A conversation in a pub with jamie

In the hallowed Princess of Wales of Clapton, we sat down with Jamie to have an unstructured chat. Pub chosen by his dog (Cloudy), Guiness chosen by Jamie, questions chosen by us.

Justin: So the first question of all is, can you juggle? 

 Jamie: Yeah. 

Hayden: You’re the first one to say yes! 

 Justin: How many balls?

 Jamie: Three. Yeah I was hitchhiking to Syria and I got picked up by some hippie in Holland. It was quite funny. He had massive blonde dreadlocks and was driving this beat up car, listening to early two thousands’ pop punk or late nineties pop punk. We're driving, he's like, ‘where are you going?’ I'm going to Amsterdam and he says, ‘oh I'm stopping in Leiden,’ the next town over. Through the conversation, he told me that I could stay the night at his and then carry on in the morning. He was learning how to contact juggle, which is what David Bowie does in Labyrinth. 

 Justin: Oh, goodness. 

 Jamie: So he was showing me that. We got Leiden, and he had all these weed plants. He had the amount that he could have without, you know, getting into too much trouble. He was talking about contact juggling, growing his weed and stuff then his housemate came home on his BMX. I asked, ‘what do you guys do for work?’ And the guy who drove me was an aerodynamic engineer who built plane wings and bridges. The other guy was a botanist/chemist. He taught me how to juggle and I had juggling balls that I took with me the rest of the trip. I would practice while I was waiting for cars.

 Justin:  So you're hitchhiking to Syria? 

 Jamie: Yes. Yeah. 

 Justin: Did you get Syria? 

 Jamie: Yeah. But I didn't hitch the whole way.  I  got to Prague and then I started taking trains. 

 Justin: What's Syria like? 

 Jamie: Beautiful. Yeah amazing. I really like deserts, I found out on that trip.

 Justin: How do you feel about the Dune franchise? 

 Jamie: Yeah. It's alright. It’s like a really long music video. 

 Justin: Good advert for desert holidays though isn't it. So what brought you to  London?

 Jamie: I came down to see a band, for 2 weeks.

 Justin: You loved it that much?

 Jamie: Yeah my friend who lived here, I’d met him like 6 months before at a festival in Brighton. We kept in touch. I was like, ‘I'm coming down to London. Can I, like, crash with you?’ And he said ‘no, but I've got friends you can stay with.’ So he hooked me up with these friends who had a squat, just off Clapton Square. Two doors down from Black Cat (at that time was called Pogo Café) and it was a collective-run, vegan, anarchist, space cafe.

 All the people I was squatting with were the co-op that ran it. So I came down and helped out at the cafe. We were like, riding bikes around and having fun. Then on my last day, I was on the sofa talking to one of the girls, and I was like, ‘I don't really want to go home.’ And she's like, ‘you don't have to you know. You can stay on the sofa until you find your own your own place if you want.’

I went home back to Glasgow, then I messaged her and I was like, ‘were you being serious? And she was like, ‘yeah.’

So I handed in my notice at my flat and I came down a month later. Got rid of, like, nearly all my stuff so I came down with just a backpack. But at the time I was dating a girl who lived in Berlin, so I was hitchhiking to Berlin quite a lot. So I wasn’t there very often. I'd spend like a week there then a week in Berlin. And I was still signing on in Glasgow because I didn't find a replacement for me in my house, so I was on the housing benefit.

 Justin: I'm still stuck on hitchhiking to Berlin. How successful was the hitchhiking to Berlin?

 Jamie: It's really hard to get out of Calais, especially at the time I had a shaved head and a big beard.  But once you get out there, it's pretty fast normally. The first time I hitched from Calais it took me 9 hours to get picked up by someone.

When I was a kid, like, there wasn't many buses around. Like my first girlfriend lived 20 miles away, and there was only 3 buses that went there.

 Justin: So you leave Glasgow. What do you miss?

 Jamie: Nothing at first. But, I miss the interactions with friends and with strangers that you have all the time in Glasgow. Like, you get here a bit, but it's not the same. I did have it, like, couple days ago, I was coming out of the house, I was, like, on my way out, I had to go back to the place, and this guy stopped me asking if I had a lighter, and then he started talking to me. And then he stopped 2 other people. And then suddenly, we were, like, listening and dancing to music.

And then I said, ‘mate, I've actually gotta go. Like, I'm like actually in a rush.’

Justin: London's got you. That's the appropriate London response for me. Have you ever been in love?

Jamie: Yes

Justin: What’s that like? I hear it’s good.

Jamie: Yeah it’s quite fun innit.

Justin: It’s fun until it’s not. A lot of things are like that.

Jamie: Have you ever tried working in the coffee industry? That’s fun until it’s not.

Justin: Should I ask a coffee question? I don’t really want to ask any coffee questions.

Jamie: I think that that was a question.

Justin: Can you do any latte art?

Jamie: Yeah. I feel like I'm not very good anymore, but I can yeah. My go to was always a double rosetta, like a little Fred Perry.

Justin needed to be shown a picture

Justin: You see I don’t believe in milk so it’s hard for me to understand this sort of stuff

Jamie: I don’t believe in milk either. Like, even if I'm having cereal, I use water.

Justin:  It's really hard to move past that now.  Tell me more about this. Is it a Glasgow thing or is it a Jamie thing?

Jamie: I think it's I don't think it's a Glasgow thing. I know people in Glasgow who put vodka in their cereal but that’s a different thing. But it might be because I'm Scottish that I came to that. Because, you make porridge with water right. And then, like cereal is just like hard porridge.

Justin: Yeah. it's a conceptual challenge. You don't realise how sheltered you are.

Jamie: Oats are a cereal.

Hayden: By that logic, bread is just hard beer.

Jamie: No, beer is like wet bread. Beer is liquid bread. You've heard that before. I'm not the first person to say that.

Justin: Last question for you. What's your ideal job?

Jamie: Within coffee?

Justin: Oh no. Just like in general.

Jamie: I don't know. So in High Fidelity, he is a record shop owner. That's not one of his dream jobs. But his dream jobs are, like, work for the Rolling Stone in 1973 and I like that. Working with somebody, working with people. Somewhere where I get to travel a bit and meet people. So, probably, I am quite close to it.