I never thought I'd be looking forward to a five night jaunt away on tour as a rest, but from tomorrow on it will be a comparative holiday at an oasis. Not today though. I had to pick up my car first thing, then load it up with one last load of possessions to move to our new flat, then unload all of that and load in enough stuff to get me through five tour dates and then drive to Harrogate.
As I sat, shell-shocked in my dressing room at 7pm I couldn't quite believe I hadn't actually done any of my work for the day yet.
As I was leaving my actual home for the last time (I am sure I will be visiting to check up on progress of the work, but I won't be sleeping here again until July at the earliest) the man with the skip arrived. It was huge, as it will need to be as there's a lot of stuff being taken out of the house, and as I drove away the builders were chucking bits of glass and wood which were once my conservatory into it. They had dismantled it all so carefully that I thought they might be planning to sell the parts on or recycle them, but no. The glass was tossed upwards and smashed noisily in the bit metal container that would be its hearse.
I might have no skills in terms of building or making things with my hands at all, but I'd be great at this part of the job. Like Satan, only in destroying find I ease, so if the comedy career goes tits up then I could hire myself out as a bloke who will come and knock things down and chuck the rubbish in skips, before letting men with actual skills come in to mend the damage.
It's odd watching your house being destroyed. I've lived here for 9 years and it has been a good home and so I am conflicted. Because it's horrible seeing it ripped apart (though to be fair, I always disliked the conservatory, which was here when I got here) and yet exciting to think about what it's going to look like on my return. I have lived in a house decorated to someone else's tastes for all this time, mainly because I am not that bothered by that kind of stuff, but it will be nice to make it ours. Also if I had done all this nine years ago it would (to some extent) need to be done again by now, so I've saved myself a lot of cash by living like a cuckoo in someone else's nest. That's the way I justify my laziness anyway.
Of course I won't be getting to actually stay in the new place until Monday, but it looks OK, if a little cosy. I didn't really have time to do the tour though as I had to get up to Yorkshire.
Given how zonked out I was by all of this the show went well. I like this theatre in Harrogate and though it wasn't full there was nearly 300 people in, which was enough to have fun. There was no
man too drunk to get out of his row this year, but the 11 year old who bought my book was there (now 12) sitting with his parents in the front row and I enjoyed delivering some of the sexcrement lines in their direction. The only sad thing about that is that in the next year or two he will become too mature and sophisticated to enjoy my stuff any more, but it's fun while it lasts. Hello Henry.
The actor who plays Marlon Dingle in Emmerdale (I know his real name, but where's the fun in that) sometimes comes and sees me here. He is my biggest celebrity fan. But I don't think he was here this time. See, people outgrow me.
Finally at 10.45 I was at my hotel and sitting in the bar drinking a pint of Guinness that I felt I had earned and looking forward to the relatively short jaunts that I have to do over the next few days.
Doing all this stuff at once is so insane that it's almost ultrasane. I am actually enjoying having every second of my day accounted for. It makes having 15 minutes to drink a pint and play on a quiz machine seem like a luxury. And it means there is no time to sit around and think about the meaningless of existence. I think there's something to be said for doing all these stressful things at the same time. Stress expands to fill the time available, so I am not sure I'd be much less stressed if I was only doing one of these life changing things at a time, but this way by August I should have a new house, a new show, a completed tour and my first wife and having got it all out of the way the rest of my life will be totally stress free. Right?
By the way, an interesting and unexpected off shoot of this week's Metro column is that I have had offer of personal training sessions from two gyms plus Mr Kipling have sent me a big box of cakes for mentioning them. Interesting both how the column could have appealed to two such different business demographics, but also shows how product placement (in this case unwittingly) can lead to reward (in this case cakes). Nothing from Monster Munch, but those monsters don't court publicity. I feel like a man given three wishes and having wasted it, when I could have got a Ferrari or a holiday but instead got some French Fancies. Next week's column is about wedding rings, but I failed to mention the brand and in any case I have enough wedding rings to be going on with. I am a man with great power, who wastes that power. But hey, I got some free cakes and that genuinely makes me as happy as getting diamonds. You can't eat diamonds. You can sell them and buy loads of cakes though. Damn.
But thanks to Ian Kipling for the freebies.
For the second year running I have been nominated for the internet prize in the Chortle Awards. Some tough competition again, but I won last year, so help me hang on to my internet crown. It's all I have. You can
vote for me here if you've enjoyed any of the five podcasts I have been involved in in the last 12 months. Or indeed this blog I guess. I don't know if the private internet surfing I have done also counts in my various work, but I've done some great stuff with that too. I found a picture of a bare lady once, but I can't remember where it was now.
