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More evidence that I am totally losing it. A delivery man came to the door today. As he was handing over our stuff he pointed out that there was a bunch of keys still in the door. They were my keys. They had been there since 3.30 yesterday afternoon when I’d come into the house with the kids and the pram. My keys had been in the lock for about 16 hours.
Had we been in London and I had pulled that kind of shit my entire family would have been slaughtered in their beds. Or someone would at least have nicked our telly. But here in the countryside the potentially fatal display of absent-mindedness just resulted in me feeling silly and my wife calling me a dick. At least if the family had been murdered I would have been spared this humiliation.
I hope all this foolishness is down to tiredness and not some degenerative brain condition, but hey, I still just about know who I am and will try to get as much down on here before I slip into - just spent two minutes trying to think of the right phrase to go here, but it’s not coming to me. This is progressing faster than I thought. Thank God I have this blog, as soon it will be the only way I’ll know what I have done or who I am.
Anyway, it’s lucky I moved to the country where you can leave windows open and your keys in the door and usually not get slaughtered. Though if you know where I live and want a free TV then probably just hang around outside and my overstretched and under slept brain will provide you with an opportunity.
Tonight we were going to Worcester and the Huntingdon Halls. It’s a venue that I used to play pretty regularly, though the last blog recorded trip there
was apparently in 2013. It’s good to see that back then I was just as confused by varying tour numbers as I am now. And bizarrely, in spite of having kept away from Worcester for half a decade my appeal has shot up (maybe because I’ve stayed away). I had just over 100 people in in 2013, but over 250 tonight. Similarly on Saturday in
Brighton I have sold out a 300 seater venue and had to add another performance (which admittedly isn’t selling that great) whereas last year I only had 200 or so in at the Theatre Royal. So demand is shooting up, right? Not in the least: St Albans was down by a third and I currently have sold about a quarter of last year’s number in Belfast. And Wolverhampton remains reassuringly basically unmoving however many times I visit.
And in London where I’d usually sell over 1000 tickets in three nights, I am struggling to get up to a third of that number at
the Queen Elizabeth Hall. There is still some time to try and fill the venue (if I manage it, the 900 strong crowd would be my biggest audience yet), but it’s odd that the same city can produce such different results (obviously the venue change may be part of it).
On the whole things are doing a lot better than they were in 2013, but it’s a mystery as to what makes me able to sell 500 in some towns and struggle to scrape into triple figures in others.
But here I am. Still chugging along. I’m in no way complaining as I feel like the luckiest man alive to make a decent living this way. I just feel like the citizens of each town are getting together every year and deciding to fuck with my mind.
The Worcester audience were amazing though and it was great to be back in this converted church again. The dressing room still has the same electric hum. But this year I was too tired and preoccupied to get on with recording another tour podcast. I think that one might have bitten the dust. Sorry. I am not even getting my proper work done at the moment.
In the interval I watched as our Oh Frig I’m 50 DVD record kickstarter hit its target of £20,000. This means we are covered for all the filming expenses for May 4th at the QEH. About half the DVDs are now gone and we won’t be printing any more, so if you want to own this show on this archaic format then
you have two weeks left to pledge. The cheapest level to get a signed and numbered DVD is nearly full. And nearly all the other extra prizes will only be available to kickstarter subscribers.
