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I spent today thinking it was Sunday too. But it was Sunday, so that was OK.
I drove down to Balham for another work in progress show of Can I Have My Ball Back? It was long enough ago since my last one that I was glad I got to the venue two hours early, as I had a chance to go over my notes. Sadly I'd bought the stuff from the last Bill Murray show, which was largely stuff for the podcast from the second half of the story, that I was unlikely to get to and didn't know well enough to do without notes. So I had to piece things together from memory and by reading bits of my book.
Luckily when I got on stage I remembered most of it, not necessarily in the right order, but with enough jokes to keep the medium-sized audience happy. And given that this is only my seventh or eighth run out of this show it was in remarkably good shape. Mistakes came about only because I wasn't reading any of it and I was unpanicked and just told the story. The hour flew by. I didn't get time to get my bollock out properly (thus saving me from being suspended by the BBC - though to be fair they've pretty much suspended me for the last 20 years anyway), but I let Right Bollock say a quick hello at the end.
As always a delight to return to Balham, where I lived 21 years ago when this blog began and for the years before. And I first performed at the Bedford in 1990. And it's still run by the same people. So we have all got old and grey, but here we all still are (apart from the ones who aren't).
Balham has a Pret now. I seriously regret leaving. Just looked up my old flat to find it's valued at over three quarters of a million pounds, which is more than 7 times what I paid for it (and four times what I sold it for) - though it looks like quite a lot of work has been done to it and it's listed as 3 beds so I guess the attic has been converted too. But still. Fucking Hell. If only I still lived there on my own, imagine how happy my life would be. I could have Pret every day.
My next door neighbours had lived in the street for decades (they were in their 80s at least, so I have to accept the possibility that they may no longer be with us) and suspect they paid hundreds of pounds for their house. If they knew what their place was worth now they'd probably spring back to life again with the shock.
