Warming Up

Blimey, the auction for the Slytherin notebook has exceeded all expectations on day one, with a top bid of over £1000 with six days still to go. So we’re strictly in eccentric millionaire territory now. But if you are an eccentric millionaire and would like to assist in paying the costs of producing internet content, then go and make a bid. It’s an investment for the future, like buying a Picasso or one of those fancy old violins.

The Talking Cock programme is a little more affordable, but still raising some good money for SCOPE at around £40 as I write this (I am wanking as I write this). I am going to put up some more stuff in the new year, but if you have a more limited budget then you can still win some great stuff if you become a monthly subscriber and are lucky enough to get picked out in the end of month draw. And then you can put the stuff on eBay yourself and make literally tens of pounds. The big end of 2014 draw will include:

An exclusive and badly drawn hand-made Me 1 Vs Me2 T-shirt

A copy of John Bishop's Rollercoaster DVD signed by me

A copy of Dead Funny (horror short stories written by comedians) signed by me.

And my only other copy of the 2002 Talking Cock Edinburgh programme

Plus signed programmes and leaflets from nearly all my Edinburgh shows and the rare promotional stickers from this year’s Fringe.

There will be more great/rubbish prizes every month. Go to gofasterstripe.com and donate a pound or more a month to take part and get access to a secret channel of extras.

This week has been a terrible disaster for my middle class existence. Obviously being middle class I have an espresso machine and it is, without doubt, my most valued possession and I care more for it than I do for my wife and unborn child (though not my cats, I love those dopey fuckers). And I like to have a cappuccino or two to start my day. I had two cappuccino cups that I had been given as a gift years ago and then last month bought myself two fancy cappuccino glasses, which you can see through and see what your cappuccino looks like before you drink it. I was as happy as a man can be and assumed that I now had enough cappuccino receptacles to see me through to old age, as long as I had no more than 3 cappuccino drinking friends around at my house at the same time (this has never happened, I have never made cappuccinos for more than me and one other person and rightly so, they are my cappuccinos, the rest of you can fuck off). But earlier this week I put my new “dishwasher-safe” cappuccino glasses in my dishwasher (that is officially the most middle-class sentence there has ever been and it’s not even finished yet), but I had packed the dishwasher a bit tightly. When the cappuccino glasses came out they had knocked against each other and were both smashed and unusable. Their working life had been so short, but they had brought me so much pleasure. At least I had two cappuccino cups to drink my cappuccinos out of (and loads of other mugs which would do the job, but leave a lot of empty cup above the small cappuccino and thus be aesthetically less pleasing and the aestheticness is the main part of enjoying my early morning cappuccinos.

But then this morning as I drank my second cappuccino of the day (I have one as I make breakfast and then another as I eat breakfast), I inadvertently caught the handle of my cappuccino cup on my porridge bowl (the porridge somewhat dents the middle-classness, except it had sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds, blueberries and grapes in it, so we’re back on track) and knocked the handle off. To lose one cappuccino cup in a week might be seen as unfortunate, to lose two might be a disaster, but to lose three, whilst misquoting Oscar Wilde, makes you the biggest middle-class prick int existence. My cappuccino glasses, ironically enough, didn’t have handles, but the cups really need them. And to dispel any thoughts that I might use this cup in its handleless form, I then cut my finger on the spike of handle that remained on the cup. How could something I love so much hurt me so badly?

Luckily your donations to eBay are not funding my cappuccino lifestyle and my reckless disregard for cappuccino receptacles. Not a penny of you money will be spent on the accoutrements of over-expensive, poseur coffee. I will get through all of this somehow (probably by buying some more cappuccino glasses and treating them more carefully). But I am genuinely mildly fascinated by the fortunes of my crockery. Now my cappuccino mug is alone and its partner is gone, but if you look through my cup and plate draw you will see similar stories of items that were once part of a set, but are the sole survivor or occasionally entire families of plates or bowls that have survived down the years almost entirely unclipped. I still have a plate that my mum gave me when I went to University (that had already been in the Herring family for a few years). I used to have two of them, but one bit the dust. The other has survived for 30 odd years. I have one cup left from a set that I bought in 1997, with about three of the matching dinner plates and one side plate. The cup had its handle knocked off, but has survived and is probably used more than any of my other cups because it is the perfect size for measuring out the milk for my morning porridge. What would its brothers think of it if they had not perished? The cup was in a mildly nice set, my “posh” dinner set from Habitat (oh yeah, I was classy even in the 1990s before I had even considered the possibility of having a different cup for my cappuccinos) and now it has come to this. I bet that cup envies the dead.

The random nature of the survival of crockery probably has some kind of metaphorical message for us all. But I am too upset about my cappuccino cups to work out what it is.

Someone likes yoghurt? How dare you. Someone like cappuccino cups? Thank you I am sophisticated. Though not so sophisticated that they don’t all get smashed. This is why I am not allowed to have nice things.