6863/19783
I knew first thing that I was too tired to do any meaningful writing today, so busied myself with tidying up the house. I took the arduous last couple of hours of child care (including bath and bedtime), but aside from my son jumping back in the bath when I’d already dried him, it was a fairly easy one. Then I just had to get the final dog walk done, with a dog that still has a bandaged paw, but does not like having a plastic bag attached (I am sporting the accidental wounds from yesterday’s attempts to corral her). The dog walk is nearly always relaxing (though a few days ago Wolfie was attacked by a dog with a muzzle, whose muzzle came off in the scuffle and who was then baring her teeth at us - the owner said she thought it was better if everyone just left their dogs off their lead, but I think she was wrong there. It would certainly have been better if her dog had been on a lead on this occasion- mine was obvs), but today was pretty exciting as the Stocean was back to a sea of brown mud and stones as the farmer had taken up all the stubble from the wheat harvest. It was stone Christmas and after so many months of thick vegetation all over the field and the path, it was ace to wade out into the waters and pick out stones as big as your liver.
Then I was straight home to complete the sixth round of the European Super League of Self-Playing Snooker and to find out who would still be in contention for the trophy and the million pound cheque from Durex (still awaiting these funds, please send soon Ian Durex). I looked for today’s deaths to determine who the arena would be named after and was very surprised and sad to see Norm Macdonald’s name on the list. The news had just broken (but someone had headed straight to wikipedia to update of course).
I was in two minds as to whether to “honour†him in this way. Mainly because the usual joke is that I have picked someone with a funny name (there was one of those, but they had lived quite a worthy life and that felt wrong too) or who is obscure to my largely UK based tiny audience. But also because I don’t know whether Self-Playing Snooker is the medium to break genuinely bad news to people. Sure it’s funny for the people in the chat to pretend to be disconsolate about a Singaporean politician they’ve never heard of, but do you really want to hear about the death of someone you know and possibly love in this slightly disrespectful way?
In the end I decided it was the best thing to name the arena after him. It can actually be a quite sincere tribute when handled correctly, but apologies to anyone who found the revelation a shock. I know that my inclination, as a comedian, is that death (even and especially my own) should not stop the comedy. And I hope I will be treated with a lack of pompous dignity when my time comes.
It’s a bit much to see another comedian taken much too young by cancer. Cancer does seem to enjoy eating up the best comedians in the world. It occasionally takes a bite out of a shit one, and then spits them out like they’re a rotten apple. But Sean Lock and Norm Macdonald seem to have been two of the most naturally talented comedians in the world and also both just extremely decent people. There are so many talentless cunts in comedy. Kill a few of those cancer, you fucking dick.
Snooker will be up in the usual places on Wednesday. Yeah, cancer let this rubbish continue and deprived us of Bill Hicks and Andy Kaufman instead.
