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Six days to the first rehearsal of "I Killed Rasputin" and we have two thirds of a script and maybe half of the cast. No, it's not at all stressful, thanks for asking. Like the pre-revolutionary aristocrats I might be dancing my way to disaster. But where would the excitement be if this couldn't all go horribly wrong? We will get this play stage even if I have to do it myself using sock puppets and taking suggestions from the audience for what might happen next. Ah well, there are more important things in life than critical acclaim, ticket sales and money. I can sleep in the gutter beneath the many different drafts of the play that broke me.
Like the idiot I am, I am half questioning why I took this stupid risk and half planning next year's play and then another half of me is thinking I should give up comedy and take up gardening or charity work. (There are three halves of me because of the number of Mes inside me).
But don't worry it's the fear of humiliation that fuels me and drives me on to produce my mediocre/surprisingly adequate work. At the end of the day I can't do gardening and I hate the disadvantaged so I have to push onwards.
But two late nights of script writing and yesterday's personal training session meant I was mentally and physically drained today. And wasn't much use at the coal face (I do my writing in a mine, so I can pretend it is a worthwhile job), but had more doctor appointments and casting to do, so it was never going to be a hugely productive day anyway.
I listened to a bit of the football as we drove to the in-laws for dinner. So initially I only got to hear the Luis Suarez bite, but there was a definite chomp and tearing of flesh. I enjoyed the fact that one of the other Uruguayan players suggested the bite marks were an old injury, as if the Italians had planned a clever ambush. "If Suarez mouth goes anywhere near you shoulder, quickly make out like you've been bitten! That'll get him." It's a million to one shot that everything would align, but the plan nearly came off. If only the referee had been watching. Of course the Italian team might have covered themselves in bites beforehand and have been ready to make this play at the right moment. Still seems a bit of a longshot though. And it didn't work. At least not for this match, they may have got him out of future games.
The way that the rules of football work are very quaint and give the whole thing the air of a wrestling fixture. The whole game is covered by cameras from every conceivable angle and yet the rules are enforced by three or four people running around on the pitch. How difficult would it be to have a referee in a little room somewhere else watching the telly and making his or her decisions from there? Or they could make a little hovercopter with the screens inside it so that the ref could fly over the action and make his or her commandments. The way things are it does feel that it's all set up exactly for villains to do bad stuff and good guys to be unfairly penalised. What's making us stick to the old technology except a strange sense of nostalgia.
It's an odd thing for a grown man to bite other people. This is the third time he's done this. I mean, sure give him one or two chances, anyone can make a mistake (though it's hard to make a mistaken bite), but surely any decent system would just say, that's ridiculous. You're not allowed to play now. You're weird.
The England team didn't bite anyone (or even try particularly hard to kick anything) and yet they go home. Where's the justice? Though I would quite like to see a dirty football league set up where anything is acceptable and there are no referees at all. Suarez would be worth millions in that system. Unlike the current system where his biting antics mean he has a value of £0. That's right isn't it?
