Tomorrow is another day!

Two days to my first big comedy gig. I'm so nervous! Mr Henderson is very kind and lends me the key to the Animal Aid social centre so I can practice my act.

It's very strange telling jokes to an empty room, and I start to worry that the invited guests won't find me funny at all.

When I get home I find Val reading through my notes and joke ideas.

"This is really terrible Rad!"

What?! She's supposed to be supportive, not make me feel worse.

"It's like you are pretending to be a comedian off the tv, rather than just being yourself."

"Get off my pc, " I yell, stamping out of the room in a panic.

Maeve doesn't seem to understand how upset I am.

"Val can be a bit blunt, but she's honest."

"I'll put your name down for that admin course, as a back-up." Callie suggests from the kitchen.

She looks so upset when I swear at her, that I'm a bit shocked at how angry I've become. This isn't me!

I find myself crying in the elevator wanting to be anywhere but this awful city. 

The dreadful truth thing is that my flat-share buddies are right. The act isn't working. Val said to be myself, but how? The gig is on Saturday and I have no idea how to fix things. I've lost my friends, and any prospect of the comedy career I've dreamt of since being a child.

The only option left is to go back to the Animal Aid centre, and let them know I'm cancelling. At least they will have time to find someone else before the weekend. I feel dreadful when they are so nice to me, I don't deserve it!

"We didn't mean to put you under pressure," explains Mandy, it's just so hard to get someone to work for free, and we can't afford a proper entertainer.

"I guess I could do it again, like last year " says Barry. 

"Not the spreadsheet gags again!" Mr Henderson groans. "Barry is a fantastic Treasurer, but he's a rotten comedian."

Barry looks so miserable that I'm offering to help him out with some fresh jokes before I know what I'm doing.

"That's really kind," says Mandy, you could use the office to get a new script together.

 For some reason, writing material that I don't have to deliver comes a lot easier than the painful process of creating my own act. I even manage to get some funny lines about accountants into the spiel, and the group are really happy with the result.

It's getting late so Barry takes me home. His car feels luxurious compared to the trams I usually rely on. I don't say much though, as I'm worrying about how I can explain my awful behaviour to Callie, and whether she'll understand. Thankfully everyone is already asleep when I creep in, so I have more time to plan my apologies.

This city life is more challenging than I could possibly have imagined. Well, as Scarlet once said, "Tomorrow is another day!".

The Lost Weekend

 I'm getting desperate for comedy gigs now, having worked my way through the whole city directory. The only clubs I haven't door-stepped are;

1. Happy Sunshiners (daycare for confused elderly) 
2. Little Flippers (kid's breakfast club behind the fish market)

 The first would be too upsetting after how my gran went, and I'm saving the last until I have enough of a head cold to not throw up from the smell (fish not kids, though you never know).

Thankfully fate smiles on me, and enough staff get sick / pregnant / go mad at Crisponix Manufacturing that they are pretty much willing to take on anyone for a temporary admin position. At least the rent will be paid this month! 

I like working with Callie. She knows everything about everyone that works there and relishes telling me the latest goss about who is dating who, and what's going on the much talked about 'top-floor'. She's enjoying my company too, and wonders if I'd fancy a more permanent position with better prospects.

The extra dosh is very tempting, but I came to  the city to make my name on the comedy club circuit. If I'd wanted office work I could have stayed back in Sunset Valley. She tells me to think about it as there's a training course coming up soon and I'd need to put my name forward straight away. 

I have plenty of time to think as the following weekend gets pretty lonely. I want to hang out with my flatmates in our apartment, but all the girls have other things planned. It's so quiet indoors that I head off to a local park feeling sorry for myself and homesick.

After a miserable lunch, of a few stale crackers and dry cheese I walk to the library, thinking I could maybe write some new material for my act, and it would be easier with people around. The building is full of singles like me, filling their time. I ought to find this reassuring, but I end up feeling sad.

That is until I really lose it! The poster on the door says 'Try Our Summer Mocktails' and donate to the Animal Aid fundraiser. Of all the people who could be tending bar,  I see our LANDLORD the goldfish hater!!

Life has thrown a final insult.

"YOU, YOU HYPOCRITE!!" I yell. "You chuck out Jo for keeping a harmless fish in a bowl, and then you have the cheek to turn up at an animal charity event and RUIN MY DAY!!"

"What?"

"Jo, the tenant I replaced, you threw her out." I'm almost crying at this point.

"She hadn't paid her rent, for three months." He replies, obviously puzzled. "I'm not made of money."

Somehow the fact that I'd got it wrong is all his fault. Other volunteers turn up to investigate the yelling and I run out of the building wanting nothing more than to hide my face and flee the world.

Even bed is not an escape. In my dreams I'm somehow at a joint gig for fishmongers, kids and poor old confused elders, explaining to them that it's hard to tell jokes when you feel so down, and they are all booing me off the stage.

It's Sunday. I wake up angry but determined to fight back. 

"Hey world, this me Rad, and I'm NOT a failure!"

The neighbours start banging on the wall in protest at my ranting, so I go out.

Ok, don't judge me.

There's this family bbq-ing way too many cheap burgers in the park, and when the kids get bored, and wander off for ice-cream I swoop.

I mean hey, it's better than the crows coming to scatter the bits on the path and those kids had plenty of padding to spare. Plus I'm saving their arteries for later life.

I'm sitting behind a hedge, about to scoff my free lunch when who should wander along?

"Mr Henderson?"

"Yes," he replies, completely unruffled, as if crazy tenants popping up out of bushes is a daily event.

"I want to apologise" I begin, thinking maybe I can somehow avoid being evicted if I demonstrate to our landlord that I'm not totally nuts. "I was having a bad day, my career.."

"It's ok, I know about bad days." he says. "I'm sorry about the bicycle thing, last week."

It turns out he had to completely redecorate another property because the tenants had scraped paint off the walls with their bikes.

"Totally wipes my profit out when that type of thing happens."
Somehow he looks a bit less creepy today.

"Are you hungry?" he asks, looking at the stolen, greasy burger pile.

I admit that I am, with all the cutting back due to lack of gigs, and my admin wages not having come in yet.

The day ends ends well, in the most surprising way.

Mr Henderson tells me there's an Animal Aid social on later. If I help out waiting tables I'm welcome to help myself to the buffet.

When I relax, I'm back to being myself, making people laugh. It's a nice group of people.

The whole story comes out, the endless rejections, how it's got me down.

Mandy, the group secretary asks me how I'd feel about doing the entertainment at one of their events.

"There's a couple of nightclub owners who support the group, and you never know they might like you and offer you a chance!"

"Wow, I've got a gig! Not paid, but I get my transport costs, and can bring a friend. Yes, city life is looking up at last!"

You'll get used to it.

"This apartment stinks Tricia."

"Well don't blame me."

She doesn't want to hear it again. None of us want to talk to our creepy landlord.

I'm Rad, that's me with the funny hair wearing nightwear in the afternoon. I have an excuse though, working the comedy circuit, late nights, next to no pay, and currently not much prospect of anything better.

Trish is a nurse. Student nurse I should say. Her hours are worse than mine, and the pay isn't much better.
"You could try wiping everything with bleach again?"
Disinfecting things is her back-up plan for all life's problems.

She's watching daytime tv, but her eyelids keep shutting.
"Go to bed?" I suggest, but she's already asleep.
The weird, slightly rotting apartment odour is turning my stomach. I don't think adding chlorine to the mix is going to improve things.

We'd laughed about Mr Henderson stacking up bodies in the elevator shaft, previous non-paying tenants maybe, but in reality, it's a garbage problem.
Too many tenants shoving their waste down a trash-chute which just wasn't designed for pizza boxes, plastic bottles, and all the other twenty-first century packaging our low income, time pressured life generates.

Valerie walks in.
"I'm going out", are her first words.
"Someone needs to ring the landlord". I plead.
 Not me, not me I whisper to myself.

I'd bumped into Mr H once only, and that was enough, during a rare daytime trip outdoors, trying to persuade a nightclub owner to give me a gig. For some reason our property owner recognised me, as I hurtled in rejection out of the 'Sim Cat Pleasure Rooms' office. 

"Oy tenant!" He yelled.

Blinded by sunlight I burbled an incoherent reply.

"No bicycles or I'll 'ave you for it!!"

I was too terrified to defend myself before he vanished.

"He accused Jo of keeping goldfish". Val says as she scuttles out the door.
Jo was the sharer I replaced. I knew she'd been thrown out, but whether that was for keeping unauthorised pets I wasn't told. That couldn't be the reason though, as the guy on floor three keeps a python in his bathroom. I'd seen it when he left the door open to run to the mail-box in a pair of tatty wrestling shorts.

I couldn't sleep. There were loud rustling noises under the floor. It had to be rats, there was no other explanation. Probably dragging bits of deep-fried chicken back to the nest from the over-spilling trash chute.  I had two choices. Go home, admit I couldn't hack it on the comedy circuit, or ring for maintenance and risk being evicted as a troublesome tenant.

Some guy in a bib suit turns up quicker than I expect. He must live in the building.
"OMG it's python guy!"

For some reason he thinks our dishwasher is causing the stench.

"You gotta scrape the plates".

He repeats this mantra while waving around a large wrench.

"They don't put salt in it." This remark is spoken to the fridge, and he continues to talk to our appliances, the wall, in fact he manages to avoid eye contact for a good forty minutes while coming up with various ways to blame us for the smell.

Eventually Maeve came out of her room. She hardly leaves the duvet since she broke up with her boyfriend so this is a rare event. She looks angry.

The yelling wakes up Trish.

"They've got history". She explains.

It turns out python / maintenance guy IS the ex. Though why Maeve would give up on life after splitting up with this loser is beyond me.

The row has wakes up the grumpy shift worker from next door, and he pounds on the wall and threatens to call the police. I try to break up the fight, but it's hopeless.

Then, for reasons that make no sense at all, Maeve gets dressed for the first time in a week, brushes her hair and disappears off with the ex, and it seems they've made up. Maybe all the yelling cleared the air. Not the smell though. That lingers on unaffected, or is maybe worse.

"City life". Says Callie when she and Val get back from work later. "You'll get used to it."

Yeah well. Callie grew up round here, she was born used to it. 

"Eat more garlic" Val suggests, "works for me, or hot chilli, that's good too, numbs your sense of smell."

I think the whole building took her advice, it's an odour arms race.

Trish is still so shattered she sets off to work in her pyjamas.

"Shouldn't we run after her?"

"Naw, no one will notice, people wear all sorts of weird stuff in the city."

"Everything is so different here to small town life, they say I'll get used to it".

"Oh boy, I hope I will."