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Playing 9am tennis for the second day in a row. I knew it would be tough this morning. I'd got in late after my gig and not got to sleep until after 1am and then my son had woken me up at 4. I maybe snoozed a little bit after that, but up before 7.
It was, of course, very hot, even this early, but we're used to that, but what turned the experience into a slight living Hell was the fact that a man started cutting the long hedge right next to the court, with a noisy electric hedge cutter. I was being assaulted from within and without: exhausted, hot and enduring the kind of aural assault that is used to break terrorists and get them to talk. The hedge cutting went on for about 40 minutes. It was like a cartoon where someone has a pneumatic drill going off in their head.
I still won 6-3, 6-1 because I am a fucking champion, though over the weeks we've been playing, my opponent has got much better and I don't think it will be long before he is in the ascendant. Especially if he keeps paying a man to cut a hedge right next to my ear in future matches.
The rest of the day was basically a wash out. I was very happy (in the end) to do the charity gig last night, but the travel took a lot out of me. At least I didn't have to leave the house until the evening. I often get asked to do free gigs further afield - the last one was in Cornwall. But that means a day of travel to get there, an overnight stay, a day of travel to get back and another day of recovering from the travel. Not only is it hard to justify being away from the family for a weekend when I am not being paid, but I lose a Monday of work too. It's also the reason I struggle to ever do paid gigs in Cornwall. The economics both of time and money don't work out, due to my limited popularity in the county (and elsewhere) and I also have to think about my carbon skidmark.
Though conversely I seem prepared to travel to Edinburgh for two weeks to lose thousands of pounds. So it's complicated. The difference is that I am doing Edinburgh (this year at least) so that I can be with my family. Hard to believe we'll be travelling up there in 10 days.
But I hope people will understand when I turn those gigs down, as much as I'd like to help. Charity doesn't being at home, but ideally within a 45 minute radius of home.
I stopped eating Soleros for a month. What more do you want?
And I have wiped out one or maybe two days of my life here to do a charity gig in Oxford. So I hope the soldiers of Ukraine appreciate how tough my life is and (if they have any sense of justice) they will do some kind of benefit concert for me now.
Great book, so much crap was going down in the 14th C- b
uy it here.
