Joseph Matt - Cam Boy

If it had just been a straightforward road trip to London I don’t think I’d have felt under quite so much pressure – despite my obvious anxieties about revisiting a city that had come so close to breaking me, but that wasn’t the plan…

Firstly we had to head to Bristol (that in itself a good hour’s drive from my family home), to a location that Jess and Mobeen had arranged in advance but that none of us had ever set foot in before – The Mud Dock café.

From there we had a table reserved for 11where Steve would be joining us – filmed from the back as he’d had negotiated into his contract with them, and he and I would be ordering lunch whilst talking things over casually – or as casually as one can be when there’s a mic-set in your back pocket, a café filled with other customers looking on with curiosity, and a camera penetrating you throughout.

If I’d have been properly organised like I should have been and made sure I got a good nights sleep on Friday it might’ve taken some of the weight off my shoulders, but I was up until the early hours of Saturday still fretting over what to pack and what to wear. I worked myself into a right old frenzy with it all, and when my phone alarm went off at 8.30am, having only caught about four or five hours sleep at best, frankly I just wanted the ground to swallow me whole.

Jess and Mobeen arrived in the kitchen looking all bright eyed and bushy tailed at 9am, my mum having invited them in.

“Hey Joseph!” Mobeen said cheerfully.

“Looking forward to today?” Jess asked, all smiles.

“It’s gonna be great!”

‘Oh fuck off,’ I thought, pouring myself a strong cup of coffee.

I’d just gotten out of the shower by this point, hair still dripping wet – and was darting all around the house from one room to the next, watching the minutes race by (far too quickly for my liking!), chugging down my coffee like no tomorrow and puffing on Pall Mall cigarettes in a mass panic to be ready to leave with them on time.

When I finally emerged back downstairs – hair styled, bags packed, and all ready to go, my demeanour was a little less stony and it felt only right to apologise to Jess and Mobeen for largely ignoring the both of them. Luckily they’d had my mum to chat to so it wasn’t as if I’d just fucked off upstairs and left them alone, but “Sorry guys, I’m not a morning person” doesn’t quite cut it when it’s any later than 8. The rest of my family are all up between 6 and 7am for their jobs and they don’t make a big deal out of it the way I do.

“You’d never cut it in the real world,” my brother and dad have both said to me on separate occasions.

Though I object to their wording and consider camming as ‘real’ a job as any, I’m inclined to agree that an early rising 9 to 5 job would probably never work out well for me.

I said my farewells to my mum and loaded my luggage in to the boot of Mobeen’s car, which was already pretty full from the amount of bags they’d been travelling around with themselves – rucksacks full of cameras, tripods, battery packs, and a shitload of other heavy equipment, none of which I could identify by name if you’d asked me to.

I was still feeling drowsy by the time we made it to Bristol, and pulled up in to the car park, having arrived at The Mud Dock Café.

The café itself is situated above a mountain bike showroom with a view overlooking Bristol’s harbour through perfectly round porthole shaped windows, the kind you’d find on a ship. I’ll never forget how windy it was that morning as the three of us made our way inside.

There were a fair few customers already seated at the neighbouring tables. I sat self consciously at the ‘reserved’ table by myself, while Mobeen prepared for shooting the scene, and Jess had the café manager sign the release form that gave the BBCpermission to use any footage taken on location there in the documentary.

We had about 15 minutes time to kill before Steve was set to arrive and the cameras would be rolling, so I ordered a cappuccino to sip on whilst I anxiously waited. I knew Steve well enough not to bail on me at the last minute, but I also knew how big of a deal this was for him agreeing to do, so I was particularly nervous for him in the build up to his arrival. I took a Valium to steady my own nerves, though it was he that probably could’ve done with it more than anyone.

My phone beeped. It was a text message from Steve.

‘I’m outside, just parked up,’ it read.

I called Jess over to the table.

“Just got a text off Steve,” I said. “He’s parked up outside apparently.”

“Brilliant,” she said. “If you’re happy to just wait here while I go and greet him, get him mic’d up and let him know the plan? We’re gonna have you meet on camera I think, is that right Mobeen?”

“That’s right,” he confirmed. “We just wanna capture like a really natural reaction from you guys, so talk about whatever it is you generally would if you were going for lunch together and just try and ignore the camera.”

“Oh you’re easy to ignore Mobeen, you should know that by now,” I teased.

I peered through the window looking out on to the parking bay below and saw Jess approaching Steve. I couldn’t hear what she was saying to him from two stories up, but she led him inside, and he waited beneath us on the stairway between the bike shop and café. Jess scurried over to Mobeen to confer with him a second then came back over to my table to clarify what was going on.

“Right, we’re gonna start rolling in a second,” she said. “So we’ll get a bit of footage of you sat here on your own waiting for Steve to arrive, then either Mobeen or I will give the thumbs up for him to enter and you can just greet each other as usual, and order some food when you’re ready. Sound good?”

“Mmhm.”

“Sweet,” said Jess, scurrying back a few feet to stand beside Mobeen where the camera was set up on a tripod.

Mobeen put on his headphones and started recording. I sat in my designated seat, central to the camera lens and tried my best to act like I was waiting for someone I knew was standing only a few feet below me and to my left to make their appearance. I didn’t even see the thumbs up signal (I was probably too busy twiddling my own thumbs), but I heard the footsteps on the stairs and saw Steve as he approached the top of them. He walked towards me, aware of the camera, but with his back facing towards it, and I got up and embraced him with a gentle hug, and a “Hey! Missed you babe…” before we both took our respective seats opposite one another.

He was wearing a smart blue jumper and dark jeans, and to top it all off? A Burberry cap. He clearly wasn’t taking any chances when it came to being identified by the shape of his cranium alone! I had to stifle a giggle, but all that being said, he did look like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders, and I knew how difficult this was for him. The fact he cared enough about me to go through with it in spite of how awkward it was says a lot about him as a person.

“So how have you been?” He asked, his tone conversational, his face reading ‘this is fucking weird!’

“Not bad,” I said. “I’ve been busy with camming, as usual.”

“And how’s that going?” he queried.

“Alright,” I replied. “I surpassed my goal twice this weekend so… yeah, it’s going good. What about you?”

“Ah, just getting on with work. I’ve been working from home the last week or so.”

A waitress came over to the table to take our orders. I ordered a second cappuccino and a bowl of mixed fruit porridge, whilst Steve opted for a glass of Coke and a full English breakfast. It was honestly the most I’d ever known him to eat, but it’s important to note that the crew were funding all our food and drink expenses, so fuck it, why not ? I’d have ordered something more substantial myself if I wasn’t too wary of my weight, knowing I had a photo shoot the following day.