I had hoped to write the second draft of Ra Ra Rasputin today, but after limiting my alcoholic intake at the gig last night I had foolishly glugged down a big glass of whisky before bed and then hadn't slept well and woke up with an annoying hangover.
There was no way I was going to get any work done. I wasn't even up to a game of self-playing snooker (though a properly hungover one might be kinda fun). Though having seen the Turner Prize winner (and the losers too) I am quite keen to try and turn the Me vs Me snooker thing into some kind of art exhibit and see if I can win next year. Either I would have a lit snooker table inside a small room and play the podcasts over a loudspeaker and people had to stay and watch them all - or I could actually play the snooker live and commentate on it whilst pretentious art lovers watched me and pondered on what I was saying about the divisions of self, the child within us, how we ultimately must compete between ourselves and the line between sanity and insanity. It's much better and cleverer than anything I saw at the Tate last month. And I want the prize money. So if you run an art gallery and would like to put on my installation then please get in touch. I'll split the prize money with you if that helps. I would definitely win - as long as they didn't realise I was a comedian. A comedian acting like an arse is just an arse, but if an artist acts like an arse then they are a genius.
But I made no art today and had to make do with watching a bit of recorded telly. I watched Peep Show episode 2. Several people had asked if I was in it, playing a man near the back of Jeremy's Lifeschool class. But it was not me, just a not very convincing double. I'd love to be on Peep Show (and did audition unsuccessfully for a small role some years ago) but I think I'd insist on at least having a line. I wish I got some a few more acting jobs. I wouldn't like to do it all the time, but it's a fun thing to do for a few weeks. But no, this was just another man wishing he could be me and copying my distinctive style, just like Brad Pitt has (back off Pitt, you're not good looking enough to pull this off).
Apart from that I dealt with admin. I had ordered some cheap prosecco from
Tesco wine last week. It was meant to arrive yesterday between 1 and 3 pm, but it didn't arrive and no one called to let me know about the delay. In the end I called them and they said they'd look into and call me back. And then didn't call me back. It was wonderful customer service all round. Though I was glad to see that they'd taken the money for the wine out of my account already. The important thing is that they got their money.
Today I rang again and the man on the line was apologetic but said that he'd have to get someone else to ring me back. I could see this going on for some time. I often wonder if you could run a successful business that sells nothing, just offers people good deals on things, then never delivers and waits to see how committed they are in their complaints. If you made stuff cheap enough that it wasn't worth the time spent on arguing for the money back then I think you could do quite well. The first man promised me that they would send me something to make up for the inconvenience - again it's easy to promise extra stuff, but if you can't deliver the original thing then I don't hold out too much hope for getting anything.
Eventually a man did ring me back, again quite apologetic, saying tht the wine had been lost somewhere along the line and that he'd have to order it for me again. I would have thought that that would have happened as a matter of course, after all, they had lost the wine so it was up to them to make sure that it got reordered. But he said he'd need my card details to make this order.
Even if I hadn't recently been the victim of identity theft then I might have found this suspicious. After all the company already had my card details from my initial payment and they already had my money which they had rather eagerly taken and on top of this, this was a call I had received from someone claiming to be with Tesco, but I had no proof that he was. I expressed surprise at his desire to have my card details and as I was in my dressing gown and didn't know where my wallet was in the house I wasn't really arsed to go searching for it. He agreed with me that it was a bit weird to want my card details again, but that was their policy and they had to prove I was over 18. I said, "I think that you can tell from my voice that I am over 18" and in any case I had already been through the whole order on their site so they had that proof. I wasn't prepared to give my debit card details to a man I didn't know who seemed to have no need to have them.
The fact that he readily admitted that the policy was a bit off made me even more suspicious. Like he was trying to get me on side. But I was really more annoyed that Tesco were making me go through this palaver for their mistake.
He said that my only other option was for him to cancel the order and I could then go back to the website and order the wine again and sort out another delivery slot. The wine I bought had been further discounted so this would save me another £15. So I did that obviously, though by now was paranoid and slightly concerned that the whole site was a fake and they were now just going to weasel some more money out of me. He didn't say anything about an extra gift to make up for the inconvenience and I think in this circumstance where I'd messed a customer around that much I might just have agreed to send out the order without charge. But now I get to wait in on Monday too to see if my wine will arrive and whether Tesco wines (could such a thing exist) will just take my money again. How many times would I be lured back and how long would I be prepared to chase the money for?
As it's me I obviously wouldn't let go, but if you had the kind of job where you couldn't just spend all day fucking around on the phone, you might give up.
In the meantime I'd probably suggest you buy your Christmas booze elsewhere.
Exciting news for Warming Up fans (that's you right?). The second volume of my retrospective collection of early blogs "The Box Lady and Other Pesticles" is now available to buy
on kindle. A limited number of printed copies will be available from go faster stripe from next week.
You can already buy the first volume, "Bye Bye Balham" both as
a kindle ebook or if you're stuck in the past like a Luddite
you can get it as a book.
These volumes include pretty much all the entries from the early days of the blog, plus additional information and thoughts written from the safe distance of the future, letting you know what was going on in my personal life at the same time. If these sell well enough then I will try to bring out more. It's a good way to catch up on early blogs that you might have missed and very cheap if you get it on kindle (and you can get the kindle app on most smart phones and tablets so you don't need to buy the actual device). And it's very cheap (on the kindle at least). The second volume also includes the unmade TV pilot script I wrote based on the blog.
