This was a slog of a day. I got up at 6.45am and worked through to 4pm almost without a break and then headed straight to the Bloomsbury Theatre to rehearse, do an Edinburgh preview and then do the podcast. We finished about 10, so this was a 15 hour working day which was practically non-stop. And coming on the back of last night's Lyric gig by the end of it all I felt like I had run a half-marathon. With a similar sense of achievement at the end of it. It's great to be busy, though like the hero of a Hollywood action movie part 4, I am getting too old for this shit. We got through it all though and you can hear the results on iTunes or
the British Comedy Guide. I can't believe we put together a 65 minute show in just one day (though very obsessive fans might recognise an old Lee and Herring routine, which we performed about twice and which never worked back in 1998, but which I thought, wrongly as it turned out, might work tonight). I am very much looking forward to finishing, but we're doing another four this year and I hope we might be able to do another run this time in 2011, but as last time it will depend on ticket sales. There was a lot of empty seats in the Bloomsbury tonight, so I think we'll need a sell-out next week to encourage them to have us back. So please
book now if you can.
The trip to the theatre turned out to be a little unusual and almost enchanting. The carriage that I got into and the one next to it had no lights. As I had got on it had seemed like these two carriages had tinted glass in their windows, but it was only once I got in that I saw there was some problem with the electrics. I sat down anyway, as there weren't too many people in the carriage, but once we were away from the lights of the station we were traveling in almost total darkness. Looking up the train I could see the lights from the other carriages, which twinkled like fairy lights in the distance. It was unsettling and a little scary to think that anyone could move next to me without being seen or if some mad person freaked out in the odd conditions , but it was also faintly exhilarating to be speeding along in the dark, like it was a fairground ride. It was calm and quiet and a rare and unpredictable moment in a commute that enlivened my battered senses a little and made me smile. A tiny change to routine can make a big difference and make you look at everything differently (even if you can't actually see it). A woman standing by an open window in the next lit carriage had her hair blowing in the turbulence. She was in shadow, but her hair was silhouetted against the light. It was fascinating. And oddly calming to be in this speeding metal womb.
Then it was back to work, back to the light and in the next tube I got I had one of those sarcastic drivers I love who impatiently kept telling people to stand clear of the doors - "Once again, please stand clear of the doors if you want the train to leave."
