Just a couple of days off touring and things are back in perspective a little. I have been in a bit of a funk and my brain has been fugged up and though it took all of yesterday to acclimatise, today I felt much better, sat down at my computer and actually did some work. And for only the third time in as many months writing came relatively easily. I doubled the length of the existing script and although that puts me only a third of the way through, I feel pretty confident that I can have a pretty good crack at finishing it tomorrow (my third deadline) or at least by the start of next week. It would be good to finish tomorrow because I am off to Spain on Friday and it would be great to enjoy myself without having work hanging over me. On the other hand, it's quite important that I make the script good, as there is a chance someone will want to make it then and they will give me money to spend on food and luxury items.
Perhaps foolishly, partly out of sentiment and partly out of expedience, I am trying to do the work on my rapidly disintegrating laptop (the one that I wanted to replace
back in January and the one which
crashed, losing me all my work last week - though I am compulsively saving every couple of minutes, both on to the hard drive and a memory stick. I have even emailed it to myself a couple of times). It's really on its last legs - a thick white line has appeared down the screen about two inches from the right hand edge, which can make reading certain websites difficult, but it's too far right to get in the way of any of my documents. Also, slightly comically the on/off button has fallen off.
But I don't have time to waste going to a shop and if I am on the road too much to guarantee I will receive it easily if I buy on-line. And there's a part of me that just wants to see how long this old heap of junk will hold together.
Hopefully I won't come to regret this decision. I can just see me putting the finishing touches to the latest script when the whole computer explodes, taking the memory stick with it.
But sometimes life is about risks. Pointless, stupid risks. And I am still hoping that Ian Apple might send me a free computer if I wait long enough. And then I can be like cool Robert Webb, not nerdy David Mitchell. Even though in my heart I think that David Mitchell is the cooler one.
In the afternoon there was a flurry of excitement as I got a message telling me that the "Someone Likes Yoghurt" DVD is now available to buy from the good folks at
Go Faster Stripe. Along with checking the ticket sales for Ha Ha Hammersmith on
the Lyric site (about half those cheaper tickets are gone and the full price ones are shifting fast too and the event hasn't been publicised yet, so don't wait til the last minute if you want to come) this gave me the perfect displacement exercise as I constantly went back to the GFS admin page to check on sales. And it was shifting gratifyingly quickly. In fact I doubt many DVDs in the country sold quite so well between the hours of 4 and midnight this afternoon. A couple of hundred had been snapped up. If only we could maintain those sales for the rest of the year, but alas there are only a finite amount of you who want this shit, and you're all very keen. But if you haven't bought it already you know where to go. I am very pleased with the recording (the first official GFS filmed and produced DVD for me) and there's about an hour of extras, as well as some hidden features apparently. Which means it doubles up as a kind of video game once you're sick of watching it. Please support this excellent initiative to release the work of less mainstream and commercial comedians. I am recording menage a un in Cardiff on the 2nd June, and Simon Munnery and Robin Ince are doing their shows around about the same time, so lots to see if you can get to South Wales. If not, buy the DVDs and it's almost like actually being there.
Better get back to work now. Place your bets on how many pages I will get done today.
