All right so it's tweeters, not titters (nick-name for bird-watching twatters). Titters is closer to being correct on many levels and had been brought to mind by the Not the Nine o Clock News sketch about the Two Ronnies, which I still know off by heart -"Everybody calls me the muffled titter".
No more interesting birds, but I have a pet wasp thing that comes and visits me when I am reading on my balcony. He is like a skinny wasp at the top, but then his bottom section is kept separate from his other sections by a long thin insect spine, so it flaps around in front of him when he flies and so looks like he is two insects, or one insect carrying a kind of Dick Whitington style knap-sack. He is a bit scary if I am being honest, but he keeps returning to me no matter how many times I bat him away with my book. I don't know what he is. He might be a one off.
Not that I am obsessed with comedians, but I decided to take the Peter Kay taste out of my mouth by reading Dawn French's book "Dear Fatty" and it turned out to be an excellent choice. A lot more care and thought and talent has gone into it and I don't know if I am only saying this because I have just read a Peter Kay book, but it was one of the most enjoyable reads I've had in a while. It is funny and moving and cleverly constructed as a series of letters to important people in her life, which not only give her the chance to digress in an artful and unjarring way, but allows her to weave her life story into missives, whilst at all times appearing modest and gracious and honest. Three things that Peter Kay failed to include. She is forgiving of people who have let her down, and understanding and thus comes across far better than someone who has decided to use their success as an excuse to prove their superiority to those who have slighted them. Dawn's book is as much about the people in her life as it is about her and an extended thank you to them all really. I don't think it's a bad exercise for us all to do. Write letters to everyone who matters to you, explaining things that have passed. I am sure she got a lot out of writing it and I thoroughly recommend it if you haven't read it already. It's really properly funny and revealing in the right ways and yet discreet when it needs to be. She seems to have a lovely life and some terrific friends and is aware, I think, of her good fortune. Jennifer and her, she claims, got into the Comic Strip (when it was a club rather than a TV show) merely because they were the only ones who auditioned and later she had to make a difficult choice between getting promoted as a teacher or going to Australia with the comedians. She made the right choice I think.
The Vicar of Dibley and French and Saunders are not exactly my comedic tastes (though I was very impressed with the double act when I saw then live in the mid-90s) but a lot of her early work had a big influence on me and she was at the heart of an incredible comedy movement and she writes about it well.
She has been charming and a little flirtatious with me the few times I've met her. Even when I was embarrassing and childishly rude to her (and a bit overawed) the first time, when Stewart and me were on the same bill as her and Jennifer at a charity gig. The teenage me should have been delighted when she first saw me and shouted, "It's Richard Herring from Cheddar!" and no doubt I was impressed that she knew who I was. But I tried to be cool and told her I wasn't sure I should talk to her as "she was the enemy". I was mainly joking, but as a boy in my mid-20s I felt they she represented the old guard (from ten years ago), whereas in reality she represented that generation of comedians who had most inspired me to become a comedian myself. I was drunk and giddy and silly and she took it in good part and ignored it and just carried on being nice.
She clearly is a genuinely good person - the book has no side or spin to it and it was an important breath of fresh air, reminding me that most comedians are actually all right (which interestingly is the opposite of Peter Kay's experience).
Enough about comedy though, hey? I am supposed to be on holiday. But I can never escape it and clearly I don't want to.
And I am doing other things other than reading and thinking about comedians, though basically taking it very easy. Once if I was abroad I would have been rushing out to see stuff, but increasingly I think a holiday is about lying down, reading, drinking and spending time with the person I love (who is, as it happens, also a comedian, so there's no way I can escape comedy!)
I could do all these things at home, but somehow in the rush of daily life they easily get forgotten, so it's good to stop and enjoy the stillness. Part of me thinks that I should just go away for the whole year to somewhere like this to work, because it doesn't feel like work here and yet the quiet and the reading and the rest are very inspiring.
At sunset we'd had a couple of cocktails and we lay in a gently swinging hammock together, watching the sun setting into the sea (well, the mountains of clouds that clung to the horizon) and I realised that life doesn't get much better than this.
It's important to remember what things are important.
