I played squash this morning (a whopping 587 calories burned). Due to excessive work and baking heat this is the first time I had played for about four months, so was expecting it to ba hard work. Luckily I had a new squash racquet, which on cover boasted that it had "intelligence". This surely would be me secret weapon over my opponent. I had a racquet capable of rational thought, that would surely select the correct strokes for me and calculate where the ball would be and make sure it whisked me to the right place in the court, so it looked like it was me doing all the work. It was surely the sporting equivalent of the car from Knight Rider or Herbie from Herbie goes to Monte Carlo.
Yet I was surprised to discover on court that my racquet was no more intelligent than any other bit of sporting equipment I had ever had. It didn't assist me in my game in any way (other than just being there to hit the ball, if I swung it in the right place) and couldn't even answer the most basic general knowledge questions. Intelligence my foot! I don't know how these manufacturers get away with these boasts.
Having said this I was victorious, so perhaps the racquet is one of those intelligent types who hides their brains away and doesn't show off. Or maybe it guided me through a psychic link of some kind. That's most likely. I still only won 3-2, but perhaps it just gave me the edge.
Though the exertion on top of another poor night of sleep (and a lack of food) meant I was pretty tired as I drove to my gig in Norwich. It felt like months since I'd last done the show, rather than just five nights and I nearly missed a big chunk out. I had been worried about doing the Maxine Carr material, but if anything it went down better than usual. It was an interesting moral question for me. Obviously I didn't want to alter the show and deprive people of an important chunk of the material, but also I had to be sensitive to the fact that as the crime had been reasonably local that I didn't want to cause unnecessary offence. It would probably have been more of a quandary if I had been a bit more local, but in the end I just asked my squash racquet and it didn't say that I shouldn't do the stuff, so I bowed to its intelligence and it was proven correct.
It has been a few years since I have gigged at the Norwich Arts Centre which was the venue we used to generally start our Lee and Herring tours in. It was nice to be back. Though when I asked the audience if any of them had been present for my last appearance 8 years ago where I made a man eat some Golden Grahams with mustard on them, no-one shouted out. Not surprisingly it's a mainly new audience after almost a decade, which I guess is a good thing.
After the show there were the usual smattering of Warming Up readers - thanks for coming guys - including Wil who has been a long time contributor of songs and comments to old Lee and Herring shows and the guestbook of this site. He hardly seemed mental at all in real life!
I had a long tired drive home and was hungry so had to grab some food from a garage. I tried to buy the healthiest food I could find (though I had a good 1500 calories to spare after the squash) and bought a chicken sandwich and a muller light yoghurt.
It was pretty difficult to eat this latter product whilst I was driving. I had quite a lot of difficulty opening it and then had to clamp the yoghurt between my legs, whilst blindly dipping my spoon into the pot, keeping one eye on the dark road and one hand on the wheel. It became particularly difficult once most of the yoghurt was gone. I was spilling yoghurt down my t-shirt and trousers. I considered how ironic a death it would be if I crashed my car whilst attempting to gobble down a yoghurt. How you would all have laughed at me, killed by the thing I had obsessively claimed not to be interested in at all. Luckily I managed to stay on the road and no-one would ever find out my secret yoghurt shame.
