I carry on pushing myself a bit too hard. The spectre of AIOTM is haunting me, aware as I am that I have next to no time to get the show together - just like always, except there's five other podcasts and seven solo shows a week, plus extra gigs tonight, tomorrow and on Sunday and once again the golden writing time between 4.30 and 8.30pm was taken up with another panic. Yesterday was the lost podcast and today I suddenly realised (luckily in time to do something about it) that I somehow misplaced the vital connector that makes my mac hook up with my projector. I am usually very careful to look after it, so thought it had to be somewhere in the flat, or failing that the venue, but after dashing back and forth I had not located it and by now the shops were shut and no one at the GRV (where I could now only hope I had somehow dropped it) was returning my texts. On top of everything else this put me in quite a tizzy.
It was only just as the show was about to begin (and luckily we had located a temporary replacement) that I got the message that the connector, along with my swimming trunks had been left in the GRV that afternoon. They had obviously fallen out of my bag and I had been distracted as I attempted to ensure that the podcast was definitely saving and exporting. It had all been a rather unnecessary additional pressure to add to my day.
Things had started more sedately and I had woken up early as my real girlfriend was going out to see Daniel Kitson's stupidly early show, so thinking everyone else would still be in bed I put on my swimming trunks and started to cook my porridge. Justin Moorhouse came in to see me preparing food, semi-naked and hung around to interview me for his radio show - and to gawp at my beautiful and increasingly less corpulent body.
Then I went about my routine of paying in my coins and posting off some more programmes and going to the gym, where I managed 26 lengths (despite the territorial approach of the Butterfly Bully in my lane - it is unusual to use any kind of butterfly to intimidate someone, but in a narrow slimming lane, doing the butterfly stroke can actually turn you into a bit of a selfish thug) before getting some warm water shot up my mousehole in the jacuzzi. Then it was back to the City Cafe for some tea and smoked salmon, before walking down to the GRV (without Collings who had turned up late and was waiting for a burger to arrive) hoping that there would be electricity and that we wouldn't delete today's efforts.
It was fun to berate Collings for his idiocy as well as his lying claims that he was doing all the housework in the flat but we talked about loads of other stuff, which I can't remember, but luckily don't have to, because it's all
here for you to listen to. I wish we in a slightly bigger and more atmospheric venue (where the lights were guaranteed to work) as we're not getting too much off the audience, who seem reluctant to laugh at the more extreme moments, I think due to their relatively small number - the venue seats 84, but we have been used to playing audiences of three or four hundred - I am sure nearly everyone is enjoying it, but I regret not getting a bigger venue for the show. Maybe next year. If one of us hasn't impaled the other on a washing up brush by that time.
It was very close to a sell out for Christ on a Bike tonight (and might have actually just sold out at the last minute) but maybe I was tired from all my exertions and panics or maybe the audience were sitting back a little, thinking "Come on then, this is our big Friday night out, so you'd better impress us," but it wasn't as enjoyable as the last 2 or 3 have been for me. I had to work harder and wait longer for the laughs and I got a sense that there were pockets of people in the dark who were not enjoying it very much. It's hard to know how much of this is paranoia or worry. Some audiences just don't laugh as much as others and you've just got to get on with it and not let it get to you. I did a reasonably good performance of it, but it didn't feel as satisfying and it was harder to take that Icarus leap towards the sun without the gale of laughter to lift me.
But weekends are always harder and I think there were more non-fans to convert to my way of thinking and as drink had been flowing people did keep on going in and out to go to the loo. I think, in the end most of the doubting Thomases were convinced. But you can't please all the people all the time.
And then it was a rare extra gig at Best of the Fest in the big venue across the vestibule from mine. I don't think I have done this showcase since
I somewhat disgraced myself there four years ago (almost to the day). This time I managed to get through my set without insulting the other acts, to a low key but acceptable response. I then went to the bar and stayed there until 2.30 which is my only really late night of this Fringe. But I was super-tired from all the many exertions of the day and super-sober (33 days and counting, not that I am counting) and everyone else was a bit drunk. I could feel myself swaying a bit and my voice was going and I was no use to anyone, so I headed down the hill to bed. But once again all the tea and water led to me having to get up many times in the night. Being healthy is really bad for you, it seems.
I also lay in bed wondering why the fuck I had agreed to write an As It Occurs To Me while I was here. What was I thinking?
Imagine how absent-minded I will be this time next week. And still my Radio 4 series remains unthought about and unwritten.
