I had scaffolders at my house today. I am finally getting round to getting the outside of my house spruced up after only five years of being here. Then maybe I will think about getting the inside redecorated and hanging up some of the pictures that have been leaning against the wall for half a decade.
Scaffolders are, by definition, proper men, able to scale buildings and clamp together rods and wood to mean that lesser men might access out of reach places. They are in many ways even more admirable than the crane operators, and you should know how much I love and respect them.
As they had a big lorry to carry their gigantic poles we had booked a parking space outside my house for them. For a couple of weeks there have been signs up on the road warning of the parking restriction for today. All that time a landrover has been parked outside my house and it was still in the way this morning. So for a while (and the lads were here at 7 - which I only found out because I had to get up early to take my car in for its MOT - discovering I had done £120 worth of damage when
I drove over that kerb) they were parked in the road, causing a bit of a nuisance for everyone else in the street. But when the council were rung at 9, they reacted with amazing speed and by half past a lorry had arrived to winch the landrover out of the parking space and into an empty one across the road. Which might slightly confuse the driver when he returns if he remembers where he left it. Though they also gave him a ticket (maybe explaining their haste if they knew they were making money from it) which is a bit harsh as he has already paid for his parking permit and it doesn't seem fair to penalise him if he's been away on holiday. Still it was great to watch!
The scaffolders worked with speed and efficiency and soon my house was developing an exo-skeleton. I went to the gym for another extensive work out and watched This Morning, where I was amazed to see not only an annoying 8 year old boy from "Britain's Got Talent" make a joke about a paedophile doctor ("The doctor told me to take off my clothes. I said, "Where shall I put them?" He said, "Over there on top of mine!") - Fern Britton moved things swiftly on - but also actual, factual naked breasts on morning TV in a feature about a new breast enhancement procedure. This gave me something to discuss on
The Collings and Herrin Podcast 10, which turned out to be a rather lewd affair in general. I can only put it down to having exercised off more calories than had consumed. Or maybe Collings had put some kind of drug in the dried tropical fruit mix that he gave me to eat this time. We'll be doing podcast 11 on Friday, so it's double bubble this week to make up for the lack of one last Friday. I am really enjoying our stupid, sprawling chats and pretty much forget that they are going out for public consumption. If you haven't subscribed at iTunes yet, then please do so now. We are stuck at number 18 in the charts and need to overtake Russell Howard again or I will never hear the end of it.
I tried out my first bit of new material for this year's Edinburgh show at the Fortnight Club tonight. It didn't really work. But at least I have taken that first faltering step towards the new show. And I've got three months to knock something together. It's quite an exciting moment, even though it was my weakest performance for quite some time.
