by Paul Kerensa
‘Darren!’ I called, marching to the door. Let’s get this so-called gig over with.
I left the venue and glanced into the pub next door. Sure enough, a handful of people were there: maybe twenty or so. Enough for a show, certainly, if all came through. Darren was being ignored by one table of girls, leaving a flyer on their table.
‘Darren, shall we start?’
‘Great, cheers Paul. I’ve flyered everyone. Now let’s see you do your magic. Oh, and plug the disco.’
‘The what?’
‘The disco.’ He handed me a flyer. Sure enough, this was being marketed as ‘Comedy & Disco with DJ Darren’.
‘I don’t know that there’ll be enough of them for a disco, even if all this lot bring a friend.’
‘Got to have the disco, Paul. It’s on the flyer.There’s no “lie” in “flyers”. Apart from the middle bit.’ Darren looked at the flyer. ‘Actually the middle bit is a lie - the open spot changed to this Dennis fella when Sarah Walson cancelled. Probably for the best - our crowd are discerning.Two women on the same bill - that wouldn’t work.’
Darren was giving me more to loathe about him by the second. I instantly envied Sarah Walson and her cancellation.
Returning next door, I showed Katie and Dennis the flyer.‘Have you seen this?’
‘Yeah,’ Katie said.‘That’s why no one’s turned up. Flyer’s not in Welsh.’
‘Good evening, good evening! Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, oh no that’s right, there’s no one here. My name’s Paul Kerensa, what are your names? What’s that - I can’t hear you ... Oh no that’s right, there’s no one here. Well it’s nice to be here. Is it? You lot have got the right idea, you’re somewhere else. As you can tell, I’ve been touring lately with The Proclaimers.You wouldn’t get that because a) You’re not in this room so can’t see that I look like one of The Proclaimers, and b) There is no ‘you’. I don’t know if you can hear this next door, but WE’VE STARTED!! Finish your drinks, show time has begun, currently there is a ginger Cornishman ripping this room apart - not in the metaphorical audience-rousing way, but literally ripping it apart as I vent my frustration on the function room furniture. And good evening comedians. Good of you to hide backstage, so that I am literally performing to nobody.Yeah, laugh it up. I’m just glad someone’s laughing. Even the promoter has sodded off next door to drag the unsuspecting punters through. I was promised they’d come in if I started talking. Two minutes now. This is comedy gold you’re missing here, next door, you hear?! All right, comedy bronze. So let’s try some banter. What do you do for a living? Oh no that’s right,THERE’S NO ONE HERE!’
The front door opened. Crowds of people could have suddenly poured in, but it was the promoter Darren.
‘You haven’t mentioned the disco.’
... and he vanished again.
‘So have we got a show for you, yes and you know what else? Only the most exclusive disco in town! DJ Darren will be spinning the discs - don’t know if he does requests, he doesn’t want to get swamped, so don’t all rush at once.Yes indeed, as soon as the show’s over, it’s party time - I know I’ll be in a party mood, back on the M4. So, how long do you think I can keep this up?!’
Ten minutes was the answer. Ten long minutes of me talking to wallpaper, and bad wallpaper at that. Even the moose head frowned back at me.The acts waiting in the storage room alternately sniggered and wondered what they’d do if and when I eventually brought them on. But ten minutes in, as promised, the audience trickled in. Eight people in all - still under the threshold of ten that makes a comedy audience quorate.
The promoter rejoined us a few minutes after the eighth and final audient sat down. He was sweating, like he’d literally hunted this lot down from Lland’s End town centre. He threw me a shrugged look: this was it. Three groups: five girls out for a good night; two lads who seemed to be following the girls; and the mandatory old man, this time without a dog.
I introduced Katie and her guitar, and relaxed a little.The nightmare gig was someone else’s problem for twenty minutes - or more likely seventeen, tops.
‘Nice gig?’ asked Dennis the open spot, joining us in the main room finally.
‘Have you done many gigs?’ I asked back.
‘About eight.Well, eight.’
‘Yeah, all gigs aren’t like this.This is weird.’
‘... Don’t you hate paying to park?’ Katie said to the ‘crowd’. She was nearing the end of her set.‘The way they go on about carbon emissions, they should be paying us to stop the car!’
Nothing from the punters - just an irked sound from me as I realised she’d used us earlier to try out new material.
‘Well you’ve been ... an audience. Nearly. Goodnight!’
Katie leapt offstage and I brought Dennis straight on. We’d both decided it best to skip the interval and capitalise on the momentum that wasn’t there.
Dennis blitzed through his eight-minute set in three minutes. It’s a good job we didn’t have a middle section - with just him and his three minutes, I’d have had to do a lot of filling.
Dennis joined Katie and me in the storage room, his eyes wide and beaming.
‘Great gig,’ he said.‘Although I got through my set in record time. So much quicker when they’re not laughing.’
Suits us, Katie and I thought - we can leave earlier.
Darren poked his head round the door. ‘Andy’s here.’ And he vanished again, presumably to barricade the door from any punters with itchy feet.
I turned to Katie and Dennis.‘Andy.We should have probably let him know the gig wasn’t worth the drive.’
‘What do you mean?’ said Dennis. ‘It’s rocking out there!’
Katie and I genuinely didn’t know if he was being serious. Dennis was a little too enthusiastic to be joking.
‘I should have texted him,’ Katie conceded, and headliner Andy shambled in with heavy coat and bags.
‘Birmingham to Rotherham to the Atlantic Ocean, for this,’ he said morosely.
He looked back at the bare room and swore quietly. He then swore loudly when we told him that the audience weren’t just small in number because of the interval - this was it. We kept the break short so as not to lose too many punters, and sure enough did lose two of the girls to the bar next door. I introduced Andy to an audience of six.
As he neared his big finish, which I’ve seen him storm to audiences of five hundred, the worst promoter in the world sidled up to me and whispered,‘Now I need you to pad for five minutes while I get the disco set up.’
Bless Darren’s optimism. ‘I don’t think they’re going to stay for the disco,’ I said.‘The girls have been putting their coats on while Andy’s on.’
‘I promised them a disco on the flyer. I always deliver.’
That would be a good idea - he could be a delivery driver, because he was really good at making sure people stayed at home.
Andy left the stage saying, ‘Please, no encore,’ and one of the male punters eloped with one of the girls out of the venue. I took the stage to the dwindling applause of one old man, one young man, and two girls who still thought this was Lland’s End’s premier night out. Dennis’s enthusiastic clapping helped too.
‘Have you had a good night?’ I asked in vain. An attempt at a cheer came back. ‘Well your night’s not over yet, because DJ Darren is preparing the finest disco tunes this side of the Welsh border.You like ‘YMCA’? Well we’ve got enough for a letter each. I’ll be the full stop. Is this thing on?’
It actually wasn’t on, as Darren confirmed: ‘Sorry, needed the feed for the disco mixer.’
‘Cheers, Darren.’
I continued ad-libbing for far longer than a compère ever should at the end of the night, while Darren fumbled with cables and the punters began to fade back into the night. The old m
an finished his tankard and headed back next door. The remaining girls gossiped about which of the town’s two nightclubs to go to, and the one man left tried to overhear. I waffled on throughout, like an audio screensaver. All three had their coats on, and I was mentally fetching mine too.
Darren, headphones around his neck, gave me the thumbs up.
Mid-joke, I cut to, ‘ ... Thank you and good night!’ and ran offstage.
DJ Darren was heard through the speakers.‘Good evening, folks, got your favourite party tunes on a Friday night! First up, a classic from 1987!’
The door closed as the last guy followed the last girl out into the street.The comedians could be heard in the store room grumbling.The only ones left in the room were DJ Darren and me.
I could make up the song that played next. I could pretend for the sake of hindsight that Darren’s disco started with something comedically convenient. But I have no need to rewrite history, because what I heard was the instantly recognisable percussion, bass and ‘Woo!’ of Whitney Houston’s ‘I Wanna Dance With Somebody’.
I looked at Darren, and he looked at me. Houston, we have a problem ... As the only two people left, we had a little dance.[23]
***
Twelve hours have passed since The Gig from Purgatory. It wasn’t any worse than that, since it was just about tolerable, and no one needed to go to A&E. Someone might need to go to court over the Trade Descriptions Act due to calling it a comedy club.
I got paid - oh you’d better believe I got paid. I patiently waited for Whitney to finish, then grabbed my envelope and pegged it back to my car. The wodge sat in my back pocket and dug in on the drive east, but I was too tired to do anything about it. It was a good reminder of why we’d come here in any case.
Thanks to a combination of exhaustion, rain and Katie’s suggestion of the finest curry South Wales could offer, I awake on Dennis’s sofa, somewhere near Bridgend. I said I’d be up and gone early, and true enough Dennis hasn’t roused before I’m gone.
Not far from his place, I find a delightful clifftop chapel, with nothing near it but a van selling delightful bacon sandwiches.The church seems out on its own, a fair hike to any village, with no apparent parish or target congregation.The location would make a great Bond chase, with a lone priest emerging from the church to shake his fist as cars hurtle around the Welsh coast, masquerading as Monaco.
The building bucks the trend of churches by facing west, since it would look rude to turn its back on the Bristol Channel. Most western churches face the other direction to greet the rising sun (from the east), and also to greet the rising Son (from Jerusalem).The theory goes that when Jesus returns, he’d come to Jerusalem - that’s not biblical, I should point out, just ‘common sense’ along the lines of:
‘I’ve decided to find Jesus.’
‘Well where did you last see Him?’
‘Erm, Jerusalem?’
Not only that, but graves traditionally face east too, so that when we’re resurrected from the dead, we’re facing the right way to get to Jerusalem to meet Jesus. Always good to have a headstart over some chump in the next cemetery who wakes up facing the wrong way.
They’d have a long way to walk from here - we seem far from anywhere. Yet a few folks do come, so I’m reassured a service is happening, I leave my car parked facing America, and enter the small chapel.
It resembles a Church of England building, which seems at odds given we’re in Wales, but then I suppose we had a Bank of Scotland in Guildford till recently. A sign tells me that this is the Welsh form of Anglicanism, the handily-named ‘Church in Wales’. A further, more temporary sign, reads:
May-July & September
10.30 a.m. HC first Sun of month, except Aug-Sept 9.30 a.m. or
10 a.m. MW at St Mary’s 2nd/4th Suns
except when AA
It’s then repeated in Welsh. Both make equal sense to me: I think it means they might be open today.
They are - it’s full. It only holds thirty or so people, but these pews are overflowing. I perch at the back, until a woman sees and moves her dog so I can sit down. I quickly check the room again, and see that everyone else here is indeed human, as I take my seat.
The minister walks down the short aisle. He smiles at each of us and doesn’t seem to recognise me as new, or any others as regular. He reaches the front, checks his watch and begins speaking. In Welsh.
Time passes. I await an English translation, like on airlines. After five minutes of solid Welsh - and this could be just the Welsh word for ‘welcome’ as far as I know - I fear that if there is a translation afterwards, this could be the longest service I’ve ever been to.
No translation comes, as everyone stands for the first hymn. I anticipate ‘Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer’, hoping a male voice choir will pop up out of nowhere to sing,‘Feed me till I want no more!’, but instead it’s an unfamiliar hymn that sounds a good few centuries old. I couldn’t catch the hymn number, so I flounder through the book for most of the song. I think it’s in English, although it might be Welsh or even Aramaic.
We kneel for prayers, and the dog sits. My guess is that the other congregants understand Welsh, as they’re a good second or two ahead of me on everything. Even the dog seems more clued up. It reminds me that it’s only since ‘Vatican II’[24] in the 1960s that Catholic services have been in local languages. Before that, unless you knew your Latin, good luck to you.
The minister changes his tone, and although I don’t understand the words, I realise I should sit up and open my eyes.The sound of the other pews creaking is a big clue. More Welsh is spoken, and just as I think that I’m starting to understand Welsh for the first time, I realise the minister is translating into English for me. He must have seen the glazed look in my eye and deduced that it was different from the normal glazed look some have in church.
‘We’re going to have the choir sing a hymn now,’ the vicar says, addressing me directly.
Two-thirds of the congregation stand and move to the front.They’re the choir. I glance at those left: it’s like we’re parents and our Von Trapp children are putting on a show for us.
It’s a pleasant Welsh song, a perfect accompaniment for the view outside the chapel. Close your eyes and you could be in a field far away from anywhere, largely because we are.
The choir rejoin us and the reading is announced, again in local dialect. Everyone opens their Bibles with a rustle, and the vicar leans towards me and says: ‘Matthew 18.’
I open a thankfully English Bible in the chair pocket in front of me and turn to the relevant page. The Parable of the Lost Sheep. Well it would be, in rural Wales.They probably have this every week.
There follows ten minutes of Welsh, which I presume is the sermon, during which I’m guessing the vicar unpacks the passage we have or haven’t heard, judging by how he gestures back to his open Bible. As he closes, he turns to me as if he’s just remembered I’m there.
‘Oh,’ he says. ‘I was just saying that God celebrates when we return to him.’
Ten minutes to say that? I know Welsh words are longer than English, but still.
The service closes, and we file out quietly. The dog, professional to the last, only makes her first yapping noise as she crosses out into the churchyard.
Her lead tangles around the services noticeboard, still every bit as indecipherable as much of the service, and I decide this was probably an MW, not an AA or HC, because there were no children or wine. I’ve heard before of newcomers finding services difficult to follow, as if they’re in another language. Now I know what that feels like. Even when everyone’s lovely, sometimes you need a Bible and a phrasebook.
The Vicar is in the doorway, shaking hands with each of us.
‘I’m sorry you found us at our Welsh service,’ he says to me. ‘You don’t speak Welsh yourself?’
> ‘I’m afraid not,’ I reply. ‘My fault. Should have come prepared. Is it always in Welsh?’
‘Oh no, we try and keep a balance. Guidelines from on high.’
He means the diocese, not God, and points to a notice on the board behind me. Sure enough, a ten-point dictate states the enforcements of Welsh and English language to have equal weighting in services, newsletters and all parts of church life.
‘I see the notice itself is only in English,’ I say casually.
The Vicar peers, realises, and mutters to another man, who glares at the offending notice. Action will clearly be taken on this.
I feel bad to have highlighted this, plus like to give my usual contri- bution to their mission work and utility bills, so I move to the collection pot by the door. Before reaching into my pocket, I know what I’ve got with me. In my front pocket, nothing but two pence pieces, refused everywhere else. In my back pocket, an envelope stuffed with twenty pound notes.
Exactly what I just put into that pot is between me and God and no one else.The vicar seems happy anyway and waves me off to my journey east.
‘Thank you!’ he calls cheerily. ‘Always nice when a visitor leaves us to the sound of clinking coins!’
22 Or ‘muggle’, as we often call them.
23 All right, I made up the bit about the dance.
24 Aka the Second Vatican Council. ‘Vatican II’ is not like Thunderbird 2 or Apollo 11, although I suspect the Pope is hiding some kind of craft in St Peter’s Basilica.
4
It’s Friday, I’m in Mass
Congregating with Catholics
‘And what do you do for a living?’ I asked the woman in the front row, knowing the answer.
‘I’m a vicar,’ came her inevitable reply, and for once the giveaway wasn’t the outfit.There were three hundred fellow men and women of the cloth here, with more dog collars than on a busy day at Crufts. I was the only unordained person in the room, like the wild uncollared mutt among a group of well-behaved labradors. I could have hid among them and played an ecclesiastical version of ‘Where’s Wally’.