It's sobering to realise I will never do anything as funny in my life as a senile woman's face as a huge party popper explodes over her. Those are just the facts. It's almost as funny as a fat woman falling out of a hammock. But I can work all I like and never be that funny. Nor be able to explain how or why what I saw was so hilarious. But it was. I was still laughing all day at it. Not at my lovely grandma who I love, but at the whole situation. Had she been able to comprehend what had happened it wouldn't have been amusing. Yet her inability to comprehend was not what was funny. Perhaps it was just the comic relief in the tragedy that is getting old. My grandma is, I think, possibly the best human being alive on this planet.
But I wasn't laughing all day, because I spent a restless night wincing in pain because of my ever swelling cyst. Something was happening. But still no explosion. Still no pus baby to love and hold and make all this pain and waiting worthwhile.
My sister was desperate to get her hands on it. When I had had a sebaceous cyst as a kid, my sister had lived up to her name by delighting in squeezing out its stinking contents whenever it ripened. I think I must have talked about this in the podcast because I can't find it on here, but rather than send me to the doctors to sort out the smelly lump on the back of my neck, my parents (perhaps bedazzled by their sickening love for one another) just let my sister get on with it. I didn't get it properly removed until I was in my mid-twenties.
I thought now we were both grown up my sister might have outgrown her obsession, but it was still there. Or maybe she just wanted to help me. It's a kind of love.
But even armed with a pin she couldn't make any headway and we decided to leave it. By the end of the day - after eight or so hours in the car it seemed that my nightmare might soon be over. Things were starting to give. I had a bath but there was only a partial eruption from one of the lower peaks. If you had a sweepstake on it though, the thing started to give at about 3am on the 20th July.
In the meantime I had been to Nottingham for a fun gig at Just the Tonic. The show continues to progress in leaps and bounds and aside from one dick (and if you see the show you'll know that one in sixty people are bell ends) who lurched at me as I signed autographs shouting "Who the fuck are you?" in my face, his spittle hitting my eye. He had been at the show, I believe and knew who I was, but he was angry that I was so arrogant to sign my name on the programmes of people who wanted that. I thought it might kick off. But he went away.
Then he came back and said "Do you want my autograph?"
I told him I didn't. But he was clearly furious with me for giving mine to other people. But I just stepped aside and ignored him. Though I had hoped he might punch me in the back and get the ripe, stinking contents spurting over his face. It would only be fair. I thought about explaining to him that I had been doing more with the last hour than getting pissed like him and had been working on stage and that's the only reason that a handful of the audience wanted me to scribble insults for them. But what was the point? He was a sad little man who couldn't even find someone properly successful to resent. He hung around, but I kept half a spit filled eye on him and it didn't go any further.
I think my figure of one in sixty people being idiots is probably about right and thanks to the 59 out of 60 people who were pleasant to me. And to the other two dicks who must have been in that audience of 180 who at least kept themselves to themselves.
