Oh yes! Slept in until 10.45am today. The old pre jetlag me is back. I hated that manic, running idiot that I had become.
But I could have done with the extra time as I had Christmas shopping and packing to do before heading to the Bloomsbury one last time for my last gig of 2011. I presumed that I'd be the only one at the shops - after all everyone has had ages to prepare for Christmas and only an idiot would leave it to the last minute. Or a genius, realising that everyone else would have been scared to look like idiots and got their shopping done in advance. But either everyone is an idiot or a genius because there were thousands of people at the shops. What's wrong with everybody?
I was exhausted after the first hour and hadn't even bought anything yet, but slowly I managed to find suitable gifts for my family. Or at least gifts. By this stage it doesn't really matter what you get does it? Just anything. Later on I would discuss with some of the comedians at the gig how a better and less wasteful Christmas system would be for us all to go out and buy ourselves something we really wanted - spending whatever we felt we could afford - and then when Christmas Day came along you'd reveal your gift and happily say - "Look what I got!" Everyone would be satisfied, there'd be no faked disappointment and no need to fill your bin with the tat that someone else mistakenly thought you'd like. It might break the British economy and charity shops might go out of business, but this tedious waste of money and time would be over. You'd know exactly what you wanted and just pop out to buy it. And your friends and family would know too. Surely this is the way forward.
But until next year when I will be UK President and this will be instituted my family will have to do with unwanted smelly stuff and booze and books that I'd quite like, but am giving to them, even though they probably won't.
I am looking forward to Christmas this year nonetheless and can cope with getting some gifts that I didn't really want. And the last Bloomsbury gig was really lovely and fun. Well done to Robin Ince for organising this amazing night and bringing together such joyous company. Happy Christmas to them all or to quote Robin, "as we atheists say, "Happy Christmas".
