I have a choice of two different gyms to visit, both about equidistant from my house. At one you get towels, but sometimes the hair conditioner might contain faeces, at the other they don't provide towels, but they also don't provide hair conditioner, which in this case is an advantage. Also you can park at the second gym which makes it a better place to go it there is limited time.
I usually go to the shit conditioner one, but today I had to get to Andover in the afternoon so opted for the one with the car park. But in my haste I forgot about the towels. I think you can hire towels, but I only realised my towel error once I was in the changing rooms and in my swimming trunks, so I thought, "Fuck it, I will go for a swim and then maybe dry myself with paper towels or hair dryers or maybe in the sauna. And I will save myself a pound! Result." I knew it was possible to get dry somehow, having recently been forced to do so
in Derby.
My swim was brief as I was a little weary and I had a shower and decided to see if the sauna route would work out for me. I knew I was playing a dangerous game. After all the heat from the sauna may dry my hair and trunks and maybe even my skin, but it would also cause me to sweat, making me both damp and possibly smelly again. But perhaps I could find the sweet spot where I was dry, but not yet sweaty. It was worth a try. Surely it was worth a try.
It wasn't really worth a try. It didn't altogether work.
But when I was in the sauna I noticed a couple of unattended towels. One lying on the bench and another pushed down the side of a bench. Should I just borrow one of these, dry myself and get out of the sauna altogether? Or would it be impossibly scuzzy to use another man (or woman's) discarded sauna towel? Would I just end up coated in the stale sweat and murk of another person? That would be less good than being coated in fresh sweat of myself. Plus one of the towels looked like it might be there simply to mop up a leak or something. The other one looked more like one that had been used to lie on and then left accidentally (or maybe by someone with so many towels that they didn't mind losing one). But what if I forgot about the sweat and other emissions that might be on the towel and started drying myself and then a huge semi-naked man came in and asked me what I was doing using his towel and then he pulled off my head or made me his post-box as punishment. Mmmmm. No, that would be bad.
I would be no better than a common
Andre Vincent (sorry use of common there was a tautology - there is no other kind). A man (or woman)'s towel is sacrosanct. It doesn't matter if they have left it unattended, you do not go there. I was glad to see I had more dignity than I had thought I had. And I went off to wipe off my sweat with some paper towels and my pants instead.
A slight exit protest in Andover tonight (or at least some Christians giving out leaflets and chocolate eggs - they hadn't seen the show of course), but otherwise a nice show in front of about 150 people. The pastor gave me a leaflet at the end, but didn't engage in discussion. I decided not to eat the eggs just in case though! The five day break made the show weirdly unfamiliar and my voice struggled to cope after the lay-off. But it also made it a lot more fun to perform. In places it felt almost new again. Thankfully the last 15 dates are well spaced out, so it shouldn't be too much of a burden. The hard part is over. Though East Anglia for the next few days and some protests. I have sold 78 of 712 tickets in Lowestoft, so at least I have done more than 10%. There may be more people outside than in. I hope so.
But in better news the
SCOPE programme fund is going brilliantly and I am getting interest in adverts too. Today an anonymous bidder gave £500, which is going to take some beating. I will have to come up with a top prize of some magnitude. I will let you know what soon. But that's the figure to beat. The smaller donations are just as welcome of course. A minimum £12.50 donation will not only get you one of (probably) about 150 signed, limited edition programmes (which will be collectors items), but if you think of it as a share in the programme you will personally be responsible for a donation of maybe 10 times that amount to SCOPE. Which would be something to be proud of. What I love about these programmes is that everyone is a winner. You give and you receive. I am hoping that the £50,000 target is achievable. Why wouldn't you want to be a part of that? Go on!
