Starting Again

I'm not as ill today. This does not mean I'm not ill at all, because I still am a bit, but I'm much better than yesterday. This worries me as the better I get, the more I'll actually have to do rather than just slob around the house. Slobbing is good. Maybe I need to go round and lick ill people or slightly unhygienic surfaces to maintain slobbery. Before I head to those extremes, I am definitely still a bit ill, so its ok for now. Things are still achy, I still have a lot of snot in my face and occasionally I cough. To be fair, it could be flu, or it could be old age. When I sat down earlier I exhaled a small amount of breath in an almost sighing noise and that is also a sure sign of oldness. If it is old age then it will only get worse, which would mean I can continue to sit on my arse. Fingers crossed eh? Unless your fingers are very arthritic due to old age, then just leave them be or it will hurt.


I had to do things last night, which was not nice. Don't get me wrong, the gig was lovely. The room was great and the crowd were a delightful sell out audience. I however, was fluey. This meant that certain heckles from the room (all of which were nice and not aggressive) took a second longer to process than normal, and that all the way through the show I'm sure I had the expression that said 'I'd prefer to be tucked up at home with a lemsip'. I wouldn't normally gig so soon after Edinburgh, but I needed the money and it was one of Maff Brown's gigs, and he only runs really nice gigs, so I knew it would be good. It was in a part of Surrey called Thames Ditton and true to Surrey style it was a lovely old pub ( I enquired exactly how old and the answer I got from three different people was 'its properly old') that obviously catered for a certain brand of people. For example the stairs up the gig had a sign on saying 'warning! These stairs have a very steep incline. Please watch how much you drink incase you fall on your way down them.' I thought that was lovely. There are certain pubs near me, where there would be no such warning and instead just a party of laughing pointing people with camera phones should you descend in an unpleasing manner. The room tolerated my flu and my MCing was saved by a diabetic in the front row who I got to play diabetic top trumps with. Once again, I won. Although it was on who'd had the highest blood sugars so I shouldn't really be proud. There were great sets from Dan Evans, Jimmy McGhie and Christian Reilly and overall it was a pretty ace gig.


As soon as it was done, I clambered back into the car, stuck the heating on and headed home full of a lemsip top-up. I thought it may help me to drive back, but instead it meant I ignored various useful road safety trips, such as red lights and other cars. I hadn't driven for a month and while I quite enjoyed it, heading home on one of the many routes I'm so used it, it made me realise that I was back into the routine. The last time I'd seen Jimmy had been in Edinburgh and we spent a good 10 minutes before he went on, talking about how weird it is to be gigging again so soon. I think I need a few more days to reacclimatise. I often wonder if there should be some sort of program, like they do with soldiers leaving the front, to rehabilitate people back from Edinburgh time to normal time. A decompression unit or something. Slowly we are given smaller and smaller amounts of alcohol over a week, forced to go to sleep just 30 minutes earlier each night, have 30g less cheese a day and have to do one less show a day until you finally have a day off and you're allowed to see your family and friends. There would also be certain protocols, where if you accidentally gigged at a member of the public in a non-gig area you would be allowed a special warning before any legal action was taken.


Not much to do today, apart from a meeting at 3 and then a night of Xbox round Mat's later. He hasn't asked me to take a mask or anything so I assume I may have to just sit in a different room to avoid him getting infected. Up until then I'm going to spend today catching up on We Are Klang and the new Shooting Stars. One of the organisers of last night's gig was in Procal Harem and now writes music for TV, Shooting Stars being one of the shows he helps with. So far I've only seen the first one which I was quite pleased with. Not entirely happy with Jack Dee's overacting, but everything else seems in order which makes me very happy. Matt Lucas is still brilliant which proves that David Walliams ruins things, and Vic and Bob seemed back on form. However until they recreate the level of hilarity that was Mark Lamarr defending himself against a series of stuffed mammals though, it will never be the same. Fact.