Although many people have been in touch to say that I can get away without paying the parking fine, I am not going to shirk away from it. I am culpable here and I should have read the signs - though didn't bother having parked at several other gigs (the difference being I had arrived after 7). I am technically in the wrong.
But I think this kind of insidious charging on a Sunday when the store is closed is insidious and anti-community and indicative of a society which is just trying to make money at every turn and thus what I am going to do is send Aldi a letter detailing what I think of their decision and enclosing emails from Aldi shoppers who have decided to shop elsewhere from now on. It is a mini protest and one designed to demonstrate that good will and not appearing money grubbing can actually be better for a business. It will make no difference and yes, all this is my own fault.
The fact there is nothing they can legally do to enforce the fine (at least according to many people who have contacted me) makes me paying the fine more of a defiant gesture. Let them know that we resent their greed. But of course, it's their car park and they can do what they like with it.
Today was somewhat full on. I was in my car at 10.30 to drive up to York to do two gigs in the basement of a cinema in York. It's a weeny venue and the evening gig had sold out almost immediately, so I agreed to do another performance in the afternoon. So it was a five hour drive, followed by a dash to find my hotel (and somewhere to legally park) and then a 75 minute show (I did the slightly shorter, non-interval version at the first show), then a 30 minute interview with some students, a bolted down sandwich and then straight back on for the 100 minute version of the show.
I enjoyed all of it and my legs didn't start to feel heavy and my head to feel light until I was in the bar after the whole thing was over. Usually one can expect a bit of a dip between two shows like this, but I think the interview kept me in a performance frame of mind, meaning I was more or less keeping in the zone for about four hours.
Many of you I am sure have harder days work, but for a comedian that's about as hard as it gets.
I am getting to that slightly scary time in the tour where I know the show so well that sometimes I find it is running on autopilot, whilst I think about something else. Sometimes that something else is a part of the show that is coming up and I am trying to work out if I can do anything different to make it funnier, sometimes it is just a daydream about something else. In the second show, slightly annoyingly, about 12 people who had booked tickets didn't show up. Given many people had wanted to come and not been able to this was a shame, but the half of my brain disconnected from the running of the show, began to wonder if maybe those four front row seats were empty because there had been an horrific car accident and the people I was silently cursing were lying in a hospital, or worse. Yet as all this was going on in my head, the show was coming seamlessly out of my mouth. It's an odd phenomenon and sometimes it can really help the show, because these different thought streams are all thinking about different aspects of the performance and perfecting it, making it better. But when one of them goes off the point and starts thinking about something else it can be a danger, because suddenly three or four minutes of the show have passed by, and like a driver in a car at night on the motorway, I suddenly realise I haven't been paying attention to the road and there's a danger I might not know where I am any more, or I'll have missed a turning.
More often that not I just worry I've missed something out or repeated something, but I am pretty sure all went well today. And it's not like I am totally disengaged, just part of me. It's a really odd thing and almost feels like escaping myself a little bit, or creating a new me like some kind of mental amoeba (not an insane amoeba, but one that exists only in the metaphysical state) and probably more prone to happen at times of exhaustion.
I wouldn't want to do two shows every day, but it was a good way to get more people in to see me in my beloved York. York City is magic. And anyone born here or nearby is bound to be wonderful.
