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Not delighted to have a day off on the tour. I miss the kids - I missed Pancake Day yesterday and World Book Day tomorrow- and without the distraction of the show you have much more time to think about them. Plus it adds to the tour costs with nothing coming back in. I'd hoped to get another Irish gig, but instead a free day in Dublin's fair city, where girls are of equal attractiveness to the girls in any other place.
I had some press chats to do and had also booked in a Book Club interview with Mark Steel which will be out on Friday. He's always entertaining company, even remotely and it was an enjoyable hour chatting about his brilliant book and our respective cancers.
I had Pret a Manger for every meal yesterday, so decided to treat myself to lunch at the Ivy, which feels a little weird on your own. But I've got much more comfortable with my own company and enjoyed the solitude of the day.
After a chat with Craig Charles for his show, I decided to go to the cinema to get through the evening hours. I was powerfully tired though, after podcasts, travel and stand up and failing to sleep in twice and I almost drifted off during "A Real Pain" which was not as good as I had been anticipating. It was OK. And I didn't quite fall asleep. I may not have been in the right frame of mind. A minor part of it was a father being away from his kid and missing them, so that didn't help.
Luckily I got an email to cheer me up. I almost missed it because it was in my junk. It came from no higher person than Anuj Agarwal, the Founder of FeedSpot - yes, the same.
He was informing me that my podcast "Stone Clearing With Richard Herring" had been selected by his panellist (is it really a panel if there's only one person on it?) as one of the TOP 4 STONE INDUSTRY PODCASTS. What an incredible achievement to make the top four. You might think that means Stone clearing is the fourth best podcast about stones or why wouldn't they call it Top Three or best. But you are an idiot. They can't separate the four - they are all just as good as each other. If Bryan Bramble is on there I am going to be furious.
Why had my email put this in junk? There were also lots of women who live near me who want to have elicit secret affairs, based only on sex too. It's like my email server is trying to ruin my life. And I'll remind you that those women wanted to have sex with me BEFORE they heard about the award.
I assume most of these messages come from the women who are desperate for sex and unable to find anyone else but me willing to give it to them - it's a tough sexual market out there for women.
I found this one about Harley a bit disturbing though, not only because it was about a 19 year old and it seems a bit weird that she might be interested in a 57 year old married man with one testicle and no energy, but also because it doesn't even seem to be written by her. It's someone looking for a partner for Harley on her behalf, seemingly without her knowledge. Which is OK sometimes, sometimes you need a matchmaker. But this person seems to be acting against Harely's best wishes, and revelling in the fact that she's inexperienced and doesn't seem to know her worth or "what else is out there". If you're her friend then tell her that she can definitely do better than Richard Herring. Don't offer her out to me, knowing she might go for it because she is apparently like Miranda in the Tempest and doesn't know anything about men.
It's nice that Harley is looking for a possible committed relationship, but again that makes me a very poor choice and even if I was up for this I'd be very worried that she was going to base her choice of partner on his ability to have sex. I am not very good at that, especially in such a high pressure situation and I think I'd be duty boung to tell Harley that she should not be basing her search on this criterion. It's rare that sex is at its best straight away, but it's more important that she chooses a partner based on compatibility in other areas.
Harley also seems to live in Florida, which I think will make things tougher for us.
The whole thing makes me feel very uncomfortable.
