Happiness is Out There

 Hello lovelies! This is the year I am learning to do so many things. After my amazing Doctor Wholiday in Weston-super-Mare where I took my first independent trip since Spiderman died (read about it HERE) I was ready to be brave again and do another thing that we loved, namely to go see our favourite comedy band Jonny & the Baptists in Bristol. This involved expanding my repertoire of new skills that I have had to acquire after the untimely death of the Amazing Spiderman, but I was ready.

Spiderman and I have been fans of Jonny & the Baptists since their earliest days. We were buying merch from them before they set up a dedicated PayPal account and were a bit shambolic posting us something with slightly less postage than it needed and then apologising profusely because they were not very organised. Their hearts were always in the right place and their music funny but with a message.

Every tour they did of the UK, we went.  Every time they did a Kickstarter campaign to raise money for another album, we were backers. When they started a Patreon account we were one of the first sponsors. 

When people ask me about them I like to say that their music is like if satirical political Private Eye magazine was set to music. Their music has looked at serious issues within the conservative government poking fun but also raising awareness. They had a whole album and subsequent tour called Stop UKIP. They are unashamedly left wing socialists but also decent human beings. 

 In later years their albums begin to touch on mental health, dealing with quite serious issues in a light-hearted way but with an underpinning on how serious depression has been for both Jonny and Paddy. Particularly Paddy who had a full-on breakdown in  2020 and is still recovering and the fact that they were both marked emotionally by losing a parent before the age of ten. 

 On his death bed Spiderman made me promise I would always support them on Patreon. I am so glad that i have been able to keep that promise. Their music, their podcasts with frank talks about depression and anxiety have really helped with my grief. They are worth supporting.

 When I saw that they were touring again I knew I had to go. My life is sharply divided into Before and After the death of my Best Beloved. But I am trying so hard to carry on the things that we loved so that a bit of Spiderman comes with me wherever I go since we are separated on two planes of existence until I die and we can be reunited. 

 I checked the tour itinerary and found that they were playing in Bristol which is about 3.5 hours away by train. I used my new found Google Maps skills to locate really nice Hotel with a kitchenette right around the corner from the oddly named arts centre the Tobacco Factory Theatre where they would be playing. I used my new found confidence to navigate the train, a taxi, and then unfamiliar set of keys (for someone who loves Locke and Key so much I can be rubbish at opening doors). I learned the new skill of phoning and booking a taxi. This sounds like the sort of things that normal people do all the time but for me with sometimes crippling anxiety, they were a huge milestone. More on this in my next post. 

I brought a framed photo of my Best Beloved  like I did when I went on Wholiday which I think I will do at every new experience that he would have loved so that I can bring him with me because I don't want him to miss out on things. Also I need his loving spirit with me to help me be brave as I navigate doing things on my own.

 Now on to the show. The first half was made even funnier by these ridiculously ill-fitting boiler suits.

 

I could not have asked for a better show at this particular time in my life. The first half of the show was less music and more talk, with some planned but also some clearly improvised skits about tracing Paddy's decline in mental health as it paralleled the state of the nation with each different prime minister. They are so good at capturing the reality of how ridiculous it is that we are so hard on ourselves. Songs like Never Too Late really illustrate all the ways we sabotage ourselves with the opening lines:

Happiness is out there, but out there is very big. 

You've never been good at finding things, you once got lost in a Boots. 

(for my American peeps, that is like getting lost in a Walgreens)

 Which really resonates with me if you remember THIS POST about my extreme lack of a sense of direction. The song also contains phrases like It's never too late to give up (I have this on a fridge magnet) and so many other negative self talk phrases that run through my head. They manage to deal with this sense of self loathing and sabotage so well, in a humorous way. Spiderman was always very good at gently poking fun when i was in an anxiety spiral which made me laugh and showed me how ridiculously flawed my perception of reality was. Their songs and hilarious banter had me laughing until I cried.

 At the end of the first half Jonny was wearing a dress and standing on a chair pretending to be Paddy's dead Scottish mother to help give him some closure from the trauma of being six years old and losing your mother to ovarian cancer. There was lots of of bad "Och, aye Paddy!" which were hilarious and then it made a sharp turn in Jonny telling Paddy in the guise of his mother this message:

 I am so proud of you. I have watched you grow up and you are so kind and so gentle in a world that does not give that back to you. I am so proud of who you have become and i love you very much.

 And suddenly it wasn't Jonny pretending to be Paddy's mother but the Amazing Spiderman talking to me and I cried for real. Because I really needed to hear that. 

 The second half of the show was more like a regular gig, with Paddy on guitar. They sang so many of my favourite songs that I was squealing with joy. To be honest, they are all my favourites from the silly Cocaine Gran which includes my favourite line You used to love your church choir til you punched Ethel in the tits and Isaac from the perspective of a nine year old boy talking about what he did on his summer holidays in which the chorus is I was sitting on the top of a mountain all tied up and waiting for my father to kill me as a sacrifice. There are a lot of songs about the nature of God and Biblical themes with Jonny & the Baptists. 

 All too soon the gig was over. One of my favourite songs Capitalism which is a scathing look at the audience as capitalists which begins You're either against capitalism or you're for the end of the world and the tickets tonight were £14. So we know what side you're on and ends with At the end of the show we have merch.

 They did indeed have merch for sale but i literally own every single thing they sell: the t-shirt, the set of badges, a fridge magnet, the terrible calendar (by their own omission), the Jonny & the Baptists Detective Agency tote bag and every album on both CD and Bandcamp so i just gave them a donation. 

 I had a chance to speak briefly with Jonny afterwards and give them a card i had made telling them how much they meant to us and how they continue to help me deal with my grief. I showed him my photo of Spiderman and he remembered when i wrote to them via Patreon after he died. He was very touched that I brought his photo so he could still be a part of something we loved and he hugged me. This meant so much that he remembered me writing to them. This is why I support them. They make me laugh, they make me cry (in a good way) and they feel like friends because I have followed their journey since they began. 

The one thing that also makes their shows different is the obvious affection between Jonny and Paddy. it is so clear by their interactions and the way that they make each other laugh that they love each other. This has been an ongoing thing in the podcast Making Paddy Happy (now called Happiness is Out There) that was set up to talk about things men don't talk about like mental health particularly "Man up" and all that ridiculous, harmful nonsense or how much you can love a friend of the same gender and it is not "gay" to tell them. 

It was an amazing mini break and I moved throughout the world negotiating things like delayed trains and change of platform like a champ. Spiderman would indeed be proud. 

 And if you would like to support them on Patreon you can do it here: 

 https://www.patreon.com/jonnyandthebaptists