Days Without Alcohol - 63.
I was still very tired today and not really looking forward to the drive to Bath. I set off early to avoid any repeat of last week's living Hell and yet almost straight away found myself stuck in traffic and I wasn't even out of London yet. Using intuition and my sat nav I tried to find an alternative route on to the M4, but every direction I came at it from I was finding myself in a queue. I should probably have just stuck where I was in the first place, but was too impatient to wait and blindly drove down roads with no traffic in the hope that that would bring me to some secret entrance to the M4, essentially missing out the Chiswick Roundabout, which was clearly the problem.
Eventually I somehow found myself right under the M4, but facing in the wrong direction, heading back towards Chiswick on the slip road that I usually come down when leaving the M4 on the way home. There was just as bad a queue here as anywhere else, though annoyingly I only had to glance to my right to see the slip road I required to take me on to the motorway, which was almost entirely empty of traffic. There was no direct link between the two roads, but just a pavement with a medium to high kerb, between the various struts holding up the motorway overhead. I thought about trying to drive over the pavement, as this would surely save me at least half an hour of waiting, but I couldn't work out if my car would be capable of mounting the kerb and whether if I tried it I might end up damaging the vehicle, as I had feared I'd done at that petrol station at the start of the tour. A 4x4 behind me clearly thought it was an achievable stunt, as did a bigger van and they both bumped over the pavement and found freedom on the other side. But I was more cautious and fearful and of course, what they were doing was not only potentially damaging, but also rather dangerous and illegal. There was a pedestrian bit by some traffic lights that I almost considered going across (and I think there was room), but I wimped out. At one point I was fulling intending to take the chance and swung out wide to give myself a run up, but I wimped out at the last minute and decided to be law abiding. If I was a better man I would have been more knowledgeable about what my car was capable of doing and could have been on my way. But I waited in line, impatiently and sure enough within half an hour found myself driving up the empty road that I could have been on so much earlier if only there had been bravery in my heart.
Even though I had allowed for a couple of hours delay and for having my dinner en route, I only got to the venue about 15 minutes before the show was due to start (parking proved to be problematic), though it wasn't quite as stressful as last time.
It was an OK show, but I had to fight through tiredness and cold a little, making it a bit less fun for me I nearly fell asleep in the interval, though fortunately managed to stay awake on the drive home, despite feeling even more weary.
Another tour date passes by, almost literally in a dream.
The Collings and Herrin march up the iPod charts continues. We are, as I write 18th in the comedy chart and also a very impressive 46th in the overall Podcast chart. Keep subscribing to make little Andrew Collings' dreams of top ten glory come true.
