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Yup, I regretted those drinks today. Especially when I was driving to Cheltenham and my eyes were drooping like a was a dreamy Homer Simpson. I stopped and had lots of coffee and biscuits and made it somehow.
I had so much to get done today so felt dumb for getting drunk and then inevitably waking up at 3 on a day when it wasn’t my turn to get up with the baby. But I managed to write a Metro column about Pointless, without giving anything away and also, more importantly to make 7 AIOTM semi-circular toilet mats for backers of the last kickstarter. You know you have made it when you’re lying on the floor putting fabric paint on to the fabric-paint-unfriendly medium of the absorbent toilet mat. More so when you are spraying white unguent on them to complete the effect (but where from?). But I contented myself with the fact that I was creating some rare works of art that are almost bound to rocket in value. Given they cost £5 each. Or at the very least only slightly lose their value.
I don’t know who is sadder, me for making these or the lucky backers who are going to receive them. I hope they don’t use them to catch their errant piss. You wouldn’t do that with the Mona Lisa.
I’d somehow been caught a bit by surprise for the official start of my new tour. I did some previews back in July, but that seems like a long time ago. I wasn’t sure what bits I wanted to put into the 90 minute version of the show and I hadn’t thought about how I was going to end it, but luckily the smallish but enthusiastic Cheltenham crowd seemed to enjoy it. And so did I. Somehow the hangover was largely banished whilst I was on stage and as I had thought, I enjoyed doing the old routines again with the benefit of (in some cases) a decade more experience.
And I got my first plastic fiver from someone buying a DVD after the show. But I had pledged to donate my first one to SCOPE, so it went straight in the bucket. Be nice if everyone did that. But check them first. Some guy just sold three of them for £400+ because they had low serial numbers. What a strange world.
I had been a bit worried about the drive home, but I was more awake than on the way there and got through OK. I was fully remembering all the reasons I stopped drinking and given I’d eaten my weight in biscuits (and as I got fatter that got higher and I had to eat more biscuits) I realised that I am going to have to stop this again. A woman in the queue after the show had pointed at a picture of me, laughing, saying “How long ago was that taken?” as if I was using some old publicity still from the 1990s. "Two years,” I told her. It’s true that the lack of sleep since becoming a dad has taken its toll.
I had been upsetting myself on the way home by imagining my own death and thinking of my daughter growing up having no idea who I was and trying to get some sense of my from blogs and podcasts. Love is a horrible thing that just ruins everything isn’t it? How can we enjoy our lives when we are constantly fearing the worst. But you know if that one comes true, hi Phoebe. Sorry I wasn’t around. Thanks for bringing this awful dread to my life. It was totally worth it.
Oh man, was really sad to hear that Terry Jones has dementia. Like sadder than I expected. The Pythons meant so much to me growing up and I was glad I got to see them at the O2 (though it was apparent then that Terry was not on top form and reading a lot of his lines - Palin however was incredibly vigorous). I have met Terry Jones twice. Once when I was 18 and on my year off and my day off from the archaeological dig I was doing. He was signing his book in a bookshop in Oxford and I thanked him for writing his book about the Knight's Tale which had formed the basis of my A level essay. And then a couple of years ago I gave him the Chortle award for that Monty Python show and again managed to thank him both for that first meeting and the influence his comedy had had on me and my entire life. I think without Python I wouldn't be doing what I am doing now. I am glad I got two chances, thirty years apart, to thank him. Messed that up with Rik Mayall. But thanks to the rest of them too.
