A desperate apple
I am the kind of person who will apologise to anything. If I have to choose between one apple and another, I will say sorry to the apple I decide not to eat. Not out loud. That would be silly. Just in my head and without realising I’m doing it. I will explain to the apple that it’s not personal, it’s not that I hate it or find it unappealing in any way. I’m sure it would be delicious and juicy with just the right amount of crunch. But on this occasion I’ve decided to go in a different direction.
(Arguably it would make more sense to apologise to the apple I was going to eat, but apparently in the world inside my head, where pieces of fruit have opinions on things, they would rather be eaten than rejected, and who can say they’re wrong?)
As I say, I rarely do any of this consciously. I did just now, though. I apologised to the comedian Stewart Lee in my head. I’m halfway through his extremely interesting book How I Escaped My Certain Fate, and I realised I’d slightly misread a bit of it and I read it again to get the detail right. It was a tiny detail. But I became aware that I was having an imaginary conversation with Stewart Lee in which I explained that I’d been ill for the last three days and I’d been up since 4.30am, and that was why I’d briefly thought he was talking about a comedy show in Edinburgh rather than Glasgow. And I was really sorry for getting it wrong. And in my head, the imaginary Stewart Lee forgave me for my error and gave me permission to go on reading. So that was ok.
When you say “I am the kind of person who…” you imply there are others who do this – are you sure about that?
Late to the party, but: oh, absolutely. I have to shut these things out of my mind sometimes, for fear that I will start nearly crying about the fate of the last lonely leek left in the veg bin after I’ve bought it’s brother. (I once bought an extra leek I didn’t need for this exact reason.)
Maybe I can tease some others out of the woodwork.
I remember as a child I cried once because my Dad bought the wrong sort of paint roller from the DIY shop and we weren’t going to use it. I was really sorry for the roller that it was going to waste; not for the waste, for the roller as a thing in itself unable to fulfil its destiny, I wanted him to try to find someone else who needed one. I don’t really do this much any more; but believe me I do understand it.
Also I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – Stewart Lee is ace – if you haven’t got to the bit about the aristocrats yet it is truly incredible. Also all the stuff about Johnnie Vegas is brilliant. And the meta stuff that he is an unreliable narrator of his own autobiography is twistedly brilliant.
I’ve finished the book now and have found it genuinely inspirational – not in the sense that I now intend to become a stand-up comedian, because that would require a more extreme personality transplant than I am currently willing to countenance, but I very much like what he says about the kind of art that reaffirms values as opposed to the kind that aims to take you somewhere you haven’t been before.
I would like a chance to persuade him to stop hating musical theatre, though.
Don’t buy any of the DVDs – not in the sense you won’t love them, but because I have all of them. And the best is the one he released after he wrote that – “If you want a milder comedian, please ask for one”. You can borrow.