Warming Up

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At least Doctor Who being a woman means the BBC have saved some money, right?

People are going to lose their shit when they find out how much Rupert Murdoch makes. And Ant and Dec, but to be fair, they do have to split it.

I continue to explore Hertfordshire and I wanted to get out of the house today, in the hope that that would encourage me to get the work done on the sitcom. I went to Welwyn Garden City which is both much better and much worse than it sounds. I drank coffee, got some house admin did and made a tiny bit of progress on the sitcom. Then I went to cut some keys for my in-laws house (as I keep going out and working late). The man in the key cutters said to me on my return, “Did you used to be on telly?”

“I did,” I said.

“In Fist of Fun?” he asked

“It was, yes.”

“I used to love that show,” he said, “I’ve just been watching the hobby guy again on youtube.”

“Yeah, the actor Kevin Eldon is doing pretty well these days,” I remarked.

“Stewart Lee was in it wasn’t he…? And your name is….”

“Richard Herring,” I told him. There was nothing to be gained in leaving him hanging. And that’s show business. He was impressed, but also had the air of a man who thought that I hadn’t done a thing since 1996 and was thus a curiosity. How had I survived? I was clearly well fed.

He asked if I lived here now and said I was moving into the area. He was chuffed that I was there, but there was the stink of tragedy over the whole thing and I didn’t want to have to shout, “Don’t worry mate, I am actually doing OK still.”

The keys cost £21 but as I scrabbled to make up the £1 with some loose change, he said “Call it twenty.” At last the work I had done in the 1990s was finally paying off. That pound might technically just put me in credit. “And take a sweet,” he added. He had a bowl of chews on the counter and I suspect he was worried about where my next meal was coming from.

A pound and a sweet. It’s all going pretty well in 2017.

Though later as I reversed my car out of the car park I caught my wing mirror on a concrete pillar and thought I’d knocked the whole thing off. Annoyingly I had made a mental note to pull in the wing mirror before I reversed when I’d arrived as I’d spotted the danger. But high on free chews and another pound to add to my Twirl fund (incidentally I posted the travel card and the fiver back to the rightful owner today), it had slipped my mind. Luckily it was just the wing mirror casing that had broken off. Things were a bit scuffed, but I managed to get it back on. I was still annoyed by my clumsiness. All the accidents and scrapes I’ve had driving cars have come about when I have been parking or unparking. I am pretty safe at speeds of over 4 miles an hour.

If you thought This Week was awkward then check out RHLSTP with Andrew Collings. It also has much fun and emotion in it too