If Warming Up shows anything it is that I learn nothing. Or remember very little anyway. I was gigging in Fareham tonight, which I last played about 20 months ago. Had I cared to check my blog I would have remembered that last time I played here
I set off at 4pm, but due to bad traffic didn't arrive until 7.35, 5 minutes after the gig was supposed to start. Then maybe I would have set out at 3 today, just in case.
But I was working on my Gorgeous script and on a proposal for another series of Objective and I didn't get into my car until 4.15. I was a bit surprised that Fareham was 90 minutes away - in my head I was thinking it was less than an hour, but I realised I had confused it with Farnham, a place I also play. Still even allowing for an hour delay I'd be there at 6.45. As I drove down towards Hammersmith I thought to myself about how the sat nav has revolutionised my life - I am useless at navigating and I don't think I could have toured so effectively without this invention. It gives me confidence and security that I can't fuck up too badly. But even as I was thinking this I was disobeying the sat nav instructions. It clearly wanted to take me on to the M4 and M25 and I didn't want to do that. I would instead, cleverly take the short cut over Hammersmith Bridge on to the A3. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
Even when I got to the bridge I could see that the traffic was slow and thought about following my sat nav's advice and going on to the A4 instead. But I was sure about my short cut and had time to sit in traffic for 20 minutes, so blithely carried on over the bridge. An hour later I was still sitting in traffic and had moved perhaps half a mile up the road. It was gridlock seemingly in both directions. I had thought a few times about turning round, but traffic looked bad that way too and in any case I had invested my time in this route and it would be foolish to give up now. Even if my arrival time was not predicted as 7.15 and that was only if the traffic miraculously moved. It was around this point that I realised that the short cut I had taken to get on to the A3 might have been useful if I was going to Farnham, but it was actually the wrong direction for Fareham. I needed to M3 to get there. How could I have been so doubly stupid? And yet still I doggedly stuck to my incorrect, unmoving route. I had spent too much time here to give up now. Though of course, as always, I had drunk too much diet coke and really needed a wee. I was becoming increasingly convinced that there was no way I was going to make it in Fareham in time to do the gig. It was now rush hour so even if I went a different way, surely it would be blocked up too. I might get away with being 15 minutes late and starting at 8, but not much later than that. As far as I recall I have never missed a gig entirely (though have been late for a few), but I couldn't see anyway I'd be making this one. I was frustrated and angry with myself for my own stupidity - most short cuts are bound for disaster, but this one wasn't even going to the right place. I was angry enough and desperate enough for micturition to think about binning the whole night and going home. It seemed like a mission impossible to get to Fareham before 9. But if Mission: Impossible teaches us anything, it is that the impossible missions are actually possible and thus not impossible at all. So it's astonishing that the franchise has continued under that name. If I wrote the films they would consist of setting up the impossible mission and then Tom Cruise saying, "I've thought about it, and that's impossible. And you know it is. You set it up to be impossible, hence the name of the film." And then the film would end.
Time ticked on and I was forced to turn into a side street to find a place that I could evacuate uric acid in daylight. It was an emergency. I apologise to the the people of Barnes. Or more specifically the person who had a short drive and a high fence and some wheelie bins. It was lucky I did that though, because free of bladder pressure I became rational for the first time this afternoon and thought - what the fuck am I doing? I am struggling to head the wrong way. I might as well struggle to head the right way. So I headed back in the opposite direction, which whilst not fast, did not take as long as I thought. And before long I was on the M4 (like my sat nav had insisted all along) and making progress. My sat nav predicted a 7.40 arrival (actually it predicted 8.40 but luckily I hadn't corrected the clock since the hour went back). Surely I would get snarled up somewhere. I certainly wasn't going to be able to stop for dinner. And my petrol was running low. But if Tom Cruise can do impossible missions so can I.
And in spite of a few minor delays I managed to get on to the M3, where things were clear and I somehow bent time and kept my arrival time around the 7.40 mark (I certainly didn't speed officer). After the horrible events of last week (much love to the people of Somerset) it's impossible not to be driving along and imagining catastrophe. But I kept safe and didn't panic and thought "I get there when I get there". Everyone could have an extra drink whilst they waited.
And I rolled up into the familiar car park, unloaded my stuff, got changed, ate a pack of crisps and an apple (the rider was 9 packs of crisps and a bag of 8 apples - I think they over estimated how many crisps I could eat and worried about straying into Stewart Lee territory again) and then dashed out on to stage. I mumbled apologies and bumbled around for a couple of minutes - the audience seemed a little prickly and annoyed by the wait, but I hadn't gone home like I had thought I would and I did the show and it seems I won them round. I was glad I had stuck with it. This disaster had been of my own making, but I had found a way through. Tom Cruise rang me up and said, "How did you manage that? I thought you said it was impossible."
I did get to listen to the first episode of Objective due to my tardiness and Tilusha had done a great job of cutting it down (think we recorded about 55 minutes) without losing too anything too vital - though think the loss of the mention of striped pyjamas from the description of a potentially offensive Jewish doll was a shame - it was supposed to show how awful the golliwog is and needed that kind of impact and was sort of more offensive by being less offensive. Having said that I am amazed by how far the BBC have let me go with this show, so I am not complaining too hard. And it's rare that I'll listen to something on the radio and only have one minor quibble with the cut. So brilliant work Tilusha and Ben Walker. I was very pleased with it overall. You can
listen again on iPlayer. There was talk of making it podcast of the week (though haven't heard anything more about that, so it might not be) and adding in a couple of the sketches that were cut for time. But you can read the rehearsal script
here.
In the end a satisfying day's work and the drive home was a lot less complicated.
This is what it's like on tour.
