I was feeling a lot better today, but then I wasn't vomiting wave after wave of strange bile which inexplicably seemed to be filled with chunks of parmesan cheese even though I hadn't eaten any, so it was going to be hard to feel worse.
It had been an unsettled night and my stomach was far from being back to normal and I was under orders from my girlfriend to do nothing and recuperate. I had promised her yesterday that I would stop pushing myself so hard and make more time for leisure and fun, which would push me very much towards my second career plan. The first plan is to work all the hours that God gives me, pegging out at about 45 when I should have enough DVD back catalogue and blogs and books out there to build up a cult following and thus gain the commercial success and fame that I never attained in life (I prefer this one as ultimately it will mean less work for me). The second plan is to just stay alive so long that merely by outliving my contemporaries I become a kind of national treasure, who everyone loves for continually plugging away. In that plan I also get to rewrite history in order to make my own contribution to comedy actually greater than all the dead idiots who died in their mid-forties trying to fit too much in.
Both plans have their merits, but knowing my luck I will die in my early 70s and thus fall between two stools (it would be doubly amusing if I died by falling between two stools - especially as I have already cracked my rib trying to leap frog on to one. Or maybe if I fell between two turds that would be even funnier, though hard to see how that would kill you. Or why there would only be two of them).
I was meant to be going out to a meeting about my forthcoming Hitler Moustache DVD (available in shops from October 25th, but please buy if from go faster stripe if you want it) and then on to a gig in central London. I didn't feel all that bad, all things considered, and was seriously contemplating carrying on as normal, but my girlfriend told me I would be an idiot to do so. And she had a point. I hadn't eaten anything of any significance for a day and a half and had been feverish overnight and if I wanted to avoid getting even more ill then I surely should just rest up. I could see that she was right, though I hated having to cancel my appearance at the gig and let people down (in reality I don't think I could have given them much of a performance though - this show especially depends on energy and sharpness and not passing out on stage). It is good to have this voice of reason to guide me. I haven't been as sensible in the past. When I got really ill after a ridiculous mammoth drive during my tour in 2008, I remember rising from my sick bed, feverish and insensible
to do a gig at a blogging festival. It wasn't well paid (and in fact I spent my fee on getting taxis to and from the event) and I was properly fucked, but I forced myself to do it. In hindsight this was a stupid decision, even if I got away with it, but I hadn't want to let the organisers down.
But this time I pulled myself out of the gig (and apologies if you were upset by that, but there are a lot more opportunities to see the show in London - not least of which
a five week run at the Leicester Square Theatre from December 19th). And if I am going for plan 2 then I have to think of the as yet unborn audiences who won't get to see me if I am dead by 2012 (though maybe that's what the Mayan prophecy was really about).
So I did take it easy. Well easy-ish. I wrote two blogs (and sorry for my misunderstanding of the word "vomitorium" pedants), which was quite slow and hard work, but then in the evening I got a second wind and managed to eat a bit more than I'd managed up until now and so also wrote an introduction
to the latest Roger's Profanisaurus book. The Viz guys had asked me yesterday and it went to press at lunchtime on Wednesday, so I had to do it fast. If I had stayed true to my promise to my girlfriend I might have turned this down given the circumstances. But the Profanisauras is one of my favourite comedic creations of the last twenty years and I felt truly honoured to have been asked to do this (even if it was only because I was the only vaguely famous person that the Viz boys know - they admitted it was a toss up between me and Buster Bloodvessel - in fact a toss up between Richard Herring and Buster Bloodvessel should be one of the definitions in the dictionary). I only had to do 200 words and perhaps being in recovery from a day or so of evacuating at both ends is the perfect qualification for writing an intro to this book. Even if it put me back in the plan one camp.
Luckily I didn't worry so much about how I was supposed to fall asleep tonight and I managed it with relative ease. And so far I have managed to maintain the weight loss I managed yesterday. I have a strong feeling that this unpleasant escapade will propel me back towards the diet I have been continually breaking. I haven't had a drink since I turned 43. I know it's only two days and I have been in no position to have one. But maybe this is the year that I finally go for it and remain on the wagon. We can dream.
