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Why did I say I’d do six As It Occurs To Mes? It’s so much work and even though I am doing them monthly so little happens to me any more. And due to the delay in broadcast I can’t even do topical stuff in the filmed shows. If I’d said we were doing three I’d be done by now. Why have I given up months of my life to this nonsense?
Because I love it.
Not so much today though when I was supposed to be writing next week’s studio script but struggling for inspiration. It’s always like this to be fair. A day where I feel I am empty of ideas and can’t even begin to get anything down on paper followed by a day where it sort of comes together and I suddenly realise how little there is actually to do. It must be part of the creative process, but I’d much rather have the realisation on the first day and then get to take the second day off, rather than sit around for the first day, trying and and failing to apply myself and then have to work the second day.
As always I am torn between wondering if I am doing something worthy, experimental and ground-breaking or just wasting time with something ridiculously self-indulgent when I should be doing the proper paid work that I have on my plate. I think it’s probably both isn’t it? The key with AIOTM <aiotm>, I think, is to let go of the fear and sack the self-editor that stops me working and just let my subconscious do its thing. The beauty of it is that I am allowed to fail and allowed to chuck out half formed ideas, but that weirdly, in doing that, more than half the stuff turns out to be pretty good (or at least OK). As long as you understand the spirit in which it has been put together. And necessity is the mother of invention. I can’t afford to do it any other way. it’s splurged out in the days before the recording (or the day before/of the recording in the case of the audio) and that’s what makes it what it is.
I guess the only issue with that is that my improvised and as good as improvised podcasts might be the only bits of my comedy that some people ever hear. They don’t really represent my stand up shows, which are much more rigorous and practised. Ah well, what you going to do?
What a way to make a living! I do feel ridiculously lucky to be in this position, even if, on days like today, it is a sticky and sludgy place to be. The modern world is ridiculous. I saw a poster the other day featuring that brilliant act I saw a few years ago of a man who squeezes his body through tennis racquets. He’s really remarkable and I am glad and unsurprised that he is still doing it. But what a pinnacle of human evolution that that can be the way that someone makes a living. As I observed back in 2006, it’s not much different than what I do. Civilisation is an amazing thing and it’s such a shame that it is going to end. I don’t know what tennis racquet man and me will do once we are struggling to survive in the aftermath of the inevitable revolution and nuclear war that is on the horizon (we might all be able to squeeze through tennis racquets by then). But at least we will have our memories of the times that we made our living through our litheness or ability to put a pumpkin full of semen on our heads.
I kind of knew I wasn’t going to make any massive advances and when my wife was putting Phoebe to bed I made myself an old-fashioned and got a little bit tiddly and considered eating all of my daughter’s advent calendar chocolates. Twitter was torn between encouraging me to do it and calling me evil for thinking of it. Not that this isn’t a challenge that every parent has to go through.
But I didn’t eat the chocolate.
I must love my child. Because I really love chocolate.
We’d woken up to a cold house. The central heating had broken down. I did my best to fix it, which meant checking the thermostat hadn’t been turned down accidentally and turning the boiler on and off. I suspected it was something to do with the boiler as the little radiator icon wasn’t appearing in the screen (although at one point I did briefly manage to make it return by fiddling inexpertly with buttons). In my bachelor days I would just have put on a coat until I had summoned up the energy to find a plumber. But now I have responsibilities, so I took a punt on google and rang a couple of plumbers who had good ratings on check-a-trade (not sure that really means anything), but they were busy til Wednesday. So I rang one of the bigger firms, who seemed a bit expensive, but who would definitely get out today. It turned out that the thermostat wasn’t communicating with the thing that the thermostat communicates with and we needed to replace both parts. To be fair I could not have done this myself. But the man didn’t have the right part so that meant I had to pay his huge hourly rate to send him to the shops to buy it. Luckily he didn’t take the piss and spend four hours out of the house and the whole job was done in an hour and three quarters. It’s hard for a comedian to complain about anyone’s hourly rate. But then we don’t charge you more if the gig goes on longer, (I wonder if Patrick Monahan uses that system, it would explain a lot). But it set me back a big chunk of change, though at least my baby won’t now freeze to death. And who am I to complain about being mildly conned by someone who can do something that I can’t. I give the gift of temporary laughter in return for too much money (on the occasions I get paid) and he gives the gift of permanent heat (for about four years until something else goes wrong) in return for too much money. Our hunter gatherer ancestors would find us all equally ridiculous (and glorious) and I’d like to thank them for those hundreds of thousands of years of struggle and pain to help get me to this point.
