We're staying in a slightly higher calibre hotel in Norwich, partly so my princess girlfriend (Princess Richard as I insist on calling her) doesn't have to slum it in a Comfort Inn. We're in a Superior room, which I think means that the room looks down on all the people who stay in it, because they are not good enough to be in there. The room is so superior it has a spa bath, with jets of water which try and shoot up your mousehole. It's almost like Thalassotherapy, but you have to provide your own salt. The sign on the wall warned that if you use bubble bath in the spa bath you must do so sparingly, as the action of the jets whips up the bubbles. I had bought a few bars of bubble bath from Lush yesterday and tentatively broke off a small amount, thought I was erring on the side of caution and added a little more. By the time the bath was full and the jets were on it was overflowing with bubbles, like a washing machine in a crappy sitcom. It was like being in the middle of a Mr Bean sketch. We attempted to scoop armsfull of bubbles into the sink, but still the bath was overflowing. But it was lots of fun and I really wanted to keep the jets of water spinning the bubbles around until the bathroom was full of fluff. Here are some photos of me in the bath, looking like a mixture of a corpse or a bearded baby. My girlfriend suggested I destroy all other images of me and insist that only these ones are used for future publicity purposes.
It was a fun way to spend the morning and try to ignore our encroaching hangovers and it was a start to a day that didn't feel anything like being on tour, partly because I was having fun with my girlfriend and partly because we were staying in the same town. We drank coffee, did some shopping, ate pasta. It was almost like being a normal person. Albeit one who was 43 but still enjoyed acting like a child in a bubble bath.
The show tonight was a cracker. Even though I was tired and my voice was cracking a little and my throat got phleghmy (this is why I haven't been drinking on tour), somehow I was hitting everything just right and the audience were with me from the start. The funny bits got rolling laughs and the serious bits got utter silence and even here on show 82 of the tour (not including the 25 gigs in Edinburgh and the many many previews) I was still enjoying myself and finding new gags. Perhaps after a longish run where I have had audiences mainly of around 100- 150 it was because I had about 300 in (though that was true last night too, and whilst that show was good, it wasn't quite the same as tonight). Sometimes though everything just comes out crisply and sharply and my mind is somehow concentrating twice as hard and I nail it.
There were no protestors outside, perhaps having lost the will to bother when only 6 of them showed up last night, but a couple of Christians did come along, including The Reverend Michael Eden, of St Peter's and St Mary's church, Stowmarket, who had defended my right to do the show on the BBC website. He seemed to have enjoyed it. As did unclekins who
has written this interesting blog on the show. Both sensible people, representative of the vast majority of Christians in this country. It would be nice if the East Anglian papers gave more time to them, though at least the Eastern Daily Press published
this more balanced review.
After the show we went out for food with the friendly and rather lovely Norwich Playhouse staff, but headed home for a relatively early night. Back at the room my girlfriend wanted a bath, even though it was now 1am. I managed to dissuade her from using the spa jets as I thought they might disturb other guests, but bizarrely even with her having a quiet soak and me attempting to snooze on the bed the person in the next room banged loudly on the wall. Was that meant for us? I wasn't sure. Then the phone rang and an angry voice said, "Your bath is overflowing. The water is coming into my room. Can you please let some water out of your bath." It was accusative and rude and abrupt and I have to say I was somewhat confused by the comment. "But we're on the ground floor," I said, "There's nothing below us."
The man was in no mood to explain what he meant and I was pretty sure that my girlfriend was adept enough at having a bath that she hadn't allowed the thing to overflow anyway. Had he got the wrong room? Was he prepared to explain the situation more? No he wasn't. I pictured him as dripping wet, shaking his fist furiously at the ceiling, wishing he hadn't agreed to stay in this windowless basement room beneath our bathroom. I told him I would look into it, but on getting to the bathroom saw only my girlfriend in a quite shallow bath, with no water spilled anywhere. Confused I went out into the corridor to see where his room could be. There was clearly nothing directly below us, but there was another room next door which was down a step or two, but in no sense under our bathroom. Finally I worked out that what he had been trying to tell me is that water from the bath was going down the overflow pipe, which for some reason came out into (I presume) his bathroom. I would suppose it them washed down the drain rather than pouring on to his grumpy and astonished face, but clearly the sound of the water had woken him up and he had decided in turn to wake me up to tell me to stop it. There was, of course, no way we could have known about this and I don't think it's unreasonable for us to have a bath in our own room at any time of night, but the man had sounded so narked off with us that I found it a bit difficult to sleep, lest he came knocking on our wall again. I guess I wouldn't have minded as much if he had been a little less abrasive and a bit more willing to explain the situation. A simple, "I know this isn't your fault, but for some reason the hotel has decided to run your overflow pipe into my bathroom, any chance you could let some water our of your bath?" might have caused less of a scene. And to he honest he was lucky that I had had the wherewithal to stop my girlfriend using the spa and prevented a situation where his whole room filled up with copious amounts of bubbles. Might that have cheered him up? I don't think so.
