Happy 7th birthday to my 28 year old nephew Mike! The terrifying is that it only feels like 7 years ago that I first saw you.
And speaking of time passing much too quickly, my two days off (if you can really call them that) flew by way too fast. It was faintly depressing to be packing my suitcase and loading up my car and leaving behind the woman that I love.
I checked out my bike and found that the brake cable had been twisted. I untwisted it, breaking the metal tubing around it as I did so, which felt a bit risky, but once I had reattached the chain, which had also come off, everything seemed to work in the short term. So that's got to be fine right. A broken brake cable can't be any kind of future problem.
It was another day when every second had to be utilised, but this is far preferable to those days when I loll around getting nothing done. I had stuff to write, interviews to do and podcasts to record - in the end I had to catch up on the Warming Up podcasts during the interval at Shrewsbury which would usually be a time to recoup energy.
The drive was fortunately uneventful, but typically when I arrived at the venue and the tech opened the gate for me to get through, I had to do a slightly tricky manoeuvre to get through and managed to catch my passenger door on the gate. Luckily there was no damage this time (unlike when I did a similarly cack-handed move at the Frog and Bucket a couple of years back) but it was quite humiliating and put into sharp focus the skilful way I had avoided that collision after the Birmingham gig whilst going at about 70mph. In fact every time I have pranged my car I have been travelling at under 5mph, which does suggest that I should probably never drive slowly and always drive fast. Even when parking. Especially when parking.
But at least I am defying all sexist stereotypes about male and female
spatial awareness.
The tech at the venue did not mock me (at least not to my face) for my poor driving skills and helped me to extricate myself with no consequences for car or gate. And it was a good gig, made fresher by the time away from it and I played around with some bits, suddenly explaining why the repetitive nature of golf made it a more apt profession for Stewart Lee, as well as exaggerating his wobbly head in my impression of him. The theatre was pretty much full, which was a good thing as the next three gigs are either small or not selling all that well - so if you're in Bridgend, Whitehaven or Buxton (or nearby) then I'd love it if you could fill an empty seat or two. Sunday's gig at the Warwick Arts Centre is another biggie and nearly sold out so I have two big gigs to bookend the smaller ones.
I had booked my hotel late and not realised that it was 7 miles out of town. I had hoped to come back and write next week's Metro column, but realised that was unrealistic and that I just needed to relax and then sleep.
If you haven't voted for me at the Chortle Awards yet then you have less than 24 hours.
DO IT.
By the way the collection for SCOPE has already made nearly £10,000 on this tour already (and we're only halfway through) taking the total to almost £33,000 this year. I'd love to get as close to £50,000 so if you missed the buckets at a gig, or would like to give more or just want to bung a couple of quid the way of a brilliant cause then please
got to my justgiving page. God I didn't like talking about that. Please keep this work a secret.
