Life on the road is bamboozling: going from one town to another, confused as to where you are, sleeping in a different bed each night and moving on before you have a chance to get your bearings. Our Newcastle hotel was very posh given how little it cost, but I didn't get much chance to make the most of the facilities. I pretty much only slept there. I got in last night, dumped my show bags and suit case, went downstairs for a drink, then came back up, chucked off my clothes and went to bed.
Given how little I had utilised the room I was surprised in the morning when I discovered I'd lost a sock. It had to be somewhere in this tiny space (I was almost certain I hadn't done a mini striptease in the bar) but it was nowhere to be seen. I looked under everything and in everything (even cupboards and drawers that I hadn't opened) but I had entered this room with two socks and was going to leave with one. That was impossible. It was quite a nice sock too. You might say, well you've still got one of them, but one sock is no use to anyone other than a monoped. And I have two peds and I am not going to cut one of them off just so that I can still employ the one sock that remains. The worst thing was that I knew if I couldn't even get any comedy out of my lost sock, because it would just turn into a Ben Elton routine about sock elves and I don't want to stoop that low. Socks get lost in washing machines because they get sucked down the overflow pipe, or dropped out of the bag on the way to the launderette. There was nowhere for my sock to have gone. It was there last night and it was gone this morning. Some kind of small Newcastle rodent or tiny primate might have snuck in to steal it for their nest. That's the only other explanation. Oh shit, just realised I didn't check the room safe. Maybe I had decided to protect 50% of my sock investment by securing it in there, knowing that any sock thief wouldn't take just one sock....
I refuse to do any more lost sock comedy.
Luckily I wouldn't have too much more hotel confusion on this leg of the tour as we're basing ourselves in a terrific apartment hotel in Leeds and then commuting to the other gigs. I did find this slightly unsettling today as I spent the early afternoon in Leeds but was gigging in Chorley and thought I might mix the two towns up on stage. But I managed to cope with this difficulty. The Chorley Little Theatre is always a pleasure and the staff there seem to be on a Ferrero Rocher-style challenge where they give me more and bigger Chorley Cakes each time I arrive. This time there was a bag of small ones and a giant one the size of a child's head. I didn't eat all of them. But I took the big one away with me in case I needed it later! But what happens if you eat a Chorley cake when you're not in Chorley? I think the universe might implode.
