Brenda Monk Is Funny

Acknowledgements

About the Author

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Subscribers

For anyone who has ever made someone laugh and liked it.

August, and London is empty. Or at least empty of anyone that really matters: the comedy world is in Edinburgh, sharpening its wits and claws, pacing anxiously, avoiding newspapers, blogs and anyone else and instead seeking out only the company of other members of that fragile fraternity called ‘the comedians’. Attempts by comedy clubs across the capital to keep their venues running are half-hearted, booking acts that would usually struggle to gain traction on even a Tuesday night for their weekend shows. Everybody knows the centre of the universe has flipped on its axis and gone north for the summer. If you have anything to do with comedy, for this one month of the year, you do not want to be here.

For these four weeks Soho has no glamour and those that remain must be doing something wrong. The media industries have flown to Mexico, France, Italy or are at home either pretending to be in Mexico, France, Italy, or telling themselves that the ‘stay-cation’ was a deliberate decision and not the result of a bad year. Nobody is at work, that’s for sure. Soho does not make stars in the summer. The heat of the sun doesn’t suit the pavements for a start – it only shows up the dirt. The West End belongs to tourists visiting M&M’s World and trying to book tickets to a family show from the cut price booths on Leicester Square. The established clubs north and south of the river that usually hum with nerves and the low rumble of laughter close their doors and sit still, waiting for September. In short, there isn’t much going on.

It was the fifth weekend in a row that Brenda was spending alone in London. To be fair, Jonathan had been disarmingly upfront at the beginning of their relationship that he would not be the ‘usual kind of boyfriend’. Of course, for the first six months, this didn’t matter at all – couples often spend the first six months of a relationship finding all the things they have in common, and the second six months finding all the things they don’t. And for Brenda and Jonathan, this was quite firmly the second six months.

Jonathan’s stand-up comedy career was going extremely well. He was now an established headline act for the larger clubs and making good money. Never mind that his twenty-minute set largely consisted of jokes about his relationship with Brenda. The fact was they were good jokes. One or two were even great jokes, possibly classics. But still, the irony that Jonathan spent most of his time miles away from Brenda whilst talking about her to a roomful of three hundred strangers was not lost on her. Last weekend was Glasgow, the week before had been Birmingham and before that had been… Somewhere… Belfast? Maybe Belfast. And now he had gone to Edinburgh for the whole month with the hour-long show he had been working on (and not working on) for the past twelve weeks.

Brenda had suggested she ask her newspaper editor about covering the Festival for the whole month and then accompany Jonathan to Edinburgh to ‘look after him’. But he had rejected her offer. She would ‘distract him’, he said. He needed ‘space to feel powerful’. And so, another weekend stretching out in front of her. What to do with it? Go swimming? Again? A yoga class perhaps? Something, she had to do something. Call a friend? Pretty much all Brenda’s friends were either on holiday, or in relationships that were still new enough to want to exclude others at the weekend, choosing instead to remain in bed together drinking Cava and talking about where they stood on private education – a good way of disguising the inevitable ‘do you want kids?’ chat, a conversation that had been attempted once between Brenda and Jonathan and swiftly shut down with a highly contrived and deliberately diversionary pillow fight. The only friends she had that were married and therefore possibly desirous of new company, Laura and Susie, were on some kind of spiritual retreat and according to their joint Facebook page, not to be disturbed for the next few days.

Last weekend had been a particular low point as Brenda had spent it sitting in her flat, alternating restlessly between playing the piano badly, watching day-time TV (supposedly ironically) and then, in a fit of frustration and self-loathing, going out to purchase all the necessary ingredients for home-made hummus, which she had then abandoned half way through upon realising dried chickpeas require twenty-four hours soaking. And who the hell has time to soak chickpeas for twenty-four hours? Well, Brenda actually, but that was part of the problem. Jonathan would often tell Brenda to capitalise on the freedom his absences gave her, talking romantically about how missing one another actually brought them closer together and prevented them from getting into a ‘rut’. Brenda’s suspicion, buried for now but apt to flare up at inappropriate and embarrassing moments, such as his friends’ birthday parties, was that it was any degree of commitment at all on his part that constituted a so-called ‘rut’. For Jonathan was the kind of man who could see entrapment in a three course set-menu, and could barely commit to taking a shit – he always had to be doing something else on the toilet as well as emptying his bowels lest his colon get too comfortable and try to tie him down.

Brenda looked at herself in the mirror as she cleaned her teeth for the second time that morning – she wanted to get rid of the taste of the sour cream and chive Pringles she had eaten for breakfast. The combination of artificial cheese powder and toothpaste curdled in her mouth for a moment, and then was overpowered by the mint flavour. She could start afresh and forget the crisps. She could have had anything for breakfast now: eggs benedict; fresh fruit; a warm croissant with French butter and seedless raspberry jam. Anything.

The reflection in the mirror reminded Brenda that she really didn’t like her hair this way. It made her look older. Older than twenty-nine anyway. It made her look downtrodden. It made her look like she had given up. Maybe if she had her hair cut, coloured even, Jonathan wouldn’t treat her this way. She pulled her hair off her face and piled it on top of her head, Bardot style. That was better, but it wouldn’t stay up that way.

Suddenly seized with the desire to change something, anything, Brenda opened the bathroom cabinet, grabbed a pair of scissors, pulled her hair back into a rough ponytail and chopped it off at the base. It took three purposeful hacks, and she was detached: hair in one hand, scissors in the other, head in the middle. The remaining bush sprang out in shock, ends blunt, layers accidental. Brenda smiled.

‘I’m going mad,’ she thought, and her immediate instinct was to call Jonathan and tell him she was going mad. At least it was something new to say.

She picked up her phone and pressed the redial button. It went straight to voicemail. She had hardly expected anything more, and waited for the automated message (no personalised outgoing message here. Too much like commitment for Jonathan – how could he predict how long he was going to keep this phone?) to finish before she spoke at the tone.

‘Hi, it’s me. I’ve just cut off all my hair and I think I’m going mad. It’s good though. Give me a call. When you can. OK, bye.’

She hung up. Alone again. And now with really bad hair.

Brenda grabbed her wallet, phone and keys and left in a hurry. She wanted to be out now, out in the world. In the street she could feel the warmth of the sun on her newly exposed neck – it was nice. It felt hopeful. Where to? Where to… Freedom felt like a prison sometimes, but suddenly it was unexpectedly delicious. She felt a little reckless but had yet to find anything to point it at. She would walk from Hackney to Islington and see poverty give way to affluence in less than a mile. Passing nail salons advertising shellac tips and gel polish designs, Jamaican food shops selling patties and jerk seasoning and maybe more under the counter, Brenda started to sweat. Checking her phone and finding no missed call, no text and no voicemail, she picked up the pace. The smell of spice, hot rubber and bus exhausts made the air lively but she wanted to get to the cool, indifferent, tree-lined residential streets of Canonbury sooner rather than later.

Crossing over the junction of Essex Road and Newington Green Road and continuing up St Paul’s Road, she made a left turn into Canonbury Park North and at once the world was completely different. In the spring the trees were thick with pink blossom and you could stand beneath one and look up and imagine oneself as part of an old Japanese painting. But right now they were green and leafy and a high, light breeze rustled the uppermost branches. It was a good sound, a clean sound, and the shade was welcome. Surrounded by expensive houses with Farrow and Ball front doors and discreet alarm systems on the wall, Brenda felt calmer. Her pace slowed. She liked to be near rich people as long she couldn’t hear them talking, and these streets were silent now, their occupants filling villas and gites instead, private pools full of private school children. She stopped at a small newsagent and bought a cold can of ginger beer, downing half of it in one before she even exited the shop.

Standing on the pavement outside, she considered her options: continue to Upper Street to browse the endless eyepoppingly expensive interior design shops and boutiques? Get a bus into town? Bend back round on herself and go to Highbury Fields to watch other people’s dogs? The world was her oyster. Of course, what she really wanted to do was get on a train to Edinburgh, take a taxi straight to Jonathan’s rented flat, get into bed with him, have excellent sex and then go to his show before heading out into the night for all the booze and comedy chat anyone could ever possibly want, but she couldn’t do that. He had said she couldn’t and he wouldn’t be pleased to see her. Well, he would be pleased to see her but against his own will and that would annoy him. It wasn’t going to happen. She would have to think of something else to do.

Brenda wasn’t sure how she had ended up on the Royal Caledonian Express as it broke free of Greater London and ran north as fast as it could, but she was certainly enjoying her gin and tonic. Brenda didn’t hold with the view that the first drink is the best. She always found the third gin and tonic to be the most enjoyable, and this one was slipping down very nicely. She was even feeling more confident in her decision (made after an hour or so in a pretentious Islington pub) to hail a taxi, ride it to King’s Cross, buy a ticket to Edinburgh and get on the next train, which had left the station exactly six minutes after she arrived. Jonathan always told her she should be more spontaneous and stop trying to plan everything, and what could be more spontaneous than this? Crisps, she needed crisps. And one more G&T, but only one more. After the fourth all her courage would disappear in a plume of ethanol vapour and she was likely to panic, or start crying, or both.

The trolley was clinking its way down the aisle with a sour-faced train attendant attached to the back. Brenda ordered her second crisp-based meal of the day and her drink. Her phone buzzed on the table. Jonathan. She stared at it, paralysed – should she answer? If she told him she was on her way wouldn’t that spoil the surprise? He might tell her to go home. On the other hand, she didn’t know the address of his Edinburgh flat (and neither did he for that matter) and at some point she was going to need it. She didn’t answer. Their relationship was best conducted face to face, or at least face to groin, and so she silenced her phone and the train sped on.

Arriving into Edinburgh Waverley Station some four hours later, Brenda was now experiencing wave after wave of nauseating self-doubt. Gin based elation was long gone and she needed to buy a toothbrush. She had already decided to kill a couple of hours shopping for nice underwear and a change of clothes before heading to the Pleasance in time for Jonathan’s show. His manager Lloyd would be there and would let her in and she could just settle somewhere at the back, out of Jonathan’s eye-line and then surprise him afterwards. If the show went well he would be delighted to see her. If the show went well he would be delighted to see anyone, frankly. And if it went badly she would take him away and comfort him with all the attention he needed. It was win-win. Probably.

Walking up the long, wide, tarmacked slope that led out of the station and into the fickle Edinburgh sunshine (you know what they say, if you don’t like the weather in Scotland, hang around for twenty minutes) the smell of yeast filled Brenda’s nostrils and she felt nostalgic, though for what, she did not know. It was a smell that was unique to this place, created by the breweries that still lay around the edge of the city. All the buzz that had drained out of London was here, and the air was thick with its electromagnetic current. Anything could happen, literally anything. Brenda smiled. She had done the right thing. Even if Jonathan told her to fuck off she would rather be here than there. If push came to shove she could always crash on the floor or sofa of one of Jonathan’s charmingly disloyal friends for a couple of nights and enjoy herself – see some shows, catch up with friends and even make a few more in the teeming bars and pubs that overflowed into the streets all night, every night.

Brenda had been to the Festival before, several times. The first many years ago, with a university comedy group called
The Gifted Amateurs
. She had played a few small parts, got a few laughs and then given it up in favour of a career in journalism. Later visits had been social more than anything else: a long weekend with friends, seeing shows for free on borrowed press passes and Festival staff tickets. Brenda had always been a comedy geek and for the last couple of years she had been reviewing comedy shows for various online blogs and magazines which had given her an ‘in’. She reviewed fairly and knowledgeably and although she was not paid, and the publications she wrote for were not impressive enough to be used as poster quote material for more established acts, she had given a good few novice comedians a personal boost with her constructive criticism, made plenty of friends in the process, and was now reasonably respected on the comedy scene. In fact, it was how she had met Jonathan in the first place. She had given him a broadly positive but considered review twelve months earlier and then let him pursue her for a few weeks before she dumped the boyfriend she hadn’t really been that into anyway and took up with ‘this comedian person’, as her father called him.