We've been married for three weeks now and all is fine. At a gig I did on Wednesday I got a round of applause for mentioning that I'd been married for 18 days and wondered at what point that good will would evaporate. Would I get such a reaction if I said, "I've just got married..... four years ago." I think maybe there'd be support after the first bit, then slight disappointment and a sense of betrayal after the addendum. Still it's fun to fuck around with Pavlovian responses, so it might be a good thing to try.
For the moment though I am in the honeymoon period. I suspect that the audience at my final Lyric Hammersmith comedy night on Sunday will respond positively to the news.
And against the odds I am not using being married as an excuse to let myself go - I've lost 1.2kg in the last week and ran down the hill into town and back today to get a few groceries. Use it or lose it. Might be time to have a crack at writing my diet book, "All Diet Books Are Full of Shit. Including This One." It's not something that the publishing industry has been interested in taking up - mainly because they make so much money from diet books that are full of shit, though partly because that isn't a very commercial title (or maybe using that kind of reverse psychology would make it a brilliant book - who knows?), but now I can self-publish it as an ebook if I so desire. Bye Bye Balham, which I put up a few months ago
buy it here, has done modestly well, making me a few hundred pounds. Even though these books are mainly just a collection of already written blogs, it does take some time to put together a volume and it's hard to decide if the return is worth it in financial terms. But, as Bye Bye Balham had been a book as well, I had already sold a few hundred physical copies, so it's hard to predict how another unpublished volume would fare. And anyway, who cares? It's fun to get this stuff out there and any money made is just a bonus.
I've been working up volume two, provisionally called "The Box Lady and Other Maniacs" on and off over the last few months. I had a good crack at it today, and have done about two months. It's hard to work out where to end each book - six months of entries (even without the extra remarks and details for the last four months) comes in at about 500 pages, which is probably too many. And as the blog got older, the entries got longer, so I think there could be a fair few volumes to come.
It's strange looking back at this particular period in my life, it begins in June 2003 when I'd just moved into my house, as I was displaced and out of my depth, lonely and directionless and being forced to come to terms with where I was in my life both personally and professionally, but largely still trying to ignore all of that, by going out and getting drunk. It's not the happiest of times for me and yet, on the whole, the blog remained upbeat and funny. I'll let you know when I'm done. If anyone artistic fancies having a crack at creating a cover for it (check out the one for Bye Bye Balham - it'd be nice if it was consistent in appearance) then that would be nice. In the spirit of Warming Up it's not something I could pay you for, but I would credit the artist and maybe send out a few free DVDs or something.
There are quite a few pressing bits and pieces to do over the next couple of months, but I hope I can get this volume finished in idle moments or when my work isn't going too well. It's an amazing thing to have this strange diary of my life and I think adding comments years down the line does add extra value. There were times when I resented doing it and when I sat staring at my screen thinking there was nothing to say, but I it's good that I persisted. Only about one in ten entries is total rubbish, which isn't a bad hit rate.
And I love the idea of bypassing official publishers to bring out these more niche and uncommercial products.
And in another ten years I can release all the same books again, but with me commenting on the stupidity of my 2012 comments on my 2003 blogs. It's a never ending tiny income which ensures that I will not need a pension or life assurance, providing I move into a doll's house.
