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To Portsmouth, to Portsmouth, it is a gallant town and there I shall buy a pint of wine and some nutmeg brown, derry down.
Those lyrics from memory from an exercise in music class in about 1979 where I had to set them to music. I can still remember the tune. I will sing it for you if you join my Only Fans.
I'm spending a lot of time in shopping centres looking for sandwiches and killing time and noting how much HMVs have changed since the time when I used to spend quite a lot of time in them. They are now mainly sort of market stalls concentrating on K Pop and vinyl. But nice to see them surviving, even in this monstrously depressing form. Thank God Nipper didn't live to see this.
I nearly went back to bed after a pretty disappointing Costa sandwich, but then realised there was a whole other part of Portsmouth down by the docks, where there was an embarrassment of restaurants and a cinema and a bowling alley and HMS Victory (I didn't remember that the Mary Rose was also there today) and lots of shops selling cut price items. I was a bit overwhelmed by the choice and ended up nearly doing loads of things and then changing my mind. I nearly bowled alone, but then I thought that would maybe be a bit tragic, I thought about going to the casino, but thought that might be a slippery slope, I looked in the cinema but the only film I could see was Inside Out 2 and I thought it would make me sad to watch that without the kids (who have seen it), so I just nicked one piece of pick n mix for old times sake. I was going to go up the Spinnaker Tower, but decided not to and then decided on Pizza Express for dinner, but they took ages to come and seat me, so I left that too and had an ill-advised 5 Guys instead. I bought some shirts at least and it was nice to walk around Portsmouth and marvel at the billionaires' yachts, but I have not really got the hang of using my time efficiently on tour yet.
Time passed. It would have passed in any case.
I hit the ground running in tonight's gig and everything came out lovely and crisp and with some nice colour in the voice performance. I had a mic stand malfunction and Bollings had to get me another one, though he fixed the one I couldn't tighten immediately.
I'd sold over 200 tickets, which is great for another town that I rarely if ever play and though I am more than halfway through the tour and the gigs are whizzing by, I am still really enjoying doing and developing this show. When I saw the list of dates I thought that this fortnight section might be a bit hard work - I am playing lots of smaller towns, many of which I haven't played before and I haven't done stand up for six years. But enough people are coming to make the rooms more than playable and so many people are telling me how the show resonates with their own experiences.
