I guess he just really loves eggs. I wonder what talking to the guy would be like. Maybe a conversation would go like this: ‘Hey, what did you eat for breakfast?’ ‘Eggs!’ ‘Great! What did you do afterwards?’ ‘Eggs!’ ‘What do you mean?’ ‘Eggs, I just love eggs so much!’ ‘Oh ok, you can only talk about one thing. Oh, now you’ve drawn some eggs on me… And now you’ve pulled some from your pocket. Can I have some?’ ‘No!’ ‘Why not?’ ‘I just promote them.’ ‘Why?’ ‘Eggs!!’ Weirdo.

Anyway. Soon enough, I arrived at the pub underneath the meeting area. I ordered myself a gin and tonic like a real man. (I hoped). I felt a bit awkward carrying a smiley-faced chocolate lolly in the presence of rowdy and somewhat angry football fans, so to ease the tension, I pointed it in their faces. Interestingly I didn’t get a reaction, perhaps suggesting my behaviour was completely normal to them. Next time you see such fans, check if they’re also carrying smiley lollies. You never know. Drinks received, I went upstairs to see two relatively early people. Time to hop. I simply couldn’t bring myself to hop in front of the already excitable fans.

Ok, calm yourself down, Simon. This won’t be so bad. Just one small jump. That’s all. Embarrassed, I barely left the ground. Even worse, judging by the people’s facial expressions (the ‘what an idiot’ one), I think they saw me. Great, I looked like a freak and I didn’t really even achieve my mission. I’d have to do another. This time I actually left the floor, if semi-discreetly again, but I needed to take things further. I decided I had to do a fearless one when they were looking right at me. That’s a REAL anecdote. With true courage I did it. Did they look impressed with me? No, they just turned their heads away from me. Shame is a strong emotion, but yeah, they turned away with shame. Great. It wouldn’t be so bad, but I’d be spending another two and a half hours with them, which was awkward. I could have explained my actions to them, but just as you can’t reason with a madman, a hopping madman can’t get people to listen to HIM. It goes both ways. Such people just aren’t trusted.

Like last time I went to the meeting, I forgot to bring my toothpick, so I had to resort to using plastic wrapping instead. However, it was too thick to fit in-between my teeth, making it useless. I struggled harder and harder, but to no avail. It didn’t look normal. Then I ate my lemon in my gin and tonic. Again, weirdness levels rising. Now in a full room, could I take things to the max? Could I do the bravest, most badass hop of all time? I couldn’t! Could I?? Maybe if I had a stone cold expression on my face as to say ‘What of it?’, maybe people wouldn’t believe their eyes and there wouldn’t be any nasty rumours later on. Well… No. Let’s not go there. Three hops was enough. That’s three more than most people would ever do, so I think I have a good reason to be proud. Not ashamed, but happy deep down inside.

When the waitress entered the room, I noticed she took my glass, my special chewing stick mentioned two weeks ago, but not my other rubbish. (The plastic wrapping, tooth pick substitute). Did she want me to try squeezing it between my teeth again, so I looked a fool? Well, as far as I know, she never saw me doing that, so rumours must have spread. My ultimate fear. Anyway, in the meeting’s break, I got myself another G&T. Time to eat another lemon. I didn’t eat the pip, though. Can’t you get cyanide poisoning if you eat too many pips? That would be a strange death. With balls of steel, I did a hop in the now crowded room, and I didn’t feel like a prick at all. Oh yeah, you know when I mentioned my ultimate fear? I made it up.

Eventually I left the meeting for Waterloo Station. I found the train home could reach me in either platform 1 or 6. How can you not know? Only in the last five minutes did the display finally work things out, and it told me to go to platform 5! Make up your mind!! That was the journey, basically. I tried to beef this paragraph up, but not only did it make me look like an idiot completely lacking in common sense, only the select few could possibly understand the sentences. I think technically speaking they did make sense, but only after several hours of deep contemplation, and you the reader don’t deserve that. So I’ll end things here, and forget the writing ever happened. Bye!