November 6th, results of the midterms not yet in. Try telling twitter.

I’m getting off social media as a cure. The continual stream of bullshit is unfathomable, the only good thing to be said about the whole thing is that social media keeps some of the worst maniacs off the street. What did all these nut jobs do before social media? How did they express themselves then? Are these the people that would otherwise be into wife(or husband) beating? Child abuse ? or have we created a whole new sort of human? a sort of social media superman/superwoman -meek mannered off the keyboard but an abuse wielding warrior once the cursor flickers. If so I wish I knew what their kryptonite is, could it be satire? irony? I doubt it ,but we can try. I’ve tried sending love letters to trolls, blowing them cyber kisses, none of it works, they just go on and on and on, well at least they’re not breeding (let us hope). So it’s bye bye Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. Fuxk it all, stop the madness. Let’s make humans great again.

November the first. Day of the dead.

Hello, These are the first words so I really want to get them right, I want to lure you in, this is a journey I’m starting on, it would be great if you could join me. 

At the moment - everything is temporary after all - I’m a professional Stand-up comedian. I’m British but have lived most of my life in Antwerp, Belgium. This is where I started doing Stand-up, about twenty years ago when all other options had dried up, the bar I owned had gone bankrupt, there were no more factories that would hire me, so at the age of 44 I started to spend my weekends doing open mic spots at a local bar. Stand-up had just started getting popular in Belgium and I was in at the beginning - after a few lucky breaks and a lot of serious hard work I ‘made it‘ , I was actually ‘Big In Belgium‘ (Flanders actually, the Dutch speaking half).   That’s the short story, I’ll fill in the rest on the way. What’s the journey? Well it’s me again,starting out anew, I’ve just reached 65 and Stand-up, though still being a large part of my life, is becoming less important to me. I only get the ‘kick’ on stage, I’ve decided to quit doing the theatres with my ‘one man shows’ , I’ve gone back to the comedy roots of bars and smaller gigs and that has freed up a lot of time, time I like to use to reflect, to think about life, day to day in the practice of living it. So I thought “right Nidgy” (yes I give myself a nickname, it stops me taking myself too seriously) , “right Nidgy , you’ve always wanted to see if you could write, stop buying all those ‘self help books’ about ‘How to write...’ whatever and get your nose to the keyboard”. That is the how and the why of this coming to pass. I’ll try to be honest in my opinions and thoughts. Shall we start? 

Today is november the 1st, a bank holiday in Belgium, a time when most people take time to bring flowers to the graves of relatives and loved ones, a day of reflection, the day after Halloween, a day to reflect on death.... or the lighter version ‘the passing of time’. 

Today the scene is ideal, a grey rainy sky, cold, quiet streets. A perfect day to stay in bed till late, have a sort of breakfast/lunch couple of hours at the kitchen table, taking time to take stock. 

It’s been a really busy couple of months, we moved home, I had a replacement hip (bringing my prosthetic total to 4, 2 hips ,2 knees), our yearly holiday to Wales has come and gone, and we have just returned from a city trip to Budapest. Budapest, I like the town, probably because I don’t live there, it has great history and architecture, but at the moment it’s politically on the ‘right wing’ side of europe (are there any others at the moment?). I went to Budapest about three weeks ago to do a gig, but when travelling to do comedy we rarely get enough time to see any of the ‘sights’ ,so me and my wife decided to have a short break. ‘City trips’ we do about 2 or 3 a year, always one to Bristol, the town where I’m from, the place I love but also realise that I could never go back there to live. Belgium has a pretty high standard of living (even for struggling stand-up comedians), housing and healthcare have never been an issue to me here for instance yet when I watch the BBC news it more than not always starts with one of those two news items. I hear (rich) politicians talking about ‘affordable housing’ then prices get mentioned and I realise that if I returned I wouldn’t be able to live in the nice, trendy areas where I love to be when on a city trip in an ‘air bnb’. I would probably end up back on the ‘estate’ where I came from, that prospect doesn’t appeal to me, it probably doesn’t appeal to the people that live there now, so why would I put myself through it? 

The 1st of November here in Berchem, the area of Antwerp where I live, a perfect 1st of November as I said.  Berchem is a great area, the balance of young, old, Belgians, Immigrants is just about right, the ‘hipster - non hipster’ demographic is also pretty much in balance, it’s here that I recently came to live and I love it already. We went for a walk this afternoon along the local shopping street, most of the ‘non chain’ shops were open, an advantage of living in places with a quite large immigrant community is that not all (religious) bank holidays are recognised by all, so there are always shops open. We stopped for a coffee and a bun at the local Marrocan baker ‘Charif’ , it was busy as usual, the coffee is good and you get a free bun with the coffee, what a difference to the Starbucks of this world. At Charifs, it might not be hip, trendy or wifi friendly but cheap prices, good food and free bun with a coffee tick most of the boxes I need to fill. When I’m on Twitter or FB I read some of the ill informed of this world talking about ‘immigrants taking over’ and ‘destroying our culture’ etc etc ,you know what I mean, they used to make me angry, now I just feel sorry for them living in their own ‘apartheid world’, and I get to have the ‘free bun’ at the bakers. A lot of people live large parts of their lives online, never taking time to walk the streets, see what’s going on in the world where humans actually meet and talk to eachother, outside of the self imposed apartheid bubble. Which is why today, I’m burning a candle praying to the god I don’t believe in , hoping that we have a internet failure. On this ‘the day of the dead’ I would like to see the internet dead, or at least in a coma, for a day or two.