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Two nights in Norwich and as we have friends in the area we made it a family road trip. My daughter is familiar with the Norwich Playhouse, having been brought on to stage here when she was 40 days old and sleeping in her pram through last year’s show. She’d be doing the same tonight, though fatherly concern was outweighed by comedic pride and I hoped that the gales of laughter would wake her up (they didn’t -she slept through the whole thing again). She came up on stage during the sound check though. Perhaps I am projecting but she does seem to like being in theatres and enjoy being on stage, but when I gave her the mic to test she did become shy, before singing a very soft version of Baa Baa Black Sheep into it. But she looks good holding a microphone look. That can be the poster picture for one of her future Edinburgh Fringe appearances.
Before the show we’d visited the farm in Norfolk where you can feed the animals (
which I last went to back in 2011, when I was still wearing that tan leather jacket). It was a bit cold today and standing out in a field giving farm animals some pellets wasn’t quite as much fun. But it was fun to see Phoebe squealing with delight as a goat licked her hand and this time we also got to feed a baa baa black lamb with a bottle of milk. Phoebe lost interest halfway through, but I couldn’t let the lamb down, so I was left feeding a lamb on my own. It was fun though. And the other sheep were impressed by my lack of sheep racism.
It’s a bit exhausting combining touring with family days, plus I went out for a big meal (including a pint of beer) before the show, which made me feel a bit bilious and tired. But I love the Playhouse and the people of Norwich and this show is getting both looser and tighter (in all the right places) as I go on and this was one of my favourite performances of the tour so far. I guess sub consciously I wanted to impress my daughter, even in her dreams and convince her what a superstar she has for a dad. She pretended to sleep through it all. But we all know she’s impressed.
Even more impressive we managed to wheel her back to the B&B and carry her up two flights of perilous steps and she only woke up right at the end (and then fell straight to sleep in her travel cot). Being an amazing dad is more important that being an (admittedly superb) comedian.
It all felt a bit like a holiday, with a big bit of work at the end. But nice to have a tour date where I don’t lie in bed missing my girls.
