The two lobes of my brain felt like two clumps of old, brown plasticene being banged together by a gurning chimpanzee this afternoon. And were about as much use for coming up with comedy ideas. I sat all afternoon attempting to make some last show magic flow, but was only frustrated and angry and terrified that finally at the last hurdle, I would fall and flounder and come up with nothing amusing. The pressure of it being the last show and wanting to go out on a high probably added to my inertia. I wanted to give the crowd the recurring characters that they'd enjoy but also not merely rely on catchphrases. I wanted it to be smart as well as crude. But I was getting nothing, but a resentment at the task I had set myself. It definitely felt like the right decision to stop. This was no fun for me and if I could have the day again I would just have given up on writing entirely and either slept or done something non-work related.
It will be nice to have my Sundays back and this last few months of pushing myself too far and doing too much has made me determined to make sure that I give myself and the people I love more quality time. It feels like I am living to work, not working to live and this may always be the case to an extent, because my job is something I love and want to do. But it helps no one if my brain turns into a burning Hindenburg shell with nothing left inside that comes crashing to the ground.
In the end I just hoped that somehow I would be blessed with Monday manic magic and it would all come together tomorrow and I watched a TV show about
a man who has a painting that's probably by Monet but the people in charge of deciding refuse to give it accreditation mainly because they're twats I think, but probably partly because they don't consider it a good enough painting to deserve to be included in their book. Which isn't really the point. Although there is something a bit weird about the fact that if they say it's a Monet, it goes from being worth thousands to millions, so in a sense I can understand why they might be reluctant to give value to something half-arsed. Excellent and gripping show from the BBC though. Well done to them for that.
I had a gig in Islington tonight, which I probably thought I could have done without as I drove there, but it was actually great to get away from the house and the non-existent script and it blew away the cobwebs and scared off the plasticene banging monkey and I had some fun.
A man called Paul, concerned that I wouldn't be able to get a pumpkin for tomorrow had kindly purchased a pumpkin mask for me. Well maybe not kindly, as essentially he was just trying to ensure that I ended up with a cumpkin on my head for the end of the series, but I think his heart was in the right place. He seemed quite determined. At the end of last week's show he had told me he knew a pumpkin farmer, but then had emailed to tell me there would be no way to get a pumpkin in the UK at this time of year. That hadn't stopped him though and he'd quickly sourced two alternatives. Either he loves the show or he really wants to see me dripping with the sperm of 400 nerds whilst bedecked with a stinking orange hat that silently screams its displeasure.
He came to the gig tonight to give me what he'd found and when he said he'd left the masks in the boot of his car I was only mildly concerned. I did imagine a Silence of the Lambs scenario where I had to get into the boot to help move a sofa around or something and was then trapped, but I really needed a pumpkin substitute so went out down a dark back alley with him. The first vehicle I saw was a big van and I thought maybe I should have listened to my mum and not accepted pumpkins off of strangers, but it turned out that Paul had a car and the stuff was there as promised and there wasn't a cloth with formaldehyde inside the mask. He was just a nice man.
A nice man desperate to see me humiliated with a cumpkin.
Would I actually go through with the punishment or find some way to escape it though? At this point not only I knew. Tomorrow's show was as much a mystery to me as it was to you.
