I have to apologise to the people of Brighton. Due to a massive diary malfunction I forgot to put the date I was doing for the Comedy Festival in my diary and have arranged to be flying to Africa at the same time. It's a terrible unprofessional error and alas I had a date in Brighton in for November and assumed this was the festival one. But as I have paid for tickets and it's all arranged I will have to back out of the gig. I am hoping we will rearrange it for another night, but many apologies to those of you who have already bought tickets. If I don't get it in for some day the week before I promise to come to town with the show at some other point. I know that's not much consolation and can only profusely apologise. Keep your eyes on the website for details.
I am a dick. I must be getting old.
The exercise programme continues apace and today I went for a swim and managed to go for longer and further than ever before. I had taken my electric shaver with me to the gym to trim my beard, as I haven't shaved for almost two weeks. It's quite an old shaver and the battery life is poor and I had put it in my bag a few days ago with the same intention, but forgotten to shave, so I was slightly worried that the battery wouldn't have enough juice in it. But I switched it on at home and it seemed to be buzzing away and I tested it again when I got there and there seemed to be plenty of buzz left in the old razors yet.
I had decided to shave at the gym partly because shaving makes a really big mess and though I of course clean up after myself, there is often a little bit of hairy detritus left behind. If I do that at home then gradually my sink becomes dirty, so I selfishly thought I would do it at the gym so any left over bristle would be someone else's problem. The perfect crime? Or was I heading for humiliation because of my selfishness? Who can know?
So I started shaving. The shaver takes me down to a bit of bristle rather than being a clean shave. I took off my moustache first and the little bit of hair under my bottom lip, because these are always the bits that most annoy me. Then I moved to the right hand side of my face, getting almost half way across my chin and neck before very suddenly the power went down to nothing. I had an almost half shaved face and no moustache and no way of evening up the rest of my face so it matched the shaved bit.
I couldn't charge up the shaver, the lead was at home. All I could do was to go out and buy a cheap razor and shave properly, but that was a lot of hassle. I looked a bit silly, but only if you looked at me properly and I wasn't planning on interacting with anyone for the rest of the afternoon. I was going for a swim where my face would be covered by water, so that's OK and then going to Ryman's to buy some paper, then to Marks and Spencers to buy some of the expensive pre-prepared food that you now know I so enjoy (actually I was making myself a chilli tonight, but still got most of the ingredients from Marks. I am posh). I thought I would probably get away with the half shaved face look, as it was surely unlikely that I would bump into anyone I knew. And I went as far as thinking that if I did then I could always cup the right side of my face in my hand as I was talking to them, so they wouldn't be able to see.
So I probably wouldn't meet anyone, but wouldn't it be worse in a way to be seen by strangers like this? Wouldn't they judge me as some kind of mentallist who had started shaving his face and then forgotten to do the rest? No-one is likely to come up with the true scenario of the battery running out mid shave. They's assume I would have recharged. They would assume I'd have been at home. They would assume I was an idiot and a madman and judge me and steer clear of me.
Worse what if someone recognised me as that bloke who used to be on TV eight years ago. They'd go home and say, "I saw that Stewart Lee in the street today. He had a half shaved face. It wasn't like a Phil Oakey fashion thing. He just looked like an insane tramp. How the not very mighty have fallen! Which is kind of even sadder than the mighty falling. He didn't have as far to fall, but you'd kind of hoped he could stay roughly the same."
And I realised that by the time I got out of the pool I would have forgotten what my face looked like and be walking around as if I was normal, forgetting to hide my shame, which would make me look even crazier.
What if it was today that fate had ordained I would meet the woman who was my perfect match? What if I saw her in the street on my way to Ryman's, caught her eye, fell in love and approached her to tell her my feelings? She'd look at me with my nearly half shaved face (worse than being exactly half - you might pass that off as some kind of eccentric quirk or result of a bet for charity that would make you look like a nice bloke - but nearly half because the razor battery failed? There's no way of disguising that) and run a mile.
Yet there was a part of me hoping that my nearly half shaved face would get me into some kind of scrape. Not only would it make an excellent Warming Up, but it could be the starting point of some hilarious sit-com episode. If Warming Up ever got televised, imagine how funny it would be, if I bumped into the Controller of BBC2 or a vicar or something.
As it turned out I was correct, I forgot all about the nearly half beard I had, went and did my shopping and went home. I didn't really interact with anyone. Maybe someone saw me and thought I was weird, maybe it went unnoticed.
But the beauty part is that I had forgotten about it until just now when I came to write this (my chilli was delicious, and so healthy - what a good boy am I) and have still got the half beard. Even though I've been home for some hours now. I could go to bed and then in the morning I will definitely have forgotten. There is still a chance it could lead to an hilarious sit-com style adventure. Except that I am quite determined to immediately go upstairs and sort it out. Maybe I'll get distracted. Maybe I will never even it up. Maybe I will have a slightly uneven bearded face for the rest of my life. I don't know. It will probably even itself out in time.
But if you ever see me write a sit-com episode where a man shaves off nearly half of his beard and then his battery runs out and from thence the humour arises, you will know where I got the idea from.
