By the third week of a comedy festival your brain becomes a fried quagmire of fused nerve endings. It's not just the alcohol that does this to you (I was fairly restrained in my alcohol consumption last Edinburgh and it still happened), but the whole experience is emotionally and physically exhausting. A festival starts to take on its own reality and returning to the outside world is a bumpy and disorientating experience.
So many times I've gone to a festival thinking I would be able to work during the day, and every time I have managed to do a small amount in the first week, followed by an hour looking at a blank piece of paper in the second, followed by a third week which involves waking up 15 minutes before your gig and then standing in a dark room, shouting at someone you don't know very well, being unable to hear what they are saying (no, it's not in a bar. Just a strange room that they have at Festivals.... which is run by strangers..... who don't talk veryn loud).
That I have managed to keep this Warming Up section updated is a minor triumph in itself (so let's not discuss the quality of recent entries. Haven't I already written the chocolate entry before?).
To call it warming up at the moment is somewhat of a misnomer. By the time I am done I have to go back to bed for two hours.
Burning Out would be a better name.
Somehow, magically the book will get itself finished by June 1st. Thank God for those little elves who work at my computer at night in return for an acorn cup full of beer (the idiots. Don't they realise how little that costs me? Though getting the acorn cup presented some logistical difficulties).
I nearly built up some enthusiasm for work today, but when I got back to my room the Simpsons was on and it was the Stonecutters episode ("Who Made Steve Guttenburg a star?"... worth having another look for the faux-modest reaction of Guttenburg to what is in fact a clear insult to his abilities), so I watched that instead.
Remove the stone of shame. Attach the stone of triumph.
