Joe, Strummers.

 It's pissing down. I walk over the slick cobbles of Belfast's Hill Street, but the Black Box - the nearest thing I have to a haunt - is closed. I can see a band sound-checking through the window. I think there's going to be a single launch later on. There are no other pubs in the area I want to go to, so I head the the Deer's Head, two hours before the play I'm going to see there starts. I haven't been in this pub for a decade. It doesn't smell like piss anymore. "Cosmic Dancer" by T Rex is playing. Ok. They sell Peroni. This'll do. 

Outside a homeless woman on a bicycle approaches me looking desperate. I tell her I have no change and she looks doubtful. I tell her I'm sorry and add that I haven't carried money for three years, since the start of the lock-down. And then I think: did the homeless even have a lock-down? And realise my accent and no currency policy make me sound like the Queen. She shoots me a reproachful look and cycles off into the tumult. 

I feel bad. She was small and skinny and looked infinitely sad. But it was true - I had no money. 

But it wasn't true. As I walk away I remember I have a fiver in my wallet, next to the sticking plasters and dental receipts. Shit. I deserved that reproachful stare. 

I turn back and see her getting short shrift from some other man down the road. She turns and cycles back towards me. 

"Hey!" I say. She looks nervous, and rolls past me before stopping. 

"I just remembered - I have a fiver."

I hand it to her and she beams. 

"Oh Mister, thank you. Cheers Mister. Amazing. Now I can get a McDonalds. Thank you."

I'd rather you spent it on drugs, I think, but don't say. 

Mister. I'm a Mister now. She looks really hungry. And McDonalds is dry too. It's her money - she can do what she likes with it. 

I buy a beer in the pub and sit down. Something is slightly off, a niggling agitation at the back of my mind, an itch I can't reach with the chamomile. A woman walks in and, as she turns, I see she has a ukulele strapped to her back. Ah. That's it. It's ukulele jam night. I'd read this on a sign outside, buthad forgotten in the rosy afterglow of my altruism. But in the chill reality of the bar, I was to be entertained by massed ranks of uke strummers, like I was in a day time credit card advert, or one for a charity that benefits dogs. 

The woman drops her phone on the floor. 

"Great. I've dropped my phone on the floor." she tells the barman. She leaves it there, then spills the entire contents of her handbag on the floor: money, cards, everything. She throws the bag after it with a flourish. 

"What a bloody awful day!" she tells the barman. And she continues to stand there. Her entire life is on the floor in front of her and she doesn't make a move. Does she have a medical issue? Mobility problems or something? 

"Do you need a hand?" I say. My virtue signalling is through the roof. She turns to me. 

"Are you serious? It's my problem. I'll deal with it myself. What a day."

The words look quite aggressive written down. That wasn't how she sounded. She sounded as if my offer of help was the most ridiculous thing she'd ever heard. As if she couldn't even imagine such a scenario. It was quite odd. But then the rest of the strummers had started to filter in. They all looked like they wanted a lot of attention. They could't believe how interesting they were. 

 I went upstairs to watch Joe Nawaz tear the roof off the place with his excoriating one man show accompanied, for one night only, by the massed strumming of "Daydream Believer" (with melodica solo).