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I wonder how my life would have panned out if I had attempted to do my gig in Devon tonight. I certainly wouldn’t have been home tomorrow as planned. Someone should do a film about the way that your future can change based on one minor event. I mean I suppose that’s all films. Forget I said anything.
Yesterday’s storm might have meant I missed an afternoon of pampering, a night in a posh room and a slap up breakfast, all for the price of selling two tweets worth of my soul, but today it meant I missed a long drive to Dartmouth and then what would have been (under normal circumstances) a three hour drive to Salisbury before getting up to do the last couple of hours of the drive on Saturday. That would have been pretty exhausting without the snow, and fatal or impossible with it. Though a night looking after my son didn’t prove to be too relaxing. It’s great (in theory) to spend time with your family, but in a toss up between what would take the most toll on my middle-aged body I don’t know which was worse.
But this still felt like a holiday, or that an angel had granted me one more day on earth so I could see my wife on kids, before killing me with exhaustion on Saturday. I’d rather die here than in a ditch in Dartmoor being eaten by a werewolf and a lynx though. So I was a winner.
I have still failed to get anywhere with writing my sitcom and have promised to deliver four first drafts by the end of March. I hoped to make a little progress this afternoon, but I never got round to it, instead catching up with some admin, some blogs and sitting in front of my fire. I then attempted to move some more boxes of books to put them on the new bookshelves in our hall, whilst wondering how I was going to change the already spent bulbs in the hall light, that the geniuses who did up our house placed in what seems to be a wholly inaccessible position above the stairs. It’s a little pretend candelabra thing with six bulbs, but in the three months it’s been up five of the bulbs have blown (actually two others went straight away and the replaced them without showing me how the did it.
This house is determined to kill me and I suspect I will have a Rod Hull style fall attempting to reach the bulbs with a step ladder balance on a chair, balanced on a table, balanced on two steps.
I’d ask them to come in and reposition it, but I am so fed up of having these clowns in the house.They’ve worn me down. Added to this the hot water tap in the kitchen and the washing machine in the garage, all just months old, had broken down too. Am I on Beadle’s About?
luckliy with a slight thaw the latter two started working again, but it’s all exhausting.
The company that did all this work are currently requesting their management fee. I have never withheld payment from anyone and actually pride myself on paying bills the minute that they arrive, but I have asked them to list what parts of the job they successfully managed without being months late or nearly gassing us. We will see what they say.
I have to say much of the stuff they’ve done looks great now, but what a tortuous journey that we (and to a small extent you) have had to endure. It’s a weird one and they’re a small company so I’d never call them out by name. But I just feel sorry that I can’t recommend them to other people, as I could with the brilliant
gnosco who did up our London house, who I know got at least 2 or 3 other jobs as a direct result.
Not sure why our current guys made us such a low priority - do they have no idea who I am or how many people read my blog? Oh apparently they knew both of those things.
But they have added a huge amount of extra stress to what was already an incredibly stressful year. And at least they have set me a crystal maze challenge to try and solve. Five lights have gone out so I have one more to go before I am locked in. And the added delight is that if we have no light up there, the hallway is very dark and we can't turn on the downstairs light from upstairs, so there's a good chance of just falling down the stairs in the middle of the night.
I think my solution might be just to abandon this house and go and live somewhere where stuff works and there are no murderous ghosts.
Oh and great news. Maria Bamford has agreed to fo RHLSTP on March 19th. All her other London shows are sold out,
so book quick. 
