Warming Up

Tuesday 20th December 2016

5139/18059

Aside from finding some time to do all the writing that I’ve got to get done it was my last professional engagement of 2016 this evening (though actually I don’t think I get paid for it, so maybe it doesn’t count) as I headed into the heart of Soho to record the International Waters Podcast. It’s an audio panel show where one team is some Americans in America and the other team is some Brits in London, conversing by Skype and trying to keep up comic timing in spite of the two second delay. That makes it hard to do, as do the fact that everyone is fairly clueless about the references that the other team are using, but despite this, or maybe because of it, it works very well as an idea. I was teamed up with Iszi Lawrence, who is super fit and does martial arts and was telling us before everything started about how to angle your foot differently depending on whether you are kicking a man or a woman in the genitals. The trick with kicking a woman in the vagina seems to be to try and get your foot inside. To be honest I find it hard enough to navigate my penis into a vagina without taking a few run ups at it (maybe the mistake I am making is running up first) and that’s when a woman is naked and encouraging me to enter. So I’d have to be like Luke Skywalker using the force to get my foot into a clothed one in the middle of a fight.

Luckily I am both a gentleman and a coward, so the chances of me being in a fight with a woman and deciding to attack her genital region is extremely unlikely. But I now know how to kick a man in the balls, which is my default move on the very rare occasions that I find myself in a brawl. It’s almost ten years since the last one. I am due. Maybe in the run up to my 50th birthday.

Why do I keep running up to things?

The show should be out in January and once they’ve edited out all the bits where we’re talking over each other and can’t understand what’s happening I am sure it will be great. There was certainly an end of term attitude at our end. We had a couple of beers and tried to invent children’s TV shows knowing that Americans wouldn’t know the truth from invention. I think it was called Uncle Simon and his Magic Knee. I didn’t really commit though. So I didn’t fool them.

It’s strange being out in London on Christmas week in the current political climate. The pavements are heaving with people and the pubs are full and you can’t help but think about the viability of a terrorist attack. It is scary, as is the inevitability that it will happen. And yet looking at it another way you do realise how few terrorist attacks happen, given how many opportunities they are and also, looking at it in cold statistical terms, how tiny the chances of you as an individual being caught up in something actually are. It doesn’t make you any less queasy and it doesn’t detract from the tragedy of when it happens, but the terrorists (and the politicians who capitalise on terrorist acts for their own agendas) are trading on fear. The only response is to keep living your life the way you were already. To do otherwise would be the same as living your life assuming you were going to win the lottery jackpot this weekend and spending money in advance accordingly. It might happen and it will almost certainly happen to someone, but any sensible person carries on assuming that it won’t.

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Warming Up

Tuesday 20th December 2016

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