Three grand? Oh dear.
I need a new gear box and it's three thousand pounds. I mean I like my car, but that's a bit much don't you think?
The garage did indeed tell me that the complete failure of my gearbox was nothing to do with them having oiled and refiltered it two days before. I argued that it was a bit crap if they hadn't noticed during the service that it was on its last legs, but they stuck to their guns and what can I do?
If I don't pay the money I don't have a car. Or I do have a car, but it won't work. Without a gear box it's not worth anything more than scrap, with a gear box it is worth more than 3000 pounds. After taking a couple of hours to think about it and to try and get rid of the sick feeling in my stomach I agreed that they should get on with the work. I can't let my car die. We've been through too much together. And luckily thanks to all the work I've been doing since Edinburgh I can afford it. But if I am spending three grand on something I would at least hope to get a blow job at the end of it. So might pop down to the garage and see if one of the mechanics is up for that. It's the least they can do. They've actually had over four thousand pounds off me all together this year.
But it didn't put me in the best of moods for the podcast that I was about to record. But although I was a little stuttery and went down a couple of blind alleys, there was plenty of stuff in there that was pretty good. I got into my stride and suddenly became rather eloquent about forty minutes in as I discussed my recent realisation that during one's own death you must realise that you are mourning the loss (from your perspective) of everyone you know and indeed the entire Universe. Whilst everyone else must mourn only your death, in those final seconds you would have to accept that essentially your death meant the death of everyone all at once. Unless you're religious, but then religious people still seem to get upset when loved ones die, even though you'd think they'd be happy to know they were with Jesus, or being sucked off by loads of virgins or whatever they believe Heaven is. Collings, as you'll hear if you
listen in , seems to think that at the point of your death you will somehow lose all ideas of pain and fear and your body will flood you with endorphins, so you won't worry about what's going on. Good luck with that Collings. I can't wait until he is dying, because I am going to come to his deathbed. laughing and saying - "Ha ha, see it hurts and you've got time to consider your own mortality and the loss of the Universe from your perspective." Then he'll at least have the comfort of knowing that soon I will be as dead to him as he is to me.
Other podcasts might have edited out some of the less successful jokes - my brain was freezing a bit, in sympathy no doubt for my useless gear box (that's not a euphemism) - but I like the fact that we leave in the bits where we make mistakes or just say things that aren't at all funny. It proves that the stuff that is funny is just as improvised. And luckily (whatever some recent correspondents on iTunes seem to think) there are more hits than misses. I had no idea today for example that I would end up discussing a plan to rape all the living Doctor Who actors, but somehow our freeflowing conversation took us that way. That's not necessarily a good thing, but I do love the way this stupid weekly conversation works and if I stop and think about it I am quite impressed with the two of us for having talked for the equivalent of more than two days over the last year without any sign that we were about to run out of rubbish to talk about. It's throw away and silly, but it's been a lot of fun for us - and from the majority of emails and comments then it seems many of you are getting something out of it too. The only down side is that I realise that another year has whizzed by into the ether and my personal destruction of the Universe is that little bit closer.
I managed to get the earlier train back from Whitstable, after another satisfactory warm up gig. There were no crazies on there at all. I was slightly disappointed. But maybe I was the Kental this time. I wish it was possible to do the whole tour by train though, as I got plenty done on the way there. But it's just not practical or economical for most gigs. I have hired a car for Tewkesbury tomorrow. It will be nice to be in a car that someone else will have to pay for if something goes wrong.
