It's a bit like being back on tour again at the moment. I got back from Bristol at 1.30am and was in bed at 2.30, but was up five hours later to go to my last Collins and Herring 6Music show until September. I would then have a couple of hours at home before driving to Didcot for another preview. There is little to no rest for the wicked.
Except that I was looking forward to my two hour break as I was planning on putting up the hammock that my girlfriend had bought me for my birthday. She knows me so well and one of my favourite things about being on holiday is sitting reading in a hammock. Thanks to her I can now do this at home - at least I could as soon as the thing was constructed. I would have put it up on my birthday weekend, but illness prevented me and this was my first chance to get it up since then (I am talking about the hammock). So I arrived home in excited mood, with some takeaway sushi, to discover an official looking letter on the doormat. I opened it to discover that last Monday, on the way back from Latitude I had been caught driving at 38 miles an hour in a 30 mile an hour zone in Yoxford. This was a bit of a surprise, as I have been very careful with my driving over the last three years (since I got my last fine and was close to disqualification). Coming a week after I puked in a bag on the same road it seems that Suffolk is my new cursed area of the country. These were my first points collected outside of South Wales. I was gutted. Although it seems I might be able to avoid the penalty on my licence by attending a speed awareness course, which sounds like it might be fun and could make at least an entertaining blog if not a routine, so once again, for the comedian, every cloud has a silver lining. Annoying though, after driving 11,000 miles in the last six months to get caught on such a soft occasion.
It led someone on Twitter to post a link to
this old sketch and it was fun to see it again, even if it made me realise how much mileage I have managed to get out of the overlong or inappropriate acronym. That is my special comedic skill. Very hard to believe how long ago that was, I vividly remember filming that one, yet it's from 15 years ago. It's a nice sketch, but alas nothing could be as funny as Stewart's hair in the introduction. And it isn't just a fashion thing. We all thought he looked stupid at the time, but for some reason he insisted on having it like that!
And don't ask me if the series is going to be released on DVD. It remains unlikely, though recently we heard from someone at the BBC who is looking into it, so you never know. I think that series deserves more credit than it got.
But I got over the disappointment and ate my healthy sushi (my diet is going very well this time and I haven't had a drink for almost a fortnight and am now about 4kg lighter than I was when I was 42) and then constructed the hammock, which comes with a metal frame and lolled around for the next hour or so, with the hot sun on my face. It's great to know that I can now step into my back yard and go on holiday any time I want. Hopefully I will get more reading done (though I spent most of this afternoon on Twitter, so that might not work out).
I was as tired as Hell driving to Didcot, perhaps I should have snoozed in my hammock as I had been tempted to, but made it in good time and for once the projector set up was easy and the theatre's screen was big and clear and easily seen. It wasn't quite the storming success of Bristol, but was still an enjoyable performance. It is hard to believe that I am only 12 days away from the start of the Fringe. I am really looking forward to getting up there, even if a little scared by how much stuff I have got to get done. Yet I have been enjoying my sobriety over the last fortnight and am seriously beginning to think that this might be my first dry Edinburgh Fringe ever. I resisted the urge to drink beer with some of the audience after the show, despite their insistence. But then I was driving and desperately needed to be in bed and was looking forward to a Sunday lie in.
