Pete was more tired than me today, but after all the driving he has done in the last few days that is not entirely surprising. The fiddly and windy journey from Nairn to Aberdeen was actually probably tougher than the drive from Carlisle to Inverness. But it's all cumulative. It has made an immeasurable difference to me on this tour to not have this stress any more.
Once in Aberdeen I searched out a Natwest bank to deposit the SCOPE money. The lady at the counter trusted that I had counted the right number of coins into each bag. I like it when they do that. Although always wish I could know in advance so I could fiddle the number of coins in the bags and make literally tens of pence! I always fancied being a bank robber.
On the way back to the hotel I popped into Waterstones to buy myself a copy of Emma Kennedy's new book
"I Left My Tent in San Francisco". It was there at half price, even though it's only been out for four days (that's how hard it is to find anyone who would buy it), plus they had put it up on the front table because they know it will be hard to shift. My own book was hidden away right at the back of the shop, not even on the shelves, but in a little store room, in order to give the other books a chance. A member of staff saw me picking up the book and warned me that I didn't want to buy that rubbish. I said it was important to help the less fortunate, but said he should really put my book in this prime spot. He said that he had added a note next to my book to say I was gigging in town today - he was obviously a fan. "Are you coming to the show?" I asked him.
He blustered a bit, trying to think of an excuse, but just said, "Er...oh no... I'm not." He couldn't even make up a pretend reason. What a typical fan of mine he turned out to be.
When I got back to the hotel I should have done a bit of work, but I dipped into Emma's book and was whisked right back to the 1980s as she discussed her struggle to get into University and her interview to do History at St Catherine's College in 1984. What she doesn't mention in the book is that I was also interviewing at the same college on the same day and that we had a chat outside the interview room. Emma remembers more about this than me, but it seems highly likely that we were each the first person that the other met at Oxford University. It's a big coincidence, especially given that we both had a year off and that in the end, despite getting the same conditional offer as me, Emma got glandular fever and ended up going to a different college to study English. It's almost as if fate has been trying to push us together all our lives. Perhaps I share
my Red Indian spirit guide with her as well. He does seem insistent on pairing me up with crazy women. The bastard.
Emma's modestly told story of how she ended up getting into Oxford is inspiring and rather moving. But the tear in my eye was surely due to the biting Scotch winds coming in over the glens. Once again I experienced that stomach beaming sense of bitter-sweet nostalgia as I thought back to those days and how young and stupid and clueless we were. Emma's best friend "Dee" (not her real name) was (and is) as described a heart-achingly beautiful young lady and I only found out years later that there had been a period at college when she had fancied me. I had had no idea. Because I was a tiny stupid idiot who had so little self-worth that I wouldn't even ahve considered the possiblity that someone like her would have been interested in me. So reading this book is just going to make me constantly be rueing a lost, youthful snog. It turns out it is true that you only regret the things (and the people) that you didn't do. But even if I travelled back in time and told my younger self to get in there, he still would have been to shy and self-conscious and would have fucked it up.
I had been hoping to write a book about my year off before university, though I think Emma may have beaten me to this, even though her trip is post-college. We have led very similar lives as it turns out (due to Running Bear's influence no doubt) and we were similarly idiotic and naive as we launched ourselves on the real world. How we survived I don't know and how our parents let us out of the house, let alone travel around the world unaccompanied, I do not know. They should all be locked up for neglect. Emma and Dee are so dumb and unprepared at the start of this book that it is impossible to believe they didn't end up dead in a ditch and if it wasn't for the fact that I know they're still alive and kicking then I would assume that the book ended in tragedy. But so far it's very funny. And if you're my age, even if you didn't literally live through some of it and know the people she is talking about personally, it may tug at your guts in an not altogether unpleasant, but not altogether pleaseant way.
I will never say this to her face, but it's a really great and engaging read (so far) and I am very proud of her, even though she is just the girl one. Though she does seem to spend a lot of her life falling into containers full of stinking crap.
And she's another of my contemporaries doing way better than I am. I really wish I had chosen bigger losers to be my friends. Why do you mock me God? What have I done to offend you? Oh yeah, I forgot.
Talking of God there was a good interview in
The Dundee Courier today which went some way to countering the negative press of last week and a typically fatuous letter in the paper saying that I wouldn't mock Mohammed in the same way. Yes I would. Mohammed is a cock hole (There's gonna be some very angry boxing fans after me now). Thanks to the publicity from the protest the sales for the gig have almost doubled. So cheers for letting an uninterested public know about my show reverend.
There were three to four more people in the Aberdeen audience than in the Inverness one (though someone helpfully pointed out on Twitter that Aberdeen's population is three to four times the size of Inverness' so I am equally unpopular here). It was still great to be back at the Lemon Tree which just like Inverness
I haven't been to since 2007. I did a better show this time than last and was most amused when tonight's Trevor (who stayed in his seat, thank goodness) turned out to be a researcher into fish health. I managed to get a small amount of humour out of this, though I was mainly laughing to myself at someone having such an insane job. But when I mentioned it on Twitter on the interval @Martles came up with the perfect adlib calling him a "cod botherer". I said I wished I had said that and in the second half I did. It got a ripple of applause even at that distance from the event, so imagine what would have happened if I had come back with it straight away. I did admit that it wasn't my joke though. Thou shalt not steal.
Pete and me had a couple of beers back at the hotel. This will be the last night we are spending together (I am staying in a hotel in Dundee and getting the train, but he is starting the drive home straight after the gig). It's almost impossible to countenance the fact that we've done 64 gigs together now. Still five more to do, but after tomorrow we're through all the tough bits of the tour and we both have half an eye on what we're up to next.
And I realise with some terror that what I am up to next is a new series of non-Sony award nominated (our arch-enemies "Answer Me This" finally won gold - why do you hate me God? Yeah sorry, I forgot for a second) AIOTM, (aiotm) which starts
next Monday which means I must already be on the look out for things that are occurring to me. Running Bear brings me back together with Emma Kennedy, but also for one week only with Ben Moor because Dan Tetsell is off in New York for some reason (like being in New York is better than being in AIOTM
. That means three fifths of the 1987 Oxford Revue and two-fifths (quarters?) of Planet Mirth will be back together at last. Surely you've got to see that live? Come on down. Still some tickets available.
Oh and there have been abiut 20 more tickets released for the DVD record of Christ on a Bike on the 18th (also at the Leicester Square Theatre), so (may not be up on the website yet) grab them while you can. Only £15 and if you buy a ticket to the Collings and Herrin podcast on the same night you can save a fiver!
