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I got somewhere approaching eight hours sleep last night and the world seemed much brighter and easier. I had another day of writing jokes with a big TV star and unlike last week I had the energy to keep going for a full five hours and then an extra hour in the car home. It felt like less of a struggle, but I am not sure we came up with loads more stuff. I was happy to hear that our favourite jokes from last week had all gone down well in recording. We’d managed to squeeze out some really good jokes through our pain, but the secret of our success is managing to find language that conjures up an extra layer to the joke. I had added the word “repeatedly” to one of last week’s jokes and that was really what made the joke punch.
Though we didn’t have so many barren periods of no ideas I am not sure we quite hit the heights of the best jokes we came up with when we were struggling, but I might be wrong.
I pass the MI6 building on the journey in and out and it gives me flashbacks to childhood. Not because I used to be a spy, but because I had a toy that was a building system involving flat interlocking squares of transparent green plastic and the glass part of the building really looks like the architect used the same game to make this building. I don’t think I would have remembered this toy without passing the building - it’s maybe 50 years now since I started playing with it and it’s got to be over 40 since I last constructed anything with it. But seeing this building brings the little square pieces back to the front of my mind and I wondered today if they are up in my parents’ attic or if they were long ago consigned to the dump. It wasn’t a particularly good system and it certainly didn’t go on to challenge Lego in any way at all, but I had fun making rectangular and futuristic looking towers and buildings out of it. If only I’d take some photos I might have got the MI6 commission.
I saw a little bit of the Olympics which just confirms to me how crazy sport is. I saw a man canoeing down some man-made rapids and thought about the decision to spend what must surely be millions of pounds to test which people are the best at manoeuvring a canoe through some gates on a pretend river. And as delighted as I was to see Tom Daley (and another bloke) win gold, I also wondered why someone had come up with a sport that involved two people trying to do exactly the same downwards facing jump off a high board. As long as you can find someone else who is really good at copying then surely anyone could win this. If I teamed up with Tom Daley and just told him to do whatever I was doing then we’d have it in the bag.
But all the training that goes into this and no one steps back and looks at it objectively. Me and my mate are the best at synchronised jumping off a high board above a swimming pool…
That’s not a thing though is it?
It is. We’ve been training for years and they gave us medals made of gold.
Because you can jump off a board the same way as someone else?
It’s very difficult.
I don’t doubt that. It looks crazily difficult. But it’s not a thing is it? You’ve just invented a thing that doesn’t mean anything and then become the best at doing it.
Thousands of athletes all working towards being the best one at doing a usually pretty specific task that has no real world applications.
And the greatest thing of all is that you can watch it, never having even considered that it was a thing before and get totally wrapped up in it. Sport is insane. All of it. And I love it.
Hopefully self-playing snooker will be at the next games. It’s no more stupid than anything that is happening in this carnival of meaningless movement.
