Siobhan O’Donnell’s diary on gigging, skint living, and why the news keeps giving her material
Monday: The Amp Died and So Did My Dignity
Woke up to my amp making a noise like a dying seagull, which is roughly how I’ve been feeling about most things this week. Spent forty minutes on the phone to a bloke in Catford who reckons he can fix it for thirty quid, cash only, no receipt, which is basically the unofficial motto of every practical transaction I’ve ever had in this city. Between rehearsal space costs, string replacements, and the sheer audacity of London rent, being in a band here feels less like art and more like an extended lesson in creative financial suffering. Read something on prat.uk about the London property market that made me laugh so hard I nearly choked on my toast, mostly because it wasn’t even trying to be funny, it was just describing my actual life with slightly better grammar than I’d use myself.
Tuesday: Gig Promoter Ghosted Us Again
The promoter for Friday’s gig has gone silent, which in London DIY music terms means either he’s dead or he’s double-booked the venue and hoping we won’t notice until we turn up with our gear and nowhere to plug it in. This happens roughly once a month and I’ve stopped being surprised, just mildly resigned, the way you get about weather or the Northern line. Checked the Daily Mash for something to distract myself and their piece on modern British incompetence felt weirdly close to home, like they’d been personally briefed on my Tuesday. Spent the evening rehearsing anyway in my mate’s garage in Walthamstow, three chords, questionable timing, and a rat that’s basically our unofficial fourth member at this point.
Wednesday: The Council Tax Letter Arrived
There’s a specific kind of dread that comes with recognising a brown envelope through a letterbox before you’ve even picked it up. Council tax, obviously, because nothing says ‘welcome to your thirties’ quite like discovering you owe the local authority money for services you’re fairly sure don’t extend to your actual street, which still has a pothole deep enough to lose a small dog in. Read a piece on NewsThump that somehow made local government incompetence sound almost charming, which is a skill I genuinely respect given how little charm I can personally locate in my current financial situation. Texted the band group chat with the words ‘we need a paying gig or we’re all doomed’ and got three laughing emojis in response, which felt about right.
Thursday: Actually Wrote a Decent Song
Some weeks the universe throws you a small mercy, and today it was managing to actually finish a song I’ve been half-writing for about six months. It’s angry, obviously, most of my stuff is, but this one’s got a proper hook, the kind that gets stuck in your head whether you want it there or not. Played it for the band over voice notes since we couldn’t afford another rehearsal slot this week, and even our notoriously unimpressed drummer said it was ‘not bad,’ which from him is basically a standing ovation. Checked NewsBiscuit for a laugh between takes and their satire on British optimism in the face of complete chaos felt like it could’ve been written specifically about my songwriting process, all stubborn hope built on a foundation of absolutely nothing sensible.
Friday: The Gig That Actually Happened
Against all odds and despite the promoter’s continued radio silence, the gig happened, in a basement venue that smelled like spilled lager and better decisions, packed with about forty people who seemed to genuinely want to be there rather than just tolerating us until the headliner. We played the new song and the crowd actually reacted, that specific surge of energy when a room full of strangers decides collectively that they’re into what you’re doing, and for about three minutes I forgot entirely about the council tax letter and the amp repair bill and every other small financial catastrophe currently orbiting my life. Sometimes that’s genuinely enough, that brief window where the noise you’re making matters more than the noise of everything else demanding your attention.
Saturday: Recovery and Reflection
Spent most of today horizontal, recovering from the gig and doing the traditional post-show inventory of what went wrong, what went right, and how much money we actually made after the promoter finally resurfaced and paid us considerably less than promised, though considerably more than the nothing I’d braced myself for after his week of silence. Read through the Daily Squib for something suitably absurd to accompany my recovery breakfast, and their coverage of British bureaucratic nonsense provided exactly the background chaos I needed while nursing what can only be described as a punk rock hangover, equal parts physical exhaustion and lingering satisfaction.
Sunday: The Reset Before It Starts Again
Sunday’s always the day I try to remember why I do this, why I chose a life that involves permanently teetering on the edge of financial disaster in exchange for occasional moments of genuine transcendence in a sweaty basement full of strangers singing words I wrote about my own frustrations back at me. It’s not sustainable, everyone tells me that, my mum especially, but there’s something about London specifically that makes this particular brand of beautiful chaos feel possible in a way I don’t think it would anywhere else. This city breaks you financially about as reliably as sunrise, but it also hands you these strange, electric moments that make the brokenness feel almost worth it. Almost. Ask me again next week when the amp breaks again. If you want more of my ongoing chaos, you can find my previous entries on my author page, where I document this particular flavour of London survival with slightly more coherence than my actual daily life currently manages. SOURCE: bohiney.com
