I have broken myself.
One relatively late night and a bit of a disturbed night of sleep - mainly because my girlfriend kept waking me when I was snoring (selfish cow) - and I was dead on my feet.
My throat was hurting a bit from my late night shouting in bars and then I made things worse by walking the two miles to my car (which thankfully was still there, unbroken into unburnt out and still working). Then, when I really wanted to go back to bed, I had to walk over to Andrew Collings' hotel (he was back in town for one day) to record a podcast. Well, I didn't have to, but we had decided to take advantage of the situation. I was running late and tried to get a cab, but none was around and so it was another long walk across town. I was knackered and grumpy and my throat was hurting even more. I didn't have the energy for any of this and was concerned that my show would suffer from my illness and fatigue, but we ordered some drinks on room service and sat down to give the poddie a chance.
And it was rubbish. I think almost certainly the worst ever. I could not lift myself and felt miserable, only having the energy to snipe at Collings and his useless stories. I thought it might be funny, but it was just ill-tempered and largely unamusing. We thought about bailing out at a couple of points and Collings seemed to be considering not putting it on line. But the whole ethos of the podcast is to put out the crap to highlight that the occasional moments of gold are all the more impressive. If you want that proved to you and have 66 minutes to spare (for some reason though we're recording the usual amount, it's been coming in short) then
you can listen to it here. But I'd give it a miss if I was you.
Then I realised what the error had been. In my tiredness I had sat on the wrong side of Collings. This was a schoolboy error. I always go on the right and here I was on the left (or the right as you look at us). The whole thing had been ruined by that and not by over indulgence or Edinburgh fatigue.
I loaded up on lucozade and coffee and chocolate and ice cream, hoping that that would soothe my throat and wake me up. I then passed out on the floor of the dressing room in my pants for 20 minutes.
The show was hard work for me and a little croaky and painful, but I think it went OK. I had some walk outs as I derided the BNP and commented that the people leaving might have been BNP voters who were upset by the lack of racism in the show. I was joking, but I think I might have been right.
I headed home early tonight, relieved that there was just one more show to go. I think I can get through it, but very glad that there's no more to do after that.
Although I am not really looking forward to the drive home.
But I am looking forward to being at home.
It's been a long month.
