I only sold three tickets for my “Just The Yoghurt” show tonight. Alas that made it unworkable to try and do the long version of the show as the extension is reliant on audience interaction . It was with a heavy heart that I decided to cancel the show and many apologies to the three of you who booked (and I am pretty sure you read this as the show hasn’t properly been publicised anywhere else). I will definitely be doing the show on Saturday whatever, so hope you can make it along to that one. Who’d have thought that people wouldn’t want to come and see a man attempt to artificially extend a routine about yoghurt to sixty minutes?
It was slightly disappointing for me. I had hoped that word of mouth would spread and that this stupid enterprise would be one of those little Fringe treats that occasionally crop up. After all itÂ’s only an eighty seater venue. Hopefully Saturday will be a little better, as with luck my own show will have sold out and the late show will get some overflow. It would be good if some people came who didnÂ’t really understand what the premise of the show was, who are made angry and annoyed by the self-indulgence, because this is what is really necessary to get the concept moving along.
I went to see Colin and FergusÂ’s show this evening. It was most enjoyable. They have put a lot of work into the show and certainly havenÂ’t been distracting themselves from the job in hand by bothering themselves with washing up or basic household cleanliness. I am sharing a flat with the fresh-faced, surreal duo, who look like they are about 13, but might be as old as 25, I am not sure. I still do not know which one is which and they are essentially interchangeable. In the first couple of weeks here I made a big effort to keep the kitchen clean and throw stuff away and put out the bins on the right days. I wasnÂ’t that bothered that I was doing about 90% of the work as the place was staying tidy. But inevitably as time passed by and I realised that pretty much no-one else was loading or unloading the dishwasher and that I was the only person washing up pans and resentment built up. I also became more tired and lazy (only been to the gym once this week as some kind of indication of that), but like a mother, resigned to their duties I would usually wash up their dirty breakfast pans, because otherwise I wouldnÂ’t be able to cook my own porridge.
I donÂ’t know whether the boys even noticed that their washing up was being done. Perhaps they just assumed a washing up elf was coming into the kitchen at night and doing everything for them. More likely they didnÂ’t even give the issue a secondÂ’s thought. They are after all probably only 16 and so these things donÂ’t really begin to concern them.
Then about ten days ago, one of them (might be Colin, might be Fergus, they are the same and equally culpable in any case) cooked scrambled eggs and left the pan in a dirty state. I couldnÂ’t face washing it up and decided I would set a little test for them. I would leave this one pan by the side of the sink and see how long it was before they spotted it and realised it was theirs and did the decent thing and washed it up. I suspected it would be a day or so before decency and common sense prevailed and so didnÂ’t make a note of the date. But I mentioned my plan to Chris Addison about five days ago and the experiment had been in progress for probably a week by that point, so weÂ’re approaching the two week point and still the pan is sitting by the sink, unwashed. It has water in it and the egg in it has started to rot and smell and grow fungal fronds and yet still Colin and Fergus either havenÂ’t seen it, or donÂ’t care or possibly think the egg was cooked by someone else. I could swallow my pride and get the pan cleaned (though it might be simpler to just throw it away by now), but I am now interested to see if this can go on til the end. I am really hoping they donÂ’t read this beforehand, because that would spoil my experiment.
Please do not tell Colin and Fergus about this, but if you see them around do feel free to give them a disdainful look which says, “You are dirty and ungrateful”.
Honestly they treat this place like a hotel.
