Due to too much wine last night it was hard to take part in life too much today. But you can't take part every day. You just have to make sure you take part more often than you don't take part. It's a more complicated philosophy than it first appeared.
I did manage to get out of the house, though I was glad no-one was challenging me to stair racing today, and went to my management offices to sign off the budget for my upcoming spring tour of "Oh Fuck, I'm 40!". Because you are so special to me, except for the mental ones (which knocks out about half of you) I am going to let you be the first to know where I will be visiting, so you can get the dates in your diary.
Here's the list
13th Feb Cheltenham Town Hall
15th Feb Hanger Farm Arts Centre (The Comedy Cavern) Totton
17th Feb Frog & Bucket Manchester
19th Feb Camberley Theatre, Camberley
20th Feb St David's Hall, Cardiff
22nd Feb South Street Arts Centre, Reading
23rd Feb Gala Theatre, Durham
24th Feb Tobacco Factory, Bristol
28th Feb Arts Theatre, London
29th Feb Arts Theatre, London
2nd March The Comedy Cavern, Bath
3rd March Farnham Maltings Arts Centre, Surrey
4th March Little Civic, Wolverhampton
7th March Jersey Arts Centre
8th March Tripod Dublin
9th March The Tron, Glasgow
11th March Nottingham,
12th March Hilarity Bites, Darlington
13th March West End Centre, Hampshire
14th March Windsor Arts Centre, Berkshire
15th March The Y Theatre, Leicester
16th March Assembly Rooms, Derby
17th March Mac-The Theatre, Birmingham
19th March The Junction, Cambridge
20th March Komedia, Brighton
I am also doing a warm up gig at the Battersea Arts Centre on the 9th Feb and the DVD record in Cardiff on 21st March and a late addition of a final show in York on the 10th May. So I hope you can make one of those. Please don't complain to me if I am not coming near to you, complain to your local theatres because it will be them who has failed to book me. And if you show enough interest then they will probably book me next time.
Though I was a bit laden down with some posters I was bringing home to send out to comp winners and a couple of Christmas presents from broadcasters - a small sign that my career is on the up, I decided I would walk home. I further complicated things by going to the supermarket to pick up a couple of bags of groceries (annoyed with myself for not having brought any carrier bags with me - sorry planet Earth - ah what the fuck, you're screwed anyways). But I enjoy walking round town, and the more I carry the better exercise it is. It gives me time to contemplate, away from the temptations of the internet. I also like to sing to myself as I walk, mainly because it gives me the air of a madman (as if carrying a large poster tube, a bottle of champagne, a box of cupcakes and two bags of groceries wasn't enough to draw attention to myself.
I find it quite interesting what songs my brain calls up at times like these. Often it's simple association - you will see a word or an object and that will pull out a song from the mental iPod. But I do keep returning to little refrains or fragments of songs that I haven't even listened to for years. For some reason I sing
Papa Hobo by Paul Simon about ten times a day. It isn't even one of my favourite Paul Simon songs and I don't really like Paul Simon like I once did, yet somehow this refrain about Detroit and stuff I don't know much about like ice hockey and Gatorade keeps coming back to me. And it has done for years. I remember it annoying Stewart in about 1996. What's that about? Maybe it's just an unspoken connection between being out on the streets and carbon monoxide. Perhaps subconsciously I am linking the two things. But then I am sure I used to do it in our office and there was little to no carbon monoxide in there - though Stewart often gave off other emissions (he didn't really, that was a joke - he never farted, which in some ways would be more remarkable. That's not true either. He sometimes farted, but no more on average than any other person in an office environment).
I guess I will never work out what hold that song has over me, though suspect that when/if I am an old man and the rest of my memory had disintegrated into brain dust that I will annoy the nurses in my home by doing nothing but singing an obscure, forgotten song from eighty years ago. With luck Stewart Lee will be in the next bed. That'll teach him for all that farting.
