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A level results day and I always think of Andrew Collings being appalled/aroused by the newspaper coverage of jumping teenage girls. Today the BBC had mainly boys on their front page. It was a real struggle to masturbate to that, but I still managed. No thanks to the bloody Beeb.
And don’t worry if you didn’t get the exam results you hoped for. The world is about to enter a nuclear war and it’s highly unlikely that you will survive, but if you do, employers won’t really be looking for A level certificates.
It was a bit of a struggle to get through today. I was up at 6 with Phoebe, who was a delight, but who wouldn’t be appeased by CBeebies and wanted to draw, make play-dough and play hide and seek. I think even she was unimpressed by me just putting some cushions on myself and staying in the same slouched position.
It’s fascinating though to watch her acquire new skills. Her idea of colouring in is still rather free-form and mainly involves scribbling, but first she concentrates on going over the hands of whatever character is in the position, before then allowing felt-tip jazz to take over. She is only two months away from being as good at art as me.
I would dearly have loved to go back to bed after my parenting shift was over, but I was being interviewed for BBC Scotland by Janice Forsythe. Somehow I managed to keep it together and be vaguely interesting and entertaining -
well you can be the judge of that.
I managed a lunch date with my wife, before doing a tiny bit of work and then trying to grab a couple of hours sleep before my gig. After 20 minutes of drifting in and out of sleep I was woken by some barking dogs.
The stand up show was a bit of a slog for me. Once again I had some annoying almost joining in from the back of the room which was too friendly and occasional and mistimed for me to be able to break off to prevent and the audience was slightly subdued. There were maybe 150 in, which is fine, but after Monday’s stonker I had hoped for better for these midweek gigs. And if it’s that low now, then it is likely to be worse next week. As energy gets harder to tap into it really helps to have a big audience to gee you along. I did OK but it was a struggle.
This is a very hard thing to do. Weirdly, on tour, it rarely seems as draining, but then I suppose these days, I would rarely have done 16 gigs (plus extras) in 16 days.
Plus I had eaten stuff like Pizza and Twirls (not together) all day and so didn’t get the vegetable drug energy boost. A smoothie and an espresso on the long walk to the venue had had to suffice.
After the show I had three hours to kill before a late night appearance on Craig Ferguson’s show, which was being broadcast to America. I made the possible mistake of going home where I relaxed with my equally exhausted wife and watched a bit of telly. But getting back up and going out the door was tough.
Luckily the show was a lot of fun. I was last in the same room as Craig in 1988 when I think we shared a dressing room at some benefit gig in Glasgow. Since then he has gone on to phenomenal success as a talk show host in America. He was amazingly down to earth and unaffected by all this, clearly enjoying being back in Scotland and chatting freely and amusingly about all sorts of subjects. I watched him with his first guest, wondering what would happen if my exhaustion made me forget how to chat, or just give mono-syllabic responses. But once on the 25 minutes passed quickly and we covered subjects including CBeebies, the existence of God, censorship and how 9/11 had prevented my career blossoming in America… I was glad to see that my pre-show fears were unfounded. Up in front of a crowd, even not my own crowd, however tired I might be, the switch is flicked and I can do my thing.
I was back home by 1am, which is the equivalent of 7am in a Herring 2017 Fringe. Obviously I couldn’t get to sleep.
Long episode 5 of AIOTM is now up on the usual channels (see yesterday’s blog for details).
