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Just to make sure this year never has a quiet moment, we are moving house. After a few false starts with other places it looks like it’s all sorted and we will be heading out of the city and into the countryside in the summer. We went to the house today to check some stuff out and talk about some work that needs doing to it. It was a beautiful spring day and being surrounded by nature, rather than passive aggressive door to door salesmen and shitting tramps was amazingly invigorating. We’d been to the house a couple of times before, but not since the beginning of the year and the fear was we’d get there and it wouldn’t be what we remembered it being. But if anything it was better. It’s bizarre to think that this is the place we’re going to be bringing up our family and probably the first house that Phoebe will remember. Who knows what wonderful and horrific memories will be forged here. It still doesn’t feel quite real, but it nearly hit home today. After 28 years in London I will soon be leaving.
There’s a lot to do to the house - it’s pretty old and there’s some maintenance required (but who knows how much? Everyone has differing opinions). There is a fairly inaccessible and unused cellar space beneath the kitchen. I crawled into it to see if there might be anything we could do with it, but it’s pretty small and only about four feet high. I came out covered in cobwebs and dead spiders. I think we’ll probably leave it as it is.
It was strange to be in the house with the present owners still there as we debated the stuff we were going to change, but they were very helpful and friendly (I mean, they should be - we’re about to give them a frightening amount of money). They asked us if we’d like to have their cat, as they weren’t able to take her on to their new place. So it looks like one occupant of the place will be staying on with us and I like that continuity.
There are horses in the field behind the house. It’s quite a change. But it does feel like the right time to be moving onwards. And I am glad that all the other places fell through. I think this is the best one for us. I hope so.
Weirdly it didn’t tick a lot of the boxes that my wife or I had insisted on with previous places, but it just felt right when we were in there the first time. And even more so now. Though maybe that’e because we’re committed to this thing.
We headed into the local market town for lunch and maybe it was the sunshine, but it felt welcoming and relaxing, with winding back streets and an eclectic range of independent shops (as well as all the usual suspects). We sat and ate a sandwich beside a small stretch of water with a fountain and ducks and we felt, what was this emotion? You don’t get it in London. Oh, happy.
Maybe by the end of the year we’ll be tearing our hair our and yearning for the choice of the big city, but I don’t think so. But we’re not too far away if we want to pop down to visit the Morlocks.
Meanwhile, in London town, the Channel 4 taster tape was being watched by the first of the executives who will decide what’s happening next. There are a few bits that need tweaking, but apparently he was impressed and Noel Fielding also went into watch it and sounded pretty blown away by it. So the signs are very positive, lining things up nicely for maximum disappointment when it goes wrong! There will be another week of work to improve things further (given the budget, the special effects are pretty good, but a couple of them aren’t quite right) and then it will go to the people at the very top.
First though I have to rewrite my Relativity scripts and do four gigs in four nights before recording the Relativity scripts. March is a bit chocka. In Aldershot tonight at one of the venues I heart the most, the West End Centre, which has the rare continuity of having had the same tech, the amazing Jules, since I started performing here 15 or 16 years ago. She is the best. Aldershot can be a bit of a depressing town - not only did I have that infamous gig with John Oliver where I was nearly in a fight with a squaddie (where is John Oliver today? Is he still playing the West End Centre? No he isn’t), but also a few scary nights of walking down the high street on a Friday where the threat of violence hung in the air even at 7pm. A lot of the shops have closed down, even as I noted in the show to a big laugh from the audience, Poundland. I mean, things are going badly when even Poundland can’t flourish.
It’s a small venue and I hadn’t quite filled it this year (some TV comic was on in Guildford and I maybe split the audience by doing nearby Fleet last month, but also a group of 30 army personnel had had to cancel their booking due to being called away - which puts any gripes I have into proportion- though actually that means I sold around 20 more seats than capacity,but 30 of them were returned). It was, however, one of the best receptions that the show has received and I was really able to play around and do a nuanced performance that I was pretty happy with.
