Prompted by a couple of Correspondent's Articles on Chortle (though not aimed at them specifically) I wasted a valuable 30 minutes of show writing time this morning tossing off
this mildly satirical article. It's really only a joke for people who read Chortle and was a total waste of show-writing time, but I would have just wasted it in another way if I hadn't done this.
There was some excitement this afternoon when another man came to my door. I didn't know what he was trying to sell me this time. I wondered if he might be a freelance doctor who had noticed that I was looking a bit peeky and had diagnosed appendicitis and was going to offer to whip out my useless organ for half price as he was in the area anyway and his skip was not quite full of diseased body parts. "Look, I've got a stethoscope," he would repeatedly say as if this alone was enough to prove his credentials.
But in fact it was a burly man from the National Grid who said that my neighbours had smelled gas and called him out. As you know by now my anal eruptions can occasionally be toxic, but this is the first time they've seeped through walls. He asked to check my boiler, which was fitted almost exactly a year ago and it turned out that despite it being pretty much brand new a valve wasn't working properly and gas was being released out of the flue. Apparently it was seeping out even when the boiler wasn't on. I asked if it was dangerous and he said only if someone was smoking right by the flue. I thought of the barbecues we've had in the last couple of weeks. Had we had a lucky escape?
He had to shut down the boiler until it could be repaired. Which is better than us being blown up into little tiny pieces. Worse still, our new kitchen could have been damaged. Typically the warranty had started on 26th June 2012 (even though we didn't properly move back until September - I can't remember if the boiler was operational in July when we were living here). Which meant even though we had a 2 year warranty, the second year did not kick in unless we had the boiler serviced after the first year. But all it meant is we had to pay the boiler company to service the (probably) dangerously defective boiler they had sold us and then they would repair it for free. If I had been them I might have been keen to sort out the problem without payment, as boilers shouldn't really be leaking gas after only nine months of proper use. But what do I know about business?
Amongst all this procrastination and potential kitchen explosions I did make a little headway on the show. And the preview I did tonight went well, although as always I have way too much stuff and more ideas that I didn't get to run out tonight. I am still having difficulty leaving the script behind (even of the bits that I have been doing from the start) but I did manage to ad lib more bits. It's actually rather exciting to have something so fresh and unknown to work with. And less than three weeks to get it right. But it feels like it's all shaping up to be a good Fringe. Book ahead if you're coming up.
I am delighted to see that someone has finally set up a wikipedia page to
Me1 Vs Me2 Snooker, though disappointed by how little detail it goes into (largely because I can't remember anything that has happened in it and it would be useful to have a definitive list of characters and incidents). But it's a start. And rather fittingly the list of frames has some kind of glitch in it that means the box disappears halfway through (don't look unless you've seen the frames already - spoilers). I can't imagine the wikipedia pedant police will let it stay up for long, but at least it's there (and being vandalised) now.
