M1sery

Apparently hotels in Leicester don't have any rooms for the night I need to be there because its Valentines Day. Are people really that unromantic that they will take their partner to Leicester for Valentines Day? Gone are the days of Paris, Prague or even somewhere like Bath. No, now all you need to woo a lady is to whisk her to Leicester where the streets are just filled with love, obviously. Maybe they can walk arm in arm and stare at the slip road to the M1 to ignite that passionate fire. To be fair I was going to book a hotel for and my girlfriend for V-Day in Leicester but that was only because I have to be there and it means I was vaguely doing something for it. Now it appears I won't even see her on the overhyped waste of a day and so adding another notch to a collection of facts that can be used in an argument at a later date. 

I've now only got two weeks to go till Leicester and a week till my preview and my show is still a collection of scrappy notes. I have no idea what order the notes go in and I keep changing my mind as to what to write. I'll admit, there is some fear right now. I hope I get struck with some genius, or in fact just struck, then I wont have to do it. I only work when I have a deadline so I suspect that suddenly on wednesday I'll write it all. I hope this is the case anyway, otherwise all 6 people that are coming to see it will be very sad. 

I left Liverpool yesterday afternoon after having a free lunch in my friend's restaurant. It was a very nice lunch, made 100% nicer by being free and hanging out with my friend. Some people say there is no such thing as a free lunch. Well there is, I had one. I have defeated a myth and emerged full of thai curry. Not quite as impressive as dragon killing but along the same lines. Afterwards I scarpered to Halifax for a gig that promised goodness and turned out to be lots of starey people with a quarter of the room actually laughing. I'm not sure what went wrong to be honest. It was a great venue, staff were lovely, the room was sold out but after my first 5 minutes of my half and hour set, they were less than impressed. So not to let anyone down I insulted a man with a beard every 7 or 8 minutes which seemed to keep them on side. Apart from the man with the beard of course, who hated my face. It was an adequate performance but not great and I ran away leaving them with Mitch Benn to cheer them up. 

The home journey was most of the excessively dull M1 all the way. They need to do something to liven that road up. Its so long and straight and boring. Maybe some big television screens, or some obstacles you need to avoid, something just to keep me awake. What they definitely don't need is to reduce all the traffic to one lane just when I am 30 miles from home. Strangely that is exactly what they did. I was forced to visit my favourite coffee man in the Costa at Watford Gap. He enjoys being as rude and as slow about everything as possible. Its almost as if he feels that because his life is ruined by working in Costa at 1am every night, that he in turn, must ruin your life as much as he can. Unfortunately for him I find everything he does, from his constant miserable sighing to the way he can literally throw coffee into a cup, absolutely hilarious. I'm sure it would kill him to know that, although that might be a better alternative to him that being in Watford Gap on a friday night serving coffee. I think I am going to buy him a small violin for the next time I go there. I think he'd like that.