Gorillas! Busking!

Do you live in Manchester? Do you have a job that allows you to work whenever you like or, if you so choose, not at all? Do you have an appreciation for crispy duck pancakes with a musical accompaniment?

If you have answered 'yes' to the above questions, then I really must insist that you make you way down to the pagoda in Manchester's glittering China Town at four thirty this afternoon. There you can witness me and my be-hatted companion, Ben, performing a twenty minute set of our own devising, to the rain-smeared streets and, I imagine, a certain number of bemused-looking Chinese people. (Although if you are not free then, there are plenty of other acts on around the city - have a look.) In spite of a small but fairly drastic hitch when we realized that there is no power for the loop pedal, we're excited about it. We're doing two of my songs ('Song for Lori' and 'Surrender'), one of Ben's poems ('Bullets') ('Bullets'! He's so street!) and a mash-up version of Summertime. In one of the verses of Summertime I am going to beatbox! Well, I'm not, not really. I am going, in fact, to sing the bass line while Ben sings the lead, but to me it totally counts.

The drastic hitch arose this morning, when Ben was scurrying about packing things for his workshop. He frantically texted about it, trying to sort it out, whilst I sat on the bed, said "um" quite a lot, and tried to compose my facial features into 'concerned but not panicking'. It is still uncertain whether we will get the extra power. If not then we will just have to not use the loop pedal (there is an amp and two microphones, so it will not be so bad).

Over the past few days I have been down to That London and back, singing at the Dorchester, seeing friends, seeing my Mum and Dad. I managed to cock up my travel arrangements on a fairly massive scale, which culminated yesterday in my lovely Mum* driving me to Milton Keynes to try and bypass the Peak Times Of Death. I had an off-peak return Manchester-London, but had forgotten that those arch-warlords at National Rail deem that anyone travelling after three-fifteen in the afternoon should be forced to pay double the fare. I remembered this whilst having lunch with my Mum. I sat bolt upright, clutched my head and shouted "PEAK TIMES!". (She later told me that in the thirty seconds before I told her the source of my considerable consternation, she thought maybe I had forgotten to buy a copy of some little-known publication centred around the goings on of a National Park in Derbyshire. "I thought maybe they'd done an article on Ben... or something.")

Being the wonderful and kind person that she is, she drove me to Milton Keynes, an expedition that turned out to be completely fruitless as they charged me a peak ticket there as well.

Feeling glum and carrying a big rucksack and a heavy amp, I trudged to the ticket barriers, which were being manned by two identikit, acne-ridden teenagers with mid-nineties haircuts and suits that they were clearly hoping to "grow into".

I put my amp down to retrieve my ticket from my purse. The one on the right barely glanced at my ticket, but took a big sidelong look at the amp. He took a moment to think of something witty to say.

"That's a big amp" he eventually managed.

I looked at him and nodded slightly.

"Yeah. It's pretty heavy, too."

He had nothing left to add, clearly having exhausted his mental capacities earlier on in the conversation. I sighed and made a show of picking up the amp again, and began to make my way to the platform. Luckily his mate was there to pick up from where he'd left off.

"Cheer up, love."

I turned and stared at his sullen, twatty little face and laughed, bitterly. As I walked away, I said (under my breath) "What would cheer me up would be an offer of help with what is, as was helpfully pointed out just a moment ago, a very heavy fucking amp. Not being told to cheer up by a spikey-haired little cock monkey like you."

Luckily I got a good seat on the train, bought a gin and tonic, and took my frustrations out by telling the woman across the aisle from my to turn her music down. I suspected that when I got up to go to the toilet she turned it back up again, but the initial victory was mine.

So I am off to decide what to wear for my busking debut! I suspect it will involve bright colours, as today the sky has chosen "Manchester Grey" for its palate. I actually wanted to find two gorilla costumes, although Ben's would have to be rather longer than mine. I would wear mine with stilettos instead of feet, and Ben would have to wear a hat.

I have three hours to make it happen.

*Look! My Mum's on TV! (She's the nutritionist.)