The healthy lifestyle continues, if a little bit through a fug of weariness. My wonderful girlfriend was making all of us Sunday lunch (apart from the inexplicably vegetarian and roast-hating Justin Moorhouse - if I had to pick one man out of a million who would be salivating and rubbing his hands at the prospect of some roast meat then I would have felt confident picking him, just goes to show that judgement and prejudice can be a terrible thing), but I didn't stop to help her (though to be fair I have cooked her every other meal we've had since she arrived - once again, check in your stereotypes) and went for another swim. Had a bit more energy this time and worked my way up to 20 lengths, but still nowhere near the form of that first day back in the pool. Weird.
I had ten minutes in the whirlpool too and am becoming fascinated by both people's motivation for sitting in a pool of bubbling water being hit by jet streams and also with the interaction between strangers forced to share this strange experience. It's a very unnatural thing, but strangely it possibly takes us back to our animal roots or at least from my perspective at least, human beings never look more like monkeys than they do in a jacuzzi. Which isn't an obvious association to make as you rarely see a monkey in a whirlpool bath or indeed in water. But I suppose it's because no one is speaking and everyone has to sit in a certain way and the body language is really back to basics. Some men stretch out taking up as much room as possible, obviously seeing themselves as the Alpha males, surveying the scene and any women in the vicinity often in quite a sexually aggressive way. And women, as a consequence, to avoid these unwanted stares have to sit hunched up, clearly facing away from whatever monstrosity is lurking beneath the waters and pointing towards them, avoiding eye contact. The non-Alpha males and the nice men who don't want to intimidate women sit as far away from both women and Alpha Male as possible. But there is an odd and not pleasant electrical charge to the whole thing, maybe because everyone is unusually in the company of semi-naked strangers and maybe because they are all getting jets of water shooting towards their nether regions. Is the whole jacuzzi phenomenon just a way for people to give themselves a cheap thrill whilst pretending they are relaxing, like those strange electrical pants that Peggy wears in Madmen, which are meant to help you lose weight, but which are actually designed for you to get off.
Obviously I am above all those kind of thoughts, and get no pleasure from jets of hot water accidentally shooting up my mousehole, mainly because I am a writer and just observing humanity, but mainly because wherever I sit in a jacuzzi my baggy swimming trunks get full up with air and when I push the air out of my trunks it looks like I am doing an enormous fart. Especially when the proper bubbles have stopped. I want to say to everyone that the expunging of gas is not a fart but just trapped air and that when I am fiddling with my shorts I am actually just trying to push that air out to stop my trunks turning into a massive balloon, but you're not allowed to speak to people in a jacuzzi, or if you do you are then obliged to go and have sex with them in the steam room. So I just look shame-faced and try to avoid eye contact.
Of course when I look around to observe humanity I also do look at both the men and women, who might misinterpret my detached interest as me being just another pervy man. And perhaps I am a pervy man (I mean I definitely am, but not sure int this instance) and actually everyone else mainly goes into a jacuzzi to relax.
You're fooling yourselves you perverted idiots. Even if you don't realise it. You are just monkeys in a hot bubbly pool, too repressed to let your true feelings out.
I think this entry might be one way to ensure that I always get the jacuzzi to myself from now on.
Lunch was awesome. At the end of it Andrew Collings magnanimously stated to my girlfriend, "You don't need to do anything else. We'll do the washing up," as if that wasn't some kind of a given in the circumstances. But then he said, "Um... I've just got to go out and buy the newspapers" (he was a bit over-excited because our podcast had been picked out in the Sunday Times - but he's a bit over-excited about everything at the moment, which is quite refreshing and sweet, like I am doing the Fringe with a puppy) and disappeared for an hour. During which time I had not only washed up the things too big to go in the dishwasher and cleaned the kitchen and discovered that the dishwasher hadn't really worked (something not working in this flat - how unusual) so had put in some salt and put the unreleased tablet directly into the machine. This didn't work either, but although Collings was back now he didn't seem to remember anything about the "We'll do the washing up statement" and was skulking in his room, presumably masturbating over his own name in the Sunday Times and eventually I had to unload the dishwasher and wash all the rest of the stuff by hand too. I thought that maybe Andrew with all his promises might at least see fit to put all the stuff away when it had dried. But no. I had to do that as well.
The man is a monster. Two packed shows and he thinks he's Michael McIntyre.
I got my first review of the Fringe on
Spoonfed. It's four stars, just like nearly every review has been over the last two years. Which is something to be proud of, even if a small part of me wishes I could get a few fives. But that is churlishness of the highest order and I am in danger of turning into an arrogant comedian, so full of themselves that they think they are too good to do the washing up. I mainly draw your attention to the review because of the first comment from a reader called Damian who says "Herring often takes aim at Christianity - as soft a target as you can find. If he made similar jibes about Islam he would be targeted and shot. And it would be no great loss."
It's not only a rather cliched complaint and one that is not entirely true (the show is not just an attack on Christianity as I think the review makes clear and I have been scathing about all religions in the past and in any case Jesus is a prophet in Islam), but I love the way the comment spirals into violence and wishing death on me, when it presumably comes from a Christian. Maybe he hasn't read the New Testament for a while, or maybe he's managed to home in on the bits that seem to advocate violence and ignored the stuff about turning the other cheek. But it only served to make me laugh and for a raft of other people to leave comments taking the piss. It's all good fun until someone is shot in the face. I wish people would see the show before they become infuriated and threaten me with death though. Although my guess is they'd still feel like that afterwards. Partly because I am a bit blasphemous, but mainly because someone like that isn't interested in entering into a discussion or listening to an opposing view.
As it is the way that the end of the show is morphing and changing each night, I am getting pretty close to admitting my love for Jesus anyway - whoever or whatever he was.
Show 4 was the first night not to sell out, but there was a very respectable 230+ people in, which still makes this the fourth biggest audience I have ever played a solo show to in Edinburgh. And they were possibly the best crowd of the run. I made some good cuts and experimented with the running order (which I don't think was as effective) and came in on time, though possibly still had to rush the second half a little. The chandelier was tinkling again. And the SCOPE collection has not gone so well on the full price nights. And the average donation is down on what I would have expected. Perhaps people getting cheaper tickets are more inclined to give (though one would suspect that they also have less money than the weekend fat cats) and maybe the more grown up Assembly audience holds on to its money more tightly than the hipper Underbelly crowd. We're still making lots of cash for SCOPE, but the first audience have been the most generous. Someone put a £5 coin into the bucket tonight, which I hope is legal tender and not just a collectable. Though it is impressively chunky, with a slightly home made feel to it. I will try and pay it into the bank tomorrow.
Still no energy to cavort around town and I suspect the proximity of my flat to the Assembly Rooms may well preclude me from heading up to the Pleasance and Bristo Square with any regularity - though I would like to socialise with more of my fellow comics. The Assembly Rooms bar rarely has anyone I know in it.
I was playing pinball on my iPad when Collings rolled into the flat, drunk as a Lord and babbling about some stand up gig he had done in a pub with all the lights on and a microphone that didn't work in front of a tiny crowd. I think he thought he was Lenny Bruce. You're not Lenny Bruce Andrew. And when Lenny Bruce said he would do the washing up, he did it.
Still it's all material for the podcast, which I realised with a bit of a start starts in two days (all tickets are gone - not sure if there will be any available from the GRV on the day. I doubt it though).
