Another early morning as my sleep patterns try to settle down again. We were up at 5am and in the gym by 8.15. Amazingly a handful of idiots were also there at this unGodly hour on a Sunday morning, but only a handful. I sat on the exercise bike, playing MarioKart, which I have discovered is a great psychological trick - my brain thinks my pedalling is somehow motoring the kart and I thus cycle vigourously whilst playing. See video games will make me fit, mum. It was a bit odd to be doing this this morning as we'd watched episode 2 of Charlie Brooker's "Black Mirror" whilst we ate breakfast, which was all about a dystopian future where people spent their days pedalling on an exercise bike whilst essentially playing video games. I hadn't expected his nightmare vision to come true quite so soon.
I know that this early starts will soon be a thing of the past, but it's quite a thrill to get so much done and then look at your watch and realise it's not even midday yet. Somehow working in the early hours (or going to the gym) feels like it's not really working (or gyming) because no one is around and you're somehow cheating. I quite fancy the idea of going to bed at 9pm, getting up at 5am, working until lunchtime and then having the rest of the day to myself. Even though in reality it's no different than doing all those things four hours later, psychologically it somehow feels like a win.
I might just be getting old (as my credit card fiasco demonstrates) as this is the kind of life that we tend to veer towards as the years pass. But thanks to my night job I will not be able to make it a reality just yet. Unless I can do my gigs in the afternoon. Anyone up for that?
And this afternoon I was flagging quite badly, which was a slight problem as I had to head out to the Bloomsbury Theatre for the first of Robin Ince's Christmas/anti-Christmas/not-actually-anti-Christmas gigs. These are always fun and a great way to gig on Christmas week without having to do so in front of an audience of drunk, braying idiots. The audience may have had a couple of drinks tonight, but they were attentive and clever and a real pleasure to perform to. The real fun of these gigs though is hanging around in the green room with a selection of comedians, scientists, musicians and humanists. I wasn't really in a fit state to enjoy it tonight and nearly fell asleep on the sofa, but someone remarked that this basic grouping of people only really meet in this circumstance and in this room once a year and that it would feel wrong if we saw each other anywhere else. After a year where I have mainly been gigging on my own, touring the country with only Reliable Pete or my girlfriend for company and with no post-gig dressing room badinage, it's really fun to have such a social and sociable run of gigs to do to end 2011. And the gig itself went well, even though my brain felt numb, like it had just been removed from a box full of cotton wool and I had no real idea of what was coming next in the routine I was doing and just had to hope that the words would come out on their own. The line ending "exponential mathematics" always gets a big laugh, (I would assume the biggest laugh that the phrase exponential mathematics has ever got - it's not usually a guaranteed punchline) but I was sure that tonight, with this audience of lovely geeks and misfits, it would get a bigger laugh than ever and I wasn't disappointed. But hopefully in the rest of the week as my jet lag settles down it will actually feel like I am in the room and will be able to enjoy it more. It's all sold out, but I think they release some standing tickets each day and there's some incredible people on the bill, so try and come down if you can (Apparently my gigs at the Bloomsbury at the end of March are also selling well - so
Book Now London). But really if you want to have the best time you've got to try and get on to the bill so you can experience the green room, packed with nerds. So get to work on that.
