Villandry

My flat is very grey today. Think its possibly due to the lack of sunlight and the fact I haven't yet put the lights on. I should probably do that. But by not doing it, I can pretend I am helping the planet and at the same time pretend I am in a film noir. Both are bonuses to my usual life and if the rest of the day is spent being an eco-friendly detective then I feel like I might have contributed to the world. Perhaps I can search for the missing canvas bag? On second thoughts even Raymond Chandler probably couldn't make that story interesting. Unless, oooh, and this is an idea, its about a canvas bag with a dead body stuffed inside it? Then the hero could make hilarious and wry quips like 'and here I was thinking that they're meant to be bags for life.' That's all I have right now, but I reckon with time, effort, a storyline, characters and a lot of other words, that could be a killer novel. Or more likely, a novel about a killer.


I've just returned from a meeting of possible importance or possible unimportance. You never really know with these things. What I do know however is that whilst I may attend morning meetings in the physical sense, my mind was still back in bed having a doze. I essentially did just meet people, but the talking element was tad vacant. I suppose that I filled the required criteria. What they should have done was call it a 'talking and idea-ing' and then I would have stepped up my game. Or not. Even after a cappuchino of 'grande' size (which is never as 'grande' as it sounds. I want it massive and on a throne if that's its title), it took a while before my brain could think past the fact that the shop opposite where we were was called 'Villandry'. Whilst using the name for a quick tweet joke about where people might take their wet and grubby evil masterminds, my brain made me spend half an hour thinking about it. While the others were discussing clever telly things, I composed a whole situation where Doctor Doom got gravy on his metal face and couldn't get it off with conventional Persil. The Villandry cleaners told him it had to go on a setting number 4 and he got angry and blew stuff up, until Magneto walked in and got stuck to his face. Which was bad as Magneto had red wine that needed to be removed from his trousers and they couldn't go on the same wash or it'd dye Doom's robes pink. I wonder if this is why I'm not a tellybox star yet. Oh and for all you pedants, I know villain has an extra 'i' in it. So there.


Already though today has gone better than yesterday when I had to cancel Fat Tuesday for the first time in over two years. Bit sad but you have to have limits and only 7 people turned up which just wasn't quite enough. I'm not sure what did it. The line-up was great, and several people had said they would come, but it just didn't happen. I was fairly gutted and spent two hours wondering what might have caused it. Was it that Stewart Lee was playing down the road? Was it that everyone had just decided they hate our gig? Was it that some sort of horrible disaster was about to befall the Islington area and no one had let me know? I worked on the basis of the last one and then got very worried I was about to be attacked by a giant monster or a tidal wave. Not that tidal waves attack you. Or at least not on purpose. That would have made the tsunami even more distressing a few years back if we had found out that wave was getting Thailand back for the time someone had a wee whilst swimming. In the end I waited till the official start time and told the 7 that despite being a lucky number usually, for audience numbers it was shit, and sent them away. I didn't use those words as such, or I don't think they'd come back. I stuck around to meet two further Twitterers - Misha and Abbii aka @HowlieT and @FAbbii - who I knew were heading down and I felt guilty about leaving them to arrive at an empty gig. We went for a drink where I discovered they are not actually old enough to drink which made me feel both like a criminal and down with the kids all at once. I hope this isn't the start of me hanging out near the offy just waiting for teenagers to ask me to buy them 20/20 or whatever gunk it is they now drink. I assume its something better than 20/20 which I'm fairly sure was used as a drink and toilet cleaner. Still, lovely meeting them both and I have learnt some useful things about the state of tea rooms in Coventry.


We have a special Fat Tuesday tonight, with a rather special guest doing a preview of his Edinburgh happenings. We've only got 8 tickets left which is almost an exact reverse of last night's affair. The clever amongst you may say that perhaps tonight's happenings ruined yesterday's but its not all our regulars, so once again I am to assume people thought that a tornado was going to hit. Or maybe that a supervillian who wasn't able to get ribena out of his cape was about to get angry. Either way, lets hope none of those things happen tonight.