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Last night was my first night away from Phoebe and today looked bound to be the first day I could not kiss my daughter, which made me a little bit sad.
I had driven to my parents’ house after Exeter, as tonight’s gig was in Cheddar and assumed I would be staying again tonight, but as the day progressed started feeling that maybe I should get home as soon as possible. It is a balance between being there to help, but not killing myself by falling asleep at the wheel (as being dead would make me a much worse father in most ways - though at least I couldn’t actively do anything to fuck my daughter’s life up then). I had done my usual run around the reservoir in the morning and perhaps like last time I did this (you can check my blog) recalled that in the mid-70s everyone left their cars unlocked and as a slightly naughty eight year old I used to open the car doors as I passed. I didn’t break in, or take anything, I just left the doors open. And I think I was doing it to try and teach the drivers that their cars were in danger (if only partially, I liked the thrill of doing something wrong). I was like a superhero warning people that their cars were in danger from thieves (though admittedly by leaving the doors open I made them slightly more susceptible to criminals. But how amazing that people used to leave their cars unlocked. It’s almost inconceivable.
I was a bit weary by mid-afternoon. Touring is surprisingly exhausting, unsurprisingly even more so the older I get. I had a pleasant day pottering around the house, realising it’s almost thirty years since I left school and finding the house I grew up in weirdly unfamiliar for some reason.
A prophet is without honour in his own home town, and so are useless people and Cheddar does not put the bunting out for my annual return and most of the residents remain untroubled by my shows (perhaps having had enough of my childish antics from the ten years I spent here growing up). About 120 people came to see the show, once again, slightly down on last year’s numbers, but even so enough to have a good time. I boasted at the start that for once this was an uncontroversial show, before launching into a routine which was disrespectful to Jesus, had allusions to the male member and mentioned teacher-based child abuse. I suppose it’s all relative.
I am sure I am the only live comedian that some of the audience here will ever see and feel that I maybe disappoint a little, by being a bit strange and not having that many jokes and there were some unusual reactions to the material, either banker stuff not getting laughs, or tongue-in-cheek bits being seemingly taken at face value. But overall I think I won them round. There were a few familiar faces in the crowd and it was nice to catch up with some schoolmates three decades on. How can it be that long?
Armed with a bag of extremely sugary pick n mix that someone had left on the stage for me (I actually made myself feel quite ill scoffing them in the car) I decided to drive home. It was a two and a half hour journey and most of it on the motorway so I figured that I’d probably be OK. But it was only when I was on the phone to my wife and telling her that the sat nav was saying I’d arrive back just before midnight that I realised I had the opportunity to kiss my daughter today. It was going to be tight, but a 23rd February kiss would be possible if there were no delays and I jumped straight out of the car when I got home. It gave me something to aim for and gave the journey the feeling of a weird rom com where a grown man has fallen in love with a tiny baby. You’d think the fact that it was his own baby would make that weirder, but bizarrely that’s the detail that saves this story from being appalling.
I was feeling confident that I could do without a wee break, but the sugar rush might just have been giving me a false sense of security. But then, to make this even more like a rom com, the jeopardy arrived. My sat nav informed me that the M4 was shut from junctions 1 to 3 and the diversion would add ten minutes to the journey. My arrival time was now 12.05. Could I somehow make up the time? I was aware that sometimes the sat nav miscalculates the timings, especially on the last few miles in London. I wasn’t going to risk killing myself or breaking the law for this, but I was still hopeful.
The sat nav told me another route was faster and the time was pre-midnight, but I missed the turn off to the M25 and was back to 12.02 again. But somehow as I approached home and got through the diversion, in spite of traffic lights being against me, I realised I was going to make it home with a couple of minutes to spare. I parked the car, ran up the stairs and found my daughter in my wife’s arms. My wife looked tired. Phoebe was just (finally) getting off to sleep. I kissed her head with 90 seconds of the day to go. I was so excited about this victory that I forgot to kiss my wife as well. But Phoebe came out of my wife, so a kiss for her still counts as a kiss for Catie.
It’s a short-lived victory. I am away for three nights from Thursday and there’s no way I will be able to kiss Phoebe on Friday, Saturday or Sunday (unless i take her on the road with me), so this unbroken chain will soon fracture. But I am really glad it gets to last a little bit longer.
After I'd got my stuff in I made myself some Marmite on toast. You either love Marmite, or hate it or are ambivalent to it. I love it. I buy massive jars and put shovel on the Marmite at approaching a centimetre of thickness. My old jar was really essentially at an end and I had a new one ready to go, but I still did the thing that everyone does where I tried to get as much Marmite out of the dry old jar as possible. It took me about five minutes to get enough for about a quarter of a slice. And I then obliterated that residue with the fresh new Marmite. I wondered what it would be like to be so rich that you didn't bother trying to get the last lick of Marmite from the jar. You'd have to be very rich. Or maybe that's how rich people become rich. I am glad that I still try not to waste a molecule of Marmite. If I worked in advertising I would steal this idea for an advert. But if I worked in advertising I would steal all my ideas. " How rich would you have to be to not get the last bit of Marmite out of the jar?" Cut to Richard Branson with a knife in a jar saying, "I'm not that rich". And so on.
I am also featuring on this series of the podcast Comedians Telling Stuff with the excellent Sofie Hagen.
You can listen here. 
