Oh, I have bin there...
AT the weekend I was gigging at one of me favourite venues - the Stand in Newcastle.
One particular night, a whole bunch of 50-something lads on a work’s night out were sat rather self-consciously right in the front row.
They hadn’t been to a Comedy club before so they didn’t know .... although I reckon it was the devious comedy savvy younger company employees who had cruelly steered these silver foxes to the suicide seats.
Nevertheless, I felt an instant bond with them; indeed more than that - I felt their pain! I simply wasn’t used to it!
The only way I usually get to see a larger group of people my age or older is in the doctors’ waiting room!
In fact, going to the doctors is the new clubbing for us over 50s; you get to hang around with your mates and at some point you’ll be popping some pills or, if you’re lucky, perhaps even getting your kit off!
Anyway, with a bunch of folk my age I felt able to go on a sort of old radgies charter - a state of the nation speech for the generation who knew how to fix an unraveled cassette tape with a couple of Bic biros or eat a meal without taking a photo of it first.
It was pure therapy - I could unburden my soul...
The first confession was about my new obsessions (I didn’t mean that to rhyme but I’m leaving it in cos it’s strangely comforting).
Alas, this man is no longer concerned with the protest politics, edgy music, latest fashions or other such passions of his youth.
Indeed, all of my energies and focus have been transformed and condensed into one solid, physical entity.
Me wheelie bin. Even on non-collection days my other half will regularly catch me clandestinely curtain twitching in the kitchen or tooting fearfully out the landing window.
“You’re not looking at that damned wheelie bin again, are you?” she will enquire with practiced resignation.
After pathetic initial denials I will guiltily ‘fess up like a nine-year-old caught standing next to his sister’s empty Cresta pop bottle (it’s frothy man!) with an orange juice ‘Tash.
“Aye, ah have been lookin’ at the bin again pet - but Somebody’s MOVED it!
“It’s a full 3.5 centimetres off true North and ah knaa’ who did it - it was THAT ******* ”
Of course I did. No matter where you live, everybody has a pain-in -the Jacksie radgie neighbour, who is only ever referred to as “THAT ******* ”.
It had to be him; cos I watch what that wassock’s up to with nearly as much interest as I pay to me wheelie bin.
I regularly glance over his fence and exclaim “Why the hell does somebody with a garden that smaalll need a freakin’ trampoline that massive?” Givowwer!
Ah divvnt want to see his feral, nonparented kids at the best of times, so I certainly divvnt want to see the cheeky little gyets suspended in mid air shouting and bawling down at me in the ruined privacy of me back garden.
(This isn’t Chav-bashing you’ll find them from the dodgiest estate right through to Darras Hall).
It was worse back on bonfire night - or should I say ‘bonfire month’ when discussing the actions of the region’s feckless ‘hard of thinking’ community.
The idiot fatha (aye the one known as “That ******* ”) let them bounce up and doon waving what looked like fireworks.
A stupid thing to allow, especially when it was quite obvious that the wording of the firework’s instructions had clearly out-stripped the average literary level of the household.
Luckily, neybody was hurt. But that’s not the point.
Not only could somebody have been injured, but the sparks could have wafted over me garden.
They might even - in the unthinkable doomsday scenario - have landed and set alight to me Wheelie bin ....
Mike is performing at Chester Golf Club on Friday, December 1.