Days Without Alcohol - 69. Yes, I managed to resist Dublin's many temptations and my puritan lifestyle stays on course!
I also escaped Jersey unmolested, though there was a slight mystery to contend with. When I pulled on my jeans this morning there were three holes on the left hand front pocket. One of them quite big, the other two only little. But where did they come from? Surely had I ripped my jeans last night when I was wearing them I would have noticed (there's actual chunks of material missing) and I wasn't drunk (obviously) so it didn't happen in some mysterious and forgotten incident. I am almost sure they were unripped when I took them off. So how did they get ripped lying on the floor of my hotel room. Could some mice have got into the room and would they have fancied eating my jeans? It beats the Jersey national dish of Black Butter (I like my butter to be almost any colour other than black - and also to be made out of butter, not apples and liquorice, but still, surely better things for vermin to eat. Might it have been a warning shot from Jersey's human residents - this time they would just rip my clothes a bit, but next time who knows what the punishment for my rudeness would be? Or maybe just some Channel Island malevolent elves did the damage. It has really disturbed me. If you saw the show and my jeans were ripped then let me know, cos then at least it must have happened at some point in my travels, rather then when I was asleep.
It was a tedious journey to Dublin. I had to get up at 7.30 and the first flight came and went pretty efficiently. But then I had to wait a couple of hours at Gatwick for my Ryanair flight to Dublin, which was then delayed by another 90 minutes and I was stuck in a heaving South Terminal where every shop that sold food had queues about a hundred people deep and it was hard to find anywhere to sit down. I don't think Satan could do a much better job of creating a Hell for his evil disciples. It felt like I was there for eternity, and I was getting so hungry that I was almost tempted to drink some free Baileys from a stall, or to buy an Easter egg or gigantic Toblerone, which would have broken another of my resolutions. I nearly even tried to kill some time by buying a £20 ticket to win one of the gaudy sports cars in the centre of the terminal. Thankfully eventually Hell froze over and the plane was ready for boarding, though I ended up sitting behind a woman who was the most nervous flyer I think I have ever seen, who screamed every time we hit a bit of turbulence and who even after we had landed was shouting "It's not braking. The plane's going to explode! The plane's going to explode!" which must have been comforting for the small children sitting two rows behind her. It is a dedicated terrified flyer who can manage to be petrified even once the plane has touched down on solid ground.
By the time I was in my hotel it was pretty much gig time, but I relaxed a little and had a bath and watched some football.
My first gig in Dublin went very well, with a crowd who were mainly very much up for it, even when I chastised them for supporting Hitler in World War II - though I admitted there might have been extenuating circumstances and concluded it was probably best not to drag it all up again. It is fun saying the wrong thing and thankfully people generally seem to enjoy it. I still have a bit of a cough, but it's great to be well enough to perform the show with energy again and though the waiting around for planes had been wearisome, it was nowhere near as bad as it would have been if I'd had to drive from Jersey to Dublin. Obviously inventing and building a James Bond style aqua car would also have been a bit wearing.
Still I just drank water after the gig and headed back to my hotel early, so will probably never get to see any of Dublin's fair city this time round. Which is a shame as I had been looking forward to seeing all the girls selling cockles and mussels from out of wheelbarrows - which is what I have been led to believe is the main industry for this town.
There won't be any time tomorrow as I have to get to the airport for the next leg of this mammoth journey of four countries in three days (if you count Jersey as a country, which I do - I still see it as a part of Nazi Germany) as I head to Glasgow. Still having a lot of fun, when not trapped in airports with idiots and in planes with hysterical women.
