My fifth night in a row of commuting in and out of London and it's starting to take its toll a little bit. I was pretty tired anyway, but having to get the train home after a midnight gig was pretty wearing. I am starting to look forward to getting back to Shepherd's Bush, though alas building works have been put three weeks behind due to all the rain. The trains and taxis involved makes a gig like tonight not worth it financially and getting to bed at 2 or 3am as I have every day this week starts to take its toll. I was lethargic and unfocused all day.
I was meant to meet my wife (still weird - saying it, I mean, though she is a bit weird too) at 9.30pm on the South Bank for dinner, but somehow without me noticing it, it was 8.30pm and I was still at home. My brain was just not engaging. I made it to Wagamamas about 30 minutes late, but both of us just sat there a bit stupified, eating chilli squid but not really talking. Hopefully it was exhaustion rather than conversation drying up at the 5 week point of marriage.
Foolishly I decided to have a couple of glasses of wine before the gig - I rarely if ever drink before I go on stage these days, but this was the closest we were getting to a night off this week and I wanted to try and have some fun, even if increasingly I am finding drinking a chore rather than a pleasure. This time it lifted me a little bit, but I noticed the effects on stage. One of them was vaguely amusing as I said, "I don't think we really understood homosexuality when we were kids - we knew it existed, but we weren't queer about what it involved." I had meant to say "clear" of course, but mocked myself for accidentally coming up with this new joke die to crapulousness, saying that maybe drinking was a good thing if it helped me come up with material like that and taking another slug of wine.
But by losing precision and control there was the danger the gig would spiral out of control too, especially with a late night Friday audience who were pretty drunk themselves. I mainly got through it and dealt OK with a couple of well-meaning heckles, but it's not something I'd recommend to comics. You need to stay sharp.
We rushed to St Pancras by cab and then ran to the platform to get the train, but we needn't have bothered as it was delayed. The driver kindly informed us of the reason, with possibly an unnecessary amount of information telling us that someone had been sick in the seat behind his cab and there was no way he was moving until a cleaner had come to deal with the mess. This was going to mean a wait of 15 minutes which was frustrating, as much as I sympathised. Sometimes I have to work with the stench of sick (and worse) in my nostrils, though to be fair, it's usually my own. I wanted him to man up, or just put out a request to the passengers to see if any of us would deal with the mess for him. I hadn't brought my mop.
The resigned disgust with which he said the word "sick" made me laugh, but I also wondered if by adding so much venom and feeling he might make some of his other passengers vomit. I was already feeling pretty sick, sitting in a messy if non-sick covered carriage with people eating their stinking takeaways, tired and wanting my bed. If I had had a public address system I could have added my own morose complaint about my lot.
Once we got going the driver again complained and somewhat gratuitously again explained about the vomit, again hitting "sick" with all the disdain in his power. I don't blame him for refusing to drive his train in these conditions. But it was frustrating, yet also funny. An odd combination of feelings.
On a night like tonight having a home which was just a cab ride away from the gig would have been a wonderful thing. But there's still a couple of months in the country and 1am trains full of drunks and sick and sick drunks to deal with.
