4710/17369
Colds are the worst. You're not so ill that you can stay in bed all day or get any sympathy, but you still feel like crap and can't get much done. With a busy weekend of gigs and lots of driving I wanted to get my Metro column written today, but was not feeling inspired. Nothing much has happened this week (I'd already beaten the rush by getting my Back to the Future column in last year) and though with the blog on a day where nothing has happened (like today) I can just plough onwards and hope there will be a gem of wit amongst the splurge of brain diarrhoea that squirts out of my fingers (there's one, I can take the rest of the day off). But with the newspaper column I have to make some attempt to write something that will appeal to or resonate with some of the millions of commuters who might idly read it. This sloppy shit here is for free, but I am being paid (nominally) by the Metro so have to make some sort of effort, even if occasionally I am forced to phone something in (cf the Back to the Future column).
So feeling sleepy and fuggy, with no recent blog to plunder and not in the mood to go out and force an adventure (not that that's something I've ever done and I can't imagine it working, though I have been considering paying a visit to the palm reader in Shepherd's Bush market, both to prove him right about giving me a leaflet and because it might make an interesting column), I was a bit stuck.
Of course I am literally (not literally) sitting on 4709 blogs, many of which relate incidents that I have totally forgotten about and at least one in a hundred must have at least some crumb of a column in them. Occasionally I will chance across one that I will realise has some potential. When I am writing a new show I will put a key word in the search facility and find something useful. With Happy Now? I tried the word “happy†though unsurprisingly that brought up more entries than I could realistically look through, though did give me some minor inspiration. The search engine only shows me the last 100 entries with that word in it in any case, so it's hard to access the older and more forgotten blogs. I have to say that the work I've put in doing this every day has really paid off in terms of creating material for stand up and journalism. And most of these daily incidents would never have even struck me as being stand up material if I hadn't forced myself to write. I am not even sure how many people read this stuff and in a way I hope it's not that many, but it's a great resource and exercise for me. Making it public is important as it has ensured that I keep on doing it. If you want to be a writer or a comedian I would massively recommend doing something along these lines. Especially if your memory is as bad as mine
But with no theme and no real clue what I was looking for then it was pretty hard to think of a good search term to find a forgotten blog. I tried “funnyâ€, which was rather hopeful and of course turns up in nearly every entry, mainly in the phrase “the audience did not find this funny†or “my wife doesn't think I am funny†or me saying something unfunny and then saying “I am funnyâ€.
The search function is very useful if you can remember an incident and an unusual name or word that I used in it. but most searches will generate too many hits. Perhaps I should have searched for something obviously funny like “urine†or “embarrassingâ€, but for some reason my second shot at a search was with the word “unusual†(and I can see the logic behind that), which led to less hits than it might have done, and very quickly to this entirely forgotten incident from 2011 in which I entered a toilet that had an awful lot of wee on the floor, It's a while since I've done a Metro column about something disgusting involving some imaginative euphemisms and I realised that this was a perfect story, coming a few months before I started writing for the paper. Interestingly both “urine†and “embarrassing†would have also led me to this piece eventually.
It needed some work, but I had found my subject and once again could thank the Me of the past for writing something for free which I could now turn into 600 words that would make me literally tens of pounds (literally). Who knows what other chunks of Fool's Gold exist in this digital dig. I don't think I have time to read it all from the beginning, but I don't think anyone else is qualified to be able to sort the the wheat from the chaff - or maybe the wee from the chuff.
There's probably a couple of stand up shows and another 40 Metro columns hidden in this swirling sewer of shit and piss (sometimes literally), so perhaps I will be even more glad I've done this when my brain isn't playing ball due to old age, rather than the temporary shroud of illness. Every now and again I think it's time to stop and there are valid arguments for that, as maybe the hour a day this takes out of my life might be better spent writing something that I get directly paid for or advances my writing career (like the sitcom that I am still struggling to get started on). But I think it's probably the right call to carry on. I am only a month away from having completed 13 years and less than a year from my 5000th consecutive entry. Only an idiot would give up now.
Mind you only an idiot would have started this in the first place. And only a real idiot would have insisted on writing an entry every day for 4710 days.
The audio version of the RHLSTP with Diane Morgan is now up here and on iTunes
Still a few tickets left for the fourth go at Happy Now? in Brighton on Friday 23rd. I could have a whole weekend of sold out gigs here, which would be extraordinary.
And by the way, my mother-in-law gave me some Sudafed which really helped me get through the day. Never had it before, but it seemed to work.
