We walked round the grounds of the hotel this morning and I realised how unfit I have managed to get in the last four weeks. I was very glad of a little sit down on a bench hewn out of a log in a little secluded and almost secret garden. So relaxing just to sit and commune with nature. If I have had any time to sit and contemplate recently it's been behind drawn curtains in some dingy, snot-strewn hotel room. So much more pleasant to have sunshine and the softest breeze on my face, with water cascading gently from a fountain and the smell of flowers on the air.
As we walked back to the hotel we passed a tiny pet cemetery, with intricate mini-headstones, most of which dated from the 19th Century. The genuine sadness of the loss of a much loved companion was heightened by the fact that the children who had so cared for what was now a pile of bones under the ground, were now themselves also piles of bones under the ground. I remarked that the graves of the people who buried these animals are probably less visited than the ones we were viewing. We like to believe our lives are more meaningful than those of animals, but in this case the death of the animals seems more poignant than the humans who cared for them.
The truth is, of course, that none of our lives mean anything. We're all just bags of meat, waiting to atrophy and rot away. Some of these bags of meat have acheived consciousness and like to believe that they are more important than the others, that their lives have some kind of eternal meaning. But in the grand scheme of things we are no more consequential than an dog that died in 1860. And in many ways we are less so.
There's an implicit arrogance in thinking that a human life means any more than an animal one. Once upon a time this realisation made me elevate animal lives so that they too took on this mystical, cosmic importance, but the truth is we should be relegating ourselves. Our lives are amazing and the chances of us being here are beyond tiny, and we should make the most of them whilst we're here. But that doesn't mean that we go and live forever in a big palace in the sky, just as it would be hard to imagine that there is a Heaven anywhere for ants or amoebas. Treasure these precious moments and the wonders of life and the breeze on your face whilst you can, my pretties, because we are all destined to be piles of bones under the ground or dust upon the wind meaning that after death all people and animals reach a strange equality that some don't realise we actually have in life.
It was a very short drive to Nottingham, where I would have loved to have taken my girlfriend to see
The Tales of Robin Hood, which
I have written about many times before, especially regarding its claim that "you are about to leave behind your humdrum lives."
But inexplicably the Tales of Robin Hood has been closed (I am sure there is an explanation - probably that it was losing money, but I refuse to look into it). The people of Nottingham are idiots for letting this happen. All you have is Robin Hood, it's all that makes your town interesting, even though he's probably a fictional character who didn't live anywhere near Nottingham (in a way he's your Jesus). Now you've only got Brian Clough and you have to share him with the idiots of Derby - and only have a piece of dual carriageway to celebrate him, that's never going to make you any money.
We went instead to look at the castle, or more specifically the manmade caves in the sandstone beneath it. We visited the "Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem" pub which is hewn into the rock and the little museum next door, which in part took you through some little rooms carved into the sandstone, but was mainly some recreations of various shops down the ages. It was OK, but there was no papier mache models of the Sheriff of Nottingham leaping out of you through trap doors and rather than leaving behind my humdrum life, I was instead revisiting the humdrum lives of some people from the past who were now just piles of bones and had probably never shot an arrow at anyone.
There was no interactive elements in the museum and few visitors and the staff were only in the shop at the end and I wondered how long I might get away with pretending to be an actor portraying a character in one of the rooms. I considered getting behind the counter in the reconstructed sweet shop and then greeting the next lot of visitors as if I was a hearty old shop keeper, offering them sweets from the ancient looking jars and attempting to recreate the language and atmosphere of the day (though of course having no idea of what actually had happened or what was in the shop). We agreed that I'd probably be able to stay in there all day without anyone noticing, unless one of the visitors happened to comment on it on the way out. It would be fun to spread misinformation to tourists about what shops used to be like in Nottingham. And would be enormously confusing to the visitors as well. Why was there just one interactive display? Why in that particular exhibit?
Perhaps this day away from the rigours of driving and the stress of trying and mainly failing to write and just having some time for fun was a good thing, because tonight's gig was right up there with the best of the whole tour. Not only was I really nailing the scripted material, I was riffing easily and eloquently about Nottingham and the whole "Tales of Robin Hood" travesty and about people walking out in Derby and Brian Clough and being
slapped in the face last time I was at this venue. The room was packed to the rafters and everyone seemed right behind me (apart from a sour faced blond woman in the third row who barely cracked a smile all night). It was one of those nights where I felt like a proper comedian. They laughed, they cried, they were gripped by the story from the start. But how much was it to do with the fact that the last two days have helped me release some of the tension that has been building up over this stressful tour period. And the fact that I knew I now have almost two weeks off before the next gig.
Or perhaps it's just a good thing to come to terms with your own mortality and your own pointlessness and celebrate our ludicrous lives before we become a pile of bones under the ground, and evoke less sympathy from the casual observer than a dead 19th Century cat.
But I have added two more ambitions to my list (to play the Hammersmith Apollo and to fill the big venues at Wolverhampton and Cardiff). I want Brian Clough Way to be renamed Richard Herring Way and to have "Tales of Richard Herring" opened up on the site of "Tales of Robin Hood" in Nottingham, in which papier mache models of myself relive some of the more dramatic and seedy episodes from my pointless existence.
It would be doubly impressive to achieve this feat in a town which I have absolutely no connection to (though I do seem to have some kind of affinity with this town - I remarked in the show about how much I seemed to know about the place). These are the least likely of my ambitions to come to fruition, but I will do all I can to make them so. And I trust you will help me.
