I can’t remember things. Is it not-so-early-onset Alzheimers/dementia?

This is not a picture of comedian Joe Lycett.

Oh FFS!

This is a poster for a London gig by comedian Joe Lycett. It features an irrelevant photo of comedian James Acaster. I saw it in Tottenham Court Road tube station maybe a couple of months ago.

I am not convinced it is a particularly good marketing strategy.

I emailed the photo to someone I know last night saying: “I don’t think I sent this to you when I saw it at Tottenham Court Road station the other week…”

I got a reply this morning: “We saw it together”.

Coincidentally (this is true) there was an ex-rugby player on breakfast TV when I read this reply talking about getting early onset dementia… He can’t remember playing in the World Cup a few years ago, which was the highlight of his career.

Fortunately I do remember I always had a rubbish factual memory. So no change there. It’s one reason in school that I was shit at languages and particularly bad at science. I once did not come bottom in Chemistry. Once.

I was good at English (I was interested) and at British Constitution (I could waffle).

I remember keeping a diary on a trip to South East Asia in 1989 and, on returning home and reading it maybe a week later, I had forgotten most of the details – Oh yes! That happened!

My friend Lynn, who has known me for 47 years, says I will live appallingly long because I seldom worry about things which happened in the past; I just accept them, forget them, unless they’re vital, and move on. 

This is mostly true. But I am not sure that is a good thing.

Neither the forgetting nor the living appallingly long.

Living the dream: my body is rusting

This morning I got a message from a friend.

It read:

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This is how you feel isn’t it?!

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I replied:

Nah. 

It’s just weird having an old body.

In my erstwhile teens I had a dream and wrote a short story about someone who had an artificial metal body and what he felt when his body eventually, inevitably started rusting.

Now I’m living the dream.

Lynn Ruth Miller, 87, says: “STOP COMPLAINING! Just go out and do it!”

Indefatigable, inspirational, genuinely unique

The indefatigable and genuinely unique American writer, comedian, raconteur and occasional burlesque performer Lynn Ruth Miller (she first stripped at the age of 73) is 87 today.

She has two Master’s Degrees with honours: one in Creative Arts for Children from the University of Toledo and the other a Master of Arts degree in Communications from Stanford University. She has done post-graduate work at Indiana, Harvard, Oxford, Stanford and San Francisco State Universities.

When she was 27 and her ambitions turned theatrical, she starred in her own CBS television show.

She has been dubbed “the new Joan Rivers” and “the world’s oldest performing stand-up comedian”. For the last 15 years, she has been travelling the world “telling inappropriate jokes and shattering stereotypes”.

I wanted to ask about her latest book Getting The Last Laugh. We had a meal together. She insisted on paying because, she said, she wanted to have some sort of hold over me.

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JOHN: So what do you want to bring up?

LYNN RUTH: Asparagus.

JOHN: You have written another book.

LYNN RUTH: Yes. It’s the fifth that’s been published. We edited it four times and I wrote an addendum which brings it up-to-date with COVID. I have another book coming out soon called Growing Old Outrageously and Loving It – it’s just about done – to be published by my friend Nader Shabahangi. That one has pictures and more of my philosophy.

JOHN: What is your philosophy?

LYNN RUTH: Just Fuck it… So it’s a short book. (LAUGHS)

“I thought it would be a book about comedy”

JOHN: This one has pictures too.

LYNN RUTH: And everybody who was nice to me – their names are in it. Everyone who wasn’t, I just refer to them. You can figure out who they are, but I don’t name them. And there were a lot.

JOHN: And you wrote Getting The Last Laugh because…?

LYNN RUTH: I think the message of the book was not what I intended. I thought it would be a book about my doing comedy and there IS a lot about it in there…

JOHN: …but…?

LYNN RUTH: …But it’s got a lot about the walls I faced. The point of this book is Anyone can do what I’ve done. Really and truly it’s not that I am special, not that I’m talented, but I made all this happen and an awful lot of people would not have. A lot of people would have started and then said: “Ah! Too much work!”

JOHN: So why did you have the determination?

LYNN RUTH: Because I really love doing this.

JOHN: Comedy or eating?

LYNN RUTH: I love eating too and I’ve been doing it a lot longer than comedy.

JOHN: There’s a lot in the book about your early life.

Young Lynn Ruth: “I was the dreamer in the family… Hoping my mother would love me…”

LYNN RUTH: But also a lot about my philosophy of believing in yourself… This COVID pandemic has really disturbed me: because we are all so afraid of what other people think, so afraid of each other and that is wrong. The hardest thing for anyone is to believe in yourself.

People ask me “Why didn’t you just give up?” and, honest to God, I don’t know. In general, I wasn’t doing too well in Life. I had the two divorces. I have a Masters Degree in Journalism, but I couldn’t get a job in journalism. I had a TV show in the States, but I was never doing anything, really. I just kept going and then, all of a sudden, things came together. I think the story of this book is: KEEP GOING! So the message of the book is STOP COMPLAINING! Just go out there and do it!

I believe anything is possible if you’re willing to put in the work. You have to take responsibility for the things in your life.

I had a very negative upbringing. All my life, I blamed my mother, blamed my sister, blamed Toledo where I grew up.

But, when I was about 50 years old, it hit me – Oh, my God! I am the one who let those things happen. It’s MY fault! 

Until you take responsibility for your own happiness, you don’t stand a chance.

Young Lynn Ruth pictured with her parents. She had her own CBS TV show at the time.

JOHN: What were your parents like?

LYNN RUTH: My mother looked absolutely gorgeous and she smelled SO good, which is amazing as she hardly ever bathed. Daddy I thought was the most wonderful… I thought he was a great big man but actually he was quite little.

JOHN: This book is about your life AND your comedy career…

LYNN RUTH: It’s valuable for comedians, I think. In it I have a complete comedy set and, in it, I tell you what I do to make the joke work, why I put it in the order it’s in and what I do if it’s not working. Also in there I have two tours with all the names of the contacts.

JOHN: What’s the difference between this book and your next book?

LYNN RUTH: The next book is stories of people who achieved what looked like the impossible but they just got on with it. People think they can’t have the dream that they want but they can.

First wedding, aged 22, in September 1956…

I have a friend called Glenn. He didn’t go to college; he was just educated up to 18 and he got a job with the Recreation Dept in San Francisco – a low-level, shit job. But he loves theatre. He loves classical theatre. He was absolutely sure he could direct a Shakespeare play. No education. And he talked the Recreation Dept into letting him do three shows.

JOHN: Were they good?

LYNN RUTH: They were really shitty productions. And then the Recreation Dept fired him. But now he has founded his own company and it’s very successful. Or it was until COVID happened.

JOHN: So what now?

LYNN RUTH: (SHRUGS) We keep going…

John Fleming’s Weekly Diary No 33 – An anarchist’s death, baths and sleep

… CONTINUED FROM DIARY No 32 …

Another weekly diary blog that’s maybe more than a bit self-absorbed. Apologies.

(Photo by 21 swan via Unsplash)

SUNDAY 30th AUGUST

For the last 3 or 4 weeks, my legs have ached when climbing long flights of stairs eg at stations. Really tiring and aching.

I had a lot of trouble getting out of the bath this morning.

But things could be worse.

My eternally un-named friend commented: “It’s a good day when you don’t have a hand grenade thrown through your window.” Something with which I cannot disagree. We think it’s a reference to the 1942 movie Went The Day Well?

As if to prove the point, both in general and a propos hand grenades, later in the day, my friend Lynn told me that (alleged) Angry Brigade anarchist Stuart Christie,whom I blogged about in October last year, died, aged 74, on 15th August. I had not noticed any obituaries at the time.

MONDAY 31st AUGUST

A couple of weeks ago, at Euston station, I heard an announcement for Inspector Sands (a coded message which means that there is a major emergency in the building).

I arrived at St Pancras station tonight and there was another Inspector Sands announcement – this time in English AND in French.

Everyone ignored it. I am still alive to tell the tale. If this happens a third time, I will be forced to conclude that the railway companies have actually been foolhardy enough to employ someone genuinely called Inspector Sands.

My yellow chum bobs in turbulent waters…

TUESDAY 1st SEPTEMBER

I had a bath this morning.

Despite my age, I try to keep mostly clean.

Also, I enjoy farting in the bath and watching my yellow plastic duck bob around in the turbulent waters.

Anyway, I had trouble getting out of the bath again, but it was not as bad as on Sunday.

Later, Ariane Sherine‘s 9-year-old daughter – never to be underestimated – told me that my birthday (28th July) is appropriately National Milk Chocolate Day.

WEDNESDAY 2nd SEPTEMBER

I slept just over 10 hours last night and woke up 12 times needing to drink water.

Today is my mother’s 100th birthday. She is dead, of course.

Ariane Sherine’s 9 yo wished my dead mother a happy 100th

Ariane Sherine’s daughter sent me well-wishes and a design she had created to celebrate my mother’s birthday.

For some reason, she had my mother’s maiden name down as McHamilton instead of McLellan, but my mother is dead, so no harm there.

Not that there would have been any problem; she would have been very happy. Very honoured.

Perhaps Ariane’s daughter is writing a musical. I would not put it beyond her.

THURSDAY 3rd SEPTEMBER

I slept from 2200 last night to 2000 tonight with a couple of short periods awake to eat and a very large number of wakings-up to drink water.

When I woke up, l had a bath and still had some trouble getting out of it. The muscles in my legs or somesuch.

“It seems to have been a Thursday for at least eight days now.”

It seems to have been a Thursday for at least eight days now.

A friend commented on my ongoing sleeping problems: “It seems quite uncope-able with, no? Not much of a life? You seem to just have an existence of being asleep, merely waking to eat or gasping for a drink.”

But maybe that description covers a very large percentage of people’s lives.

FRIDAY 4th SEPTEMBER

July… August… September… It all merges into one…

Ah! The (in)efficiency of the NHS bureaucracy!

This morning (September 4th) I received a letter from the Kidney Man posted yesterday and written on July 29th about a July 6th chat referring to a future early August appointment. It was sent to my GP with a CC to me so I presume he also received it this morning.

In the afternoon, I had a shingles vaccination at my GP’s. Because of the COVID-19 outbreak, none of the GPs are there any more. They all work from home.

The nurse giving the injection CLAIMED it was OK for me to have, despite my recent problems – cause still unknown.

Apparently, the Shingles vaccination is not annual – it’s one in a lifetime. Of course, if it kills me next week, that would still be true.

I found out too late to celebrate that today is National Fish & Chip Day.

SATURDAY 5th SEPTEMBER

Easier to get out of the bath, Almost back to normal.

Well, as far as getting out of the bath is concerned…

Like I said at the beginning, this blog is maybe more than a bit self-absorbed. Apologies.

… CONTINUED HERE …

My spine + a surprising amount of pee

This blog is mostly for myself so this is, in a sense, the opposite of clickbait… You have been warned. Flee now.

My advice to you is… Never get hit by an articulated truck…

I am writing it on Monday morning.

So exactly two weeks after the bottom of my spine went (as I understand it) out of alignment and shooting pains started.

It happens occasionally, ever since I got hit by an articulated truck in 1991.

My left shoulder blade was pulverised in two places; the back of my head hit the edge of a low brick wall; and, although it wasn’t obvious at the time, my spine was damaged a bit.

When I phoned up my osteopath two weeks ago, it turned out he had died two years ago.

So I went to another osteopath in London two Saturdays and he mostly cured the problem.

Last Monday, I also went to an osteopath near Brighton – I made the appointment not knowing if I could see the osteopath in London. He helped too.

But, on Thursday, a coughing fit buggered-up my semi-recovering spine again. And phone calls on Friday and Saturday failed to get hold of my new London osteopath.

Let us hope that he, too, has not died on me.

I have been sleeping on the floor for the last fortnight. It’s awkward to get up off the floor in the morning but, once I’m up, I am fairly OK if I move carefully and don’t cough. Unfortunately, in parallel with the spine problem, I currently have nose sniffles and a hacking cough caught from an 8-year-old which won’t go away. The cold, not the 8-year-old.

Anyway, I have been waking up repeatedly every night for a fortnight but can never remember details, so I thought – largely for myself – I would take audio notes on my iPhone each time I woke up. 

And, last night…

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03.21
I dreamt I was directing a documentary about the 2012 London Olympic Games. It was being shot in my living room at night. This was progressing quite well but was complicated and my dream was intercut with parts of the Rambo: Last Blood movie trailer which I saw last night. This is ironic. I am certainly currently no Rambo. I got up on my knees and urinated into the red pee-receptacle which my eternally-un-named friend bought me years ago in case I ever got caught short in the middle of nowhere in my then car.

03.44
I woke up with a coughing fit. I had been dreaming about my forehead with its wrinkled skin which I had vaguely mentioned in a blog over a month ago. I got up on my knees and urinated into the red pee-receptacle. Again.

05.20
Woke up with shooting pains along my left shoulder. Managed to wee into the red pee-receptacle.

05.31
Shooting pains along my right shoulder. I half got up to try to wee in my pee-receptacle – again – and there were horrendous, searing shooting pains at the base of my spine. When I tried to lie down again, uncontrollable coughing fits gave me severe shooting pains at the base of my spine. There was a lot of out-loud “Argh! Ahh! Ow! Argh!”s as there was no-one else around to hear.

07.20
Very very painful at the base of my spine as I slowly tried to get up off the floor into a kneeling position to wee into the red pee-receptacle. Managed to raise myself by holding on to the corners of two sofas. I sleep angled between the corners of the two sofas so I can, indeed, do this. Again, a lot of “Oopph! Ooh! Argh! Ahhh! Ahhh! Aghhh!” going on.

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My sleeping companion when I have trouble getting upstairs

Well that’s it. 

Another attempt to get hold of the London osteopath today and, if not, then I will contact the next on my list of recommended osteos.

I did warn you.

That blog was mostly for myself.

There seemed to be an awful lot of pee involved.

Comic Lynn Ruth Miller is “Ridiculously Old and Getting Better” in a monastery

Here, in the latest of her travelogues, 85-year-old globetrotting American comedienne and burlesque performer Lynn Ruth Miller, based in London, tells us about her latest jaunt…

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Lynn Ruth’s passport photo is even worse…

I went to Farfa in Italy.

When we landed in Rome, I apologised to the officer because my passport photo was so bad but he said he could recognise me. I said I had to wait ten years before I got a new one and that one would be even worse than the one I had.

He agreed.

Maddie from Wales was waiting for me. She and Nader Shabahangi – my dearest of friends from San Francisco – are running an Eldership Academy in Farfa and I was an honoured guest.

Nadar’s mother Elizabeth is convinced that I am a burden to her son, taking disgusting advantage of him. I have tired him out; I have incurred huge expenses, what with his having to rent a car and forcing her darling baby to stay awake hours past his bedtime. Nader is 62 years old.

Throughout the ride home she reminded me that, if my plane had not landed so late, Nader could have gotten his much-needed rest. She also pointed out that, because of me, he had to drive at night and it was very difficult for him because the road was dark. She told me repeatedly that they had to leave Farfa early because of my late arrival and now had to drive back on an unfamiliar road, which was a hardship for all of them. She explained several times that both she and Nader desperately needed their rest and I had thoughtlessly and deliberately deprived them both of that requirement.

Nader’s car had a navigating device that spoke to him in Italian. Maddie helped him interpret the route and we only got lost three times. We arrived at the monastery in Farfa at midnight.  

Yes. 

A monastery.

Many people from around the world go to this monastery because it is a well-known B&B.

My beautiful room was on the third floor of the immaculate monastery with a lovely view of the hills. I had a private bathroom, plenty of hot water and a desk for my computer. But NOT a WiFi connection.

“Ridiculously Old and Getting Better” – soon

Nader, who does not share his mother’s opinion of my value (whew),  brought me some yogurt and a galley copy of my brand new book Ridiculously Old and Getting Better, which is my take on living a good, productive and satisfying life. At that point, though, I thought the title should have been: Why the Fuck Am I Still Around Making Everyone Suffer?

I managed to read half the book and then drifted off to sleep in that very quiet peaceful place where the air smells sweet and you can actually hear birds singing without a hearing aid.

I awoke the next morning feeling a bit more like the title of my book and met the first of three of the most charming nuns ever. The first was Citadel (really) originally from the Philippines who fixed the plug on my computer and explained that I could get WiFi in the sitting rooms, but the entire monastery loses its wi-fi when the wind blows. Ordinarily, I would think this is a tragedy but somehow it felt like a blessed relief.  

Gabriella came to clean my room, extolled over the book and Justine made me a special breakfast. They are all three happy, smiling people. The interesting thing is that ALL the nuns there are happy, smiling people. It makes me wonder if a celibate life is the secret to happiness.  

Statistics say that single women without children are the most content and, if the nuns are any indication, the answer to the world‘s malaise is to confine all men in a separate camp where women who want to ruin their lives can get it on and have a baby. The rest of us can just go about our business growing flowers and dancing in the sunlight, as women do. 

Elizabeth came to get me because she is a devout Christian woman who believes in being kind to the vermin of this world. She scampered down four flights of stairs to remind me that she is in better shape than I am. She hugged Justine several times and gave me a triumphant look to remind me that I am scum and she is blessed.

Maddie told me a bit about herself.  She is a potter from Wales. Her husband died three years ago but had vascular dementia for about 20 years. She has two sons both very intelligent and creative and an artistic daughter. She and Nader along with Julia from Australia have been running the workshop at the monastery for three years.  

In the garden, I met two others on the course: Iris whose real name is Ruth and her husband Spider who is really interesting and very well-travelled because his father was in the military. He lived his early years in Paris but cannot speak a word of French. The two met in a cooking school some forty years ago, have one child and are both fun to be with. They are from Sonoma in California. They work with the elderly there and are interested now in coming to terms with their own advancing years.

Another person I met in the garden was from Cape Town, South Africa. His name is Rayne. He has a small company that provides services to care homes in Cape Town and is without doubt the most well-read human being on the planet.  

I am quite a reader but there is not one book I mentioned that he has not only read but can discuss the plot of far more intelligently than I. (I AM American) He is a delight.

Farfa. Lovely but with dodgy WiFi (Photo by Renio Linossi)

We all met in the garden because it was the only place where you could get on the Internet (sometimes). 

The rest of the group had arrived by dinner time: all truly wonderful, innovative, creative people from all over the world.

Joyce and Ed were from Denver, Colorado; Anna from near Brighton, England; and Bernie, a doctor, from Redding, California.  

They were all there (some had returned from previous years) to explore who they are and where they are going in their lives as older people. Of course, they all looked like children to me, but I am guessing most are in their sixties with the exception of Bernie who is 52.  

Ageing is a frightening thing to contemplate in this plastic world that worships muscular, fit bodies, healthy diets, endless plastic surgery and non-surgical techniques to make us all look like teenagers without the angst.

I do not fit into this picture.

That first night, I took a late-night walk with Spider. He said it was his losses that made him strong. His closest friend, the man who married him to Iris whose real name is Ruth, died of multiple sclerosis at 62 and he has never yet come to terms with his own loss. He is making up for the gap in his life with the elderly people he is helping now in Sonoma.

Joyce is 72 and into mysticism and The Kabala. She brought up her daughter alone and managed to travel the world and experiment in a variety of life styles, always supporting herself and her daughter. Ed just retired from a counselling type thing in Berkeley and he has been her best friend for at least forty years.  

Everyone in the group connected with one another. The discussions were hugely interesting and very spirited.

One of the more interesting topics was how we listen to one another. Ed showed us there are three levels of listening. One is about the hearer, one is about the listener and the third when it is about what the speaker is feeling. We listen not just with our ears, but with our eyes and with our body.  

This is why Facebook and Instagram are robbing us of the ability to hear what our friends mean when they type in a remark online.

The finale of my stay was my talk on Optimistic Ageing, which I have already done in the UK for the Brighton Women’s Institute, the retired NHS workers of South Croydon and the Mental Health Unit in Birmingham. 

Seeing the back of  her forthcoming book…

This time though, I was preaching to the choir because every one of the people in this group takes risks and makes waves in an effort to live the fullest, most meaningful life possible. It was an exhilarating experience to be part of their search for meaning and direction.

I am now home in London, practising bowing and saying “Ah! So!” to prepare for my trip to Japan where I am planning to tell jokes and rip off my clothes.

Maybe then they will forgive me for Hiroshima.

Why I don’t trust people who have no wrinkles on their faces…

Are lines on a face necessarily a good thing? (Photo: Pierrick Van-Troost via UnSplash)

Continuing on from yesterday’s blog about how you can seldom learn much from watching perfection but you can learn a lot from other people’s mistakes (and your own)…

I don’t trust people over a certain age who have totally wrinkle-free foreheads and no spidery skin wrinkles at the side of their eyes. This tends to go against the prevailing orthodoxy that everyone should look young and wrinkle-free.

But, if you don’t have any wrinkles, you haven’t experienced bad times. In fact, you haven’t experienced much at all. So you are likely (I am not saying certainly) to be less than averagely sympathetic to or understanding of other people’s problems.

A wrinkle isn’t just a one-off frown or a one-off laugh with the eyes.

It is the result of repeated somethings.

Of course, if you have had a shit time, you may have gone to the other extreme and have turned into a soul-less bastard with no empathy, sympathy or any other form of pathy except possibly psychopathy.

Mass murderers and evil incarnates tend, I think, to have quite lined faces too.

So a wrinkly face ain’t always a guarantee of anything. 

But at least it doesn’t mean the person is a shallow, inexperienced, inward-looking shell of a half-human who sees the world only by looking outward and not by trying to see the world from other people’s viewpoints.

Poet WH Auden – a man famous for his memorable lines…

I think this obsession with wrinkles came about when an English teacher at my school went on-and-on in awe-struck admiration at the look of poet WH Auden’s face, telling us something like: “Just look at all the experience in that face!”

I remember sitting in a tube train after that looking at my reflection in the window opposite and raising my eyebrows to create wrinkles in my forehead… then being disappointed when, lowering my eyebrows, the skin on my forehead returned to its virgin, furrow-free blandness.

Now the top half of my face, given the wrong type of side-lighting, can look like a cross between a furrowed field and the number of lines in Tolstoy’s War & Peace and it will only get worse.

On the other hand – or face – there is only a very thin dividing line between being experienced in a good way that may show admirable humanity and being a wrinkly old fucker, possibly psychopathic, sat in the corner mumbling into his own beard, beer or spittle.

I think I may go and have a lie-down now.

This is what an ageing app thinks I will look like when I am older, though it is pretty-much me now…

Lynn Ruth Miller meets her idealistic, optimistic, innocent 21 yo self in Beijing

In her last missive from China, comedienne Lynn Ruth Miller was in Shanghai. Then she progressed to Beijing…

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There are definite pluses to being small and old in China. I have survived because of the kindness of strangers just like Blanche did in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but I did not have to sell what she did. Actually, mine is not worth selling these days, not even on eBay. Don’t tell ME it is never too late.

It is too late.

You would be amazed how confusing things are when you cannot ask directions or read the signs.

The road from Beijing airport into the city was lined with trees and it felt almost as if we were going through a forest to get to my hotel. The driver walked me into the lobby and left me there. No-one spoke English and I was thinking I might just have to unpack there and set up shop when, to my utter delight, a little angel appeared in a fuchsia hat that proclaimed: “Here to BREAK your heart”.  

A carbon copy of idealistic 21 y.o. Lynn Ruth

But she didn’t. Instead, she helped me find my room and figured out the lights and the internet. Her name was Diane and she was a carbon copy of the idealistic, optimistic innocent I was at 21, eager to learn more, do more and see more but afraid of all the unknowns in the universe. I discovered she also had challenges with relationships and food.

I had thought the only nervous, insecure wrecks were Jewish girls like me from Toledo, Ohio.

That evening, I sat and talked to this lovely human being who cares so much about life and thinks she can do so little. We talked about writing and the arts. We talked about philosophy and we talked about the ways society tries to limit us.

Then we walked to see my venue, The Bookworm.

I was struck with the way the main street looked like any street in Central London, filled with recognizable shops. I was told this was a very up market part of town and, indeed, it felt very Fifth Avenue but with a difference. Motor bikes go up on the sidewalks and weave through pedestrians and cars block the entrance to shops. I am absolutely certain there are no traffic laws whatsoever in Beijing.

Crossing the street is a challenge. Even when you have the green light, cars and motorbikes turn into the street and swerve around pedestrians. As I crossed on a green light, several cars turned into the intersection and just steered around me avoiding the ten bicycles coming the other way and motorbikes weaving through the entire mess trying to avoid severing toes and bruising hips. There is no such thing as right of way.

I did not get the sense that people feel repressed or unhappy even though we are told that they have a very repressive and controlling government that limits people’s freedom. Instead I got the same feeling I get walking the streets in London or New York of busy people living productive, secure lives.

Not all traffic – in the Soho area of Beijing

I was struck by how fashionable the women were and how beautifully they dressed. I was also taken by couples with children and the way they hover over their little ones.

Until just lately, China only permitted couples to have one child and that child was hopefully a son. From what I hear, girl babies were often aborted or drowned.

Now the law has changed and you can have two children. Furthermore, amniocentesis is banned. You cannot try to find out the sex of your unborn child.

These parents are totally devoted to their babies and the children are all dressed adorably with cute tee shirts and adorable little jackets and shoes. The place felt like a fashion show. Perhaps that’s why I saw so few dogs. You only have so much love you can give.

When we got there, I loved The Bookworm. It is one of those all-in-one places where you can go to an event, eat food, drink wine and have good conversations. Very reminiscent of Shakespeare and Company in Paris.

In the hutong area, I saw a very different side of Beijing: very Chinese, very traditional, with narrow streets, shops jammed next to one another and people crowding each other on the street. Chinese people push and shove their way to where they want to go. There is no sense of courtesy to strangers as there is in Britain and yet, face-to-face, they are unfailingly kind. I had numerous people guide me across streets and one guy hugged me afterwards as if I were his best friend. Yet, if you are in their way, watch out.

My friend Jesse Appel runs a venue in Beijing: the US-China Comedy Center. He comes from the richest community in the United States, Newton, Massachusetts, and went to Brandeis University, an exclusive Jewish university that, despite its origins, is very diverse. Only half the student body is Jewish.  

Jesse explained to me that standup comedy as an art form is very new in China, but growing. He was part of a small team that initiated Chinese standup with Des Bishop, an Irish comedian from Flushing, New York, who is famous for doing comedy in the Chinese language.

That night, I performed at The Bookworm. It was an add-on show following the Chinese Comedy that Jesse was in.

I listened to the Chinese show and was astounded and encouraged at how eager the audience was to laugh. However, after the group of 125 chuckling Asians at that show dispersed, I was left with about 30 people, most of them from Beijing with English as their second language. There were about 5 people who were from the US and UK – one from Leeds, one from Newcastle and one man from Michigan where I went to University. He was the only one who got all the jokes.  

Lynn Ruth performed in English at The Bookworm in Beijing

The rest of my audience were polite; they listened; they chuckled. But they were not like Jakarta or Manila. The host was a man from Orlando named Mac who was very good. The opener was his brother who informed us that he was very famous in Orlando, Florida. He was supposed to do 10 minutes but he rambled on for 30.  

The show began on Chinese time (always late) and, by the time I got on stage 45 minutes later, the audience was half asleep. But the guy from Michigan laughed; the man from Leeds chuckled and drank gin and tonics; and the rest of the audience smiled, nodded and tried to figure out what “a suppository” and “a cellar door” was.

You cannot win them all.

That said, I got a tremendous amount of praise for the show from the very audience members I thought I had confused. So maybe they did get some of it after all.

When it was time for me to go home (about 1.00am) Justin from Leeds offered to walk me to the hotel.

As we walked, chatting about life and love and the high cost of sex in China, we missed the sign for my hotel. We ended up in another hotel about half a mile from where I was staying, where no-one could speak English to help us.  Justin has been here for 6 years. He understands a bit of Chinese but, unlike Jesse who has mastered the language to the point where he has no accent, Justin communicates only in English.  

We wandered around asking people who had no idea what we were asking until one wonderful human caught on. He WALKED us to our destination. By this time, I had a raging headache from having only eaten those soggy noodles and nothing else all day. Justin, being an English Gentleman, was determined to find me something to eat. That is why I love British men. They do what their mothers taught them and their mothers got it right.

We went into a bar adjacent to the hotel but, by this time, it was almost 2.00am and no food was being served. A man from Los Angeles named Eddie saw our plight, argued with the manager about the necessity of bending rules and regulations to no avail, then disappeared to go to a convenience store to get me a bit of bread. Eddie informed me that I had very young eyes but my hearing aid didn’t quite get what he said, so I responded: “Yes, it never turned grey.”

I staggered upstairs at 2.30am, still worrying about audience reaction to my show. I wrote Eamonn in Jakarta and said that it was not like the show I did for him and, being the modest, non-assuming Brit that he is, he said: “Nothing is.”

Beijing – “Everyone has the same fears, the same wants…”

And he is right.  Each place is different and that is what is so exciting about doing an international tour.

Everyone has the same fears, the same wants and the same needs but they express them in totally different ways.

And that explains why Chinese people love that horrid tea that tastes like soaked dirt and the English love fish encased in so much batter you cannot find the cod.

There is no accounting for taste.

The next evening, I went to The Bookworm to hear Ian McEwan discuss his new book Machines Like Me. It examines what makes us human. Our outward deeds or our inner lives? He pointed out that the novel is the one place where you can get inside another person. 

When I returned to my hotel, I received two follow-up e-mails from people who had seen me at the book talk and heard that I had published books of my own.

I think it is safe to generalize that Chinese people are very anxious to enlarge their scope and increase their understanding. There is a tremendous amount of intellectual curiosity that I find very refreshing.  

Once you decide you know it all, you know nothing.

… CONTINUED HERE …

Nathan Cassidy goes forward to the past with Back to the Future & sucked a bong

Nathan Cassidy – Back to Birmingham

“If you really wanted to live dangerously,” I told Malcolm Hardee Award nominated comedian Nathan Cassidy, “you should have booked your Edinburgh Fringe show into the Cowgatehead venue.”

“There’s only one thing you can’t make jokes about,” said Nathan, “and that’s Cowgatehead. Those comedians have got thousands of pounds and, in their minds, maybe their whole careers riding on it.”

As well as being a comedian, Nathan runs a company which offers tourist trips round the ‘real’ London and ‘real’ New York. But, he complains, everything  is getting too safe and gentrified in London.

“Are you a Londoner?” I asked.

“I was born in Birmingham. Even Birmingham’s nicer now. There’s no rough places  for me any more.”

“Certainly not Brownhills,” I said, attempting a North Birmingham accent.

“That,” said Nathan, “is exactly the Brummie accent I am going to use in Back To the Future III.”

Back To The Future stage shows I, II & III

Nathan is performing three comedy shows this year – Back to the Future I, II and III.

“I’m doing all three on the same day at the Camden Fringe and on Back to the Future Day, which is Wednesday 21st October. That’s the day in Back to the Future II – 21st October 2015 – they go forward to and that’s when you see the flying cars.”

“Why did you do the first Back to the Future?” I asked.

“I guess I’m at that part in my life where I’m looking back 30 years and looking forward 30 years. I went to see Back to the Future at Secret Cinema at Westfield in East London and that’s what triggered my thought. Secret Cinema fuses theatre and film. They had bought a great plot of land but they had to cancel the first week of shows. 3,000 people were turning up every day and they cancelled the first day only about half an hour before the start time.

“They didn’t allow you to take your mobile phones because they didn’t want the location revealed. So everyone, including me, had left their house dressed in 1950s gear – some people had travelled from the Isle of Wight – 3,000 people all getting to the door and these ten security guards having to turn everyone away and getting abuse.

Secret Cinema’s Back To The Future set at the Olympic Park (Photograph by Nathan Cassidy)

“There was a guy dressed as Doc Brown shouting at this security guard saying that he had ruined everything and it was unforgivable. Then he turned to me and says: Do you want to come for dinner? I had no excuse not to, because he knew I was supposed to be there for the next six or seven hours and I didn’t have my phone on me. And he turns out to be the grumpiest cunt I’ve ever met and it got me thinking: I’m in the middle of my life and I’m turning into this grumpy guy. I feel my life is falling away.

“I was told by my step-dad when I was about 15: As soon as you hit 30, your life will start to accelerate. And he was absolutely right. I’ve got two kids now – 5 and 7. My 7-year-old is doing stuff I did about 30 years ago and I’m thinking about my own death in maybe 30 years time.

“So Back to the Future II is about living again. I’m not religious, but I’ve recently got into the idea of reincarnation. Maybe it’s because I’m hoping for something that may not exist.”

“And now you’re up to show three,” I said.

“Yes, Back to the Future III is about some regrets I’ve had from the past. My whole school was not very nice to this one particular person.”

“Not you?” I asked.

Nathan showed me his very real BTTF jacket

“No, not me. I was not a bully as such, but you’ve always got these kids at school who are bullied and your excuse to yourself is you weren’t old enough to stop it because you were 12.

“Then you think: Maybe I WAS old enough. So it’s about wanting to go back in time to stop that happening.

“I’ve written a few novels too and one of my books is about this – about bullying at school and wondering what happens to those kids you haven’t seen for 30 years.

“I think your life is pretty much set in stone in those years and there’s nothing you can do about it unless there’s massive serious intervention.”

At this point, Nathan had a coughing fit. When he recovered, he told me:

“I did this show last night with Trevor Lock and I’ve never taken drugs in my whole life and I did this bit on stage about not taking drugs and then somebody from the audience handed me something and said: It’s bong.”

“Bong?” I asked.

“Bong. I have no idea. I don’t do drugs, don’t hang around with anyone who does drugs even as a comedian. But this person handed me this thing and I took a suck and then thought: What am I doing?”

“You sucked a bong?” I asked.

“It was like a fake cigarette thing and lit up at the end. It didn’t look like a cigarette: it looked like a…”

“Bong?” I suggested.

“A big bong, yes. And I’ve got this thing at the back of my throat now and I’m thinking: Why have I resisted drugs for 40 years?”

“You are going to turn on to drugs?” I asked.

“If I’m going to live again – as I do – why don’t I just get fucked-up now?”

“That’s partly what Back to the Future II is about,” explained Nathan. “If I believe I am going to live again – as I do – why don’t I just get fucked-up now? Why don’t I start living like Chris Dangerfield? None of my favourite musicians or comedians have never done drugs. So, if I’m going to become who I want to be, I’ve gotta start…”

“But who do you want to be?” I asked.

“I don’t feel like I’ve truly seen the dark side of life.”

“I never took drugs,” I explained, “because I worried it might push me over an edge I thought I might be too close to already.”

“Exactly,” said Nathan. “But, if it pushes you over the edge, then you’re going to find something that… I’m not saying just drugs…”

“You must have done something in your life?” I asked.

“I’ve done loads. I’ve travelled the world – New Zealand, Australia, all across Asia, Siberia, Russia. I’ve had kids.”

“And,” I pointed out, “you’re running an international business that takes people to ‘real’ places. What on earth IS the real New York? Probably horrible.”

“That’s it,” said Nathan. “To see the dirty side of it. The guy I started the business with has been on heroin, come off heroin, is covered in tattoos, has done crime, come out of that and he ends up this beautiful man. He’s done all that and now he can talk from a perspective of having done that. I’m not advocating this bad way of living, but Back to the Future II is about What do I do in the next 20 years? Do I take things a new way in my life?”

“You can’t,” I suggested. “You’ve got two small children and a wife.”

“What do you mean Can’t?” Nathan asked.

“You don’t,” I suggested, “want to support the Colombian drug cartels or the Mexican gangs. There were 43 people killed in some shoot-out in Mexico this morning. If you take heroin…”

Nathan reckons he has just been too clean-living

“I’m not going to take heroin,” Nathan interrupted. “I’m not talking about just drugs. I’m talking about the dark side of life.”

“Define the dark side of life.”

“I dunno. But I have been too clean-living.”

“What are these other things that life has to offer?” I asked.

“Everything.”

“Paedophilia?” I asked.

“Of course not,” said Nathan. “But my interesting stories are about what my kids are doing or my mum warning me of the danger of parked cars. All my comedian friends have more interesting stories.”

“Maybe your Unique Selling Proposition is that you’re Mr Clean.”

“I want to be scum.”

“You can’t wear a leather jacket and be clean,” I said.

“I’m wearing a Back to the Future jacket just for you. I’ll do anything to publicise the show.”

“I still,” I said, “want to know what all these dark things are that aren’t paedophilia or heroin.”

“Trevor Lock was telling me a story about severed heads on crosses in South America. Being alone with that and being scared. Life over-and-above the mundane. You can get a sense from older comedians that they’ve seen everything.  If you’re a 20-year-old comic, it’s all about wanking, living with your parents and thinking you might be gay.

“I was on the circuit when I was 23 or 24 and I had nothing to talk about and that’s why I gave up for nine years. I came back in about 2009.”

“If you want the ultimate dark side,” I suggested, “the ultimate thing is to go along and join ISIS.”

Nathan Cassidy: “I came back in about 2009″

“I think that’s maybe a step too far.”

“But you keep implying there are no steps too far. You could be a thrill killer like Leopold & Loeb in America or Mary Bell in this country.”

“Maybe I won’t go that far.”

”Why?”

“My own two children, maybe.”

“Good choice,” I said.

Age. So it goes.

An extract from my e-diary in April 2000:

At my parents’ home, in the afternoon, the clock chimed once for 4.30pm.

My mother asked my father: “Why did that clock stop last night?”

“Half past twelve,” he replied, mis-hearing her.

“It’s only Tuesday,” my mother continued, not really hearing him.