Oh thanks a lot Cheryl Cole. Go and get malaria the day after I have finished AIOTM (AIOTM). Very fucking thoughtful of you. Some people think of no one but themselves.
Ah well, at least I can concentrate on Edinburgh now (though do also have to do some work on my Radio 4 series which we start recording in September) and whilst I could probably have done with a day off, I was instead heading up to Manchester for a preview. I was certainly questioning my wisdom as I got on the train. I suppose I can have a nice long sleep when I am dead, which should be pretty soon given how hard I am pushing my fat almost 43 year old body. Oh, what a wonderful infinity of oblivion that shall be. I hope God doesn't spoil it all by turning out to be real and burning me up in a big lake of fire. I have this unusual condition which makes it impossible to sleep if burning sulphur is sticking to my skin.
I had taken my iPad to work on and it's perfect for little jaunts like this, where there are some light writing duties to do, but where I don't need to lug my laptop around. Especially as I was already lugging around a bucket and a rucksack full of show programmes. I could catch up with my blogs on the train - this was pretty much the whole reason I bought the thing. But taking the iPad out in public is still a bit like sitting there, conspicuously polishing up the Holy Grail. It means that strangers (all men) feel they now have a good reason to talk to you. All boundaries come down. An iPad is the key to a lot of conversations with people you don't know. But all the conversations are about the iPad. And whether it is worth buying. I can't criticise anyone. I was once one of these strangers talking to an iPad owner.
For me the jury is still out. It is a useful luxury item, but by no means a necessity. It might indeed end up being the prototype of how all computers are in the future. The touch screen interface is good and it's brilliant to have all your entertainment in one place. I played games, caught up on some emails, browsed Twitter and read an iBook on the train as well as catching up on the blog. I could have done most of these things on my computer too I suppose, but not as easily I might well have watched a TV show or a film too, but in the rush to come out I had forgotten my headphones. What a dolt.
There is a part of me that feels like I have been suckered still. Apple have done an amazing job of making people covet this item, even without knowing what it actually does exactly, as witnessed by the men who wanted to talk to me about it and find out what it was like. Some of my productivity was thus lost by the desirability of the item.
I think my advice to the curious would be to wait a while before buying one. They need to be a bit cheaper and in a year or so I imagine they will have improved them no end. I can't for example easily put in pictures to the blog, or leave what I am doing here to check Twitter and then return (though with my iPhone I am able to operate two mini computers at once). It is easier to write on it with the attachable keyboard, but that isn't particularly portable and is an odd shape, which somewhat negates the portability of the iPad. There seemed to be a few glitches with it yesterday too, when keys didn't work or things mysteriously deleted themselves, but that seems better today.
But if you can't bear to wait and if, like me, you are worried about Steve Jobs not being able to keep up with the rent on his bedsit (I have spent an awful lot of money on Apple stuff this year and will probably be giving them some more money for an iPhone 4 soon) then you could give it a whirl. If nothing else it will help you to meet some nerdy men.
I was powerfully tired when I arrived at my hotel and was a bit disappointed to find I had been put in a tiny room with a single bed and no windows - but at least it didn't smell of sewage (though much of the hotel did smell odd and unpleasant). In the middle of a tour a room like this might have broken me or at least depressed me significantly. But perhaps it was a little reminder to me not to let last night's success at the Bloomsbury to go to my head. I am certainly no superstar. Russell Brand would not sleep in a room like this. Peter Kay probably couldn't fit in a room like this. It was like a little monk's cell, which might be apt given that I am to be a Holy Fool for the next few months. At least the bed was not made of stone.
The room was packed (and I am still getting used to doing previews that people are actually coming to - when I first previewed Christ on a Bike I would have played to some audiences that were no more than six people strong) and although there were some microphone issues at the start, we got through them and I did the whole show, without a script and pretty much remembered everything. The new Ten Commandments bit went very well again, though it's entirely ad libbed and I keep forgetting to record the show (at least I have AIOTM to look back on). Hopefully it will all come back to me. The Men of Phise reading which I had put in on Monday, seemed a little bit crow barred in tonight, but aside from that I am very happy with the way it's going. There is some way to go, but I have some ideas to improve the structure and give the show more weight. I am very glad I resurrected this show. Not just so it can get the audience it deserves (although I am quite proud of the 33 year old me that wrote this - it's a shame he never got to live to see the day when it would get this kind of a reaction), but because nine years on I do have a slightly different view point on the subject. Whilst I am obsessed with trying to discover the historical Jesus and annoyed that Christians don't realise how the New Testament has been adapted by spin doctors (who would today have been working for Apple) and obfuscated the original philosophy of the man they follow, I also realise that getting annoyed about the inconsistencies of the Bible is almost as stupid as insisting on taking the Bible literally. In a sense it doesn't matter who the man Jesus was, or what he did. What he represents to the people who follow him is what it's about. In a sense it doesn't matter that the historical Jesus and the Jesus that people worship are entirely different entitities. The imaginary Jesus has become a real entity, a bit like a Tiny Andrew Collings. He guides and helps people even though he is entirely pretend. I think there is an element of this in my original script, but hope to make the point more effectively this time round. And he really is all things to all men. I like him because I think he was a satirist and iconoclast like me. But George W Bush obviously thinks that Christ was like him too and so did Peter Sutcliffe and Cliff Richard and all kinds of disparate people. Everyone wants him, even if no one really knows what he does. I wonder if people will worship the iPad in 2000 years time.
After the show it was back to my poky room, where it sounded like the monk in the next room was continuously kicking the wall at regular intervals. Though it might have just been the pipes in the walls. I was as tired as a stone and fell asleep anyway.
