By yesterday it'd been five days since I had a gig, and I started to get the jitters, Like Dug keeps telling me "This engine runs on love and admiration" and looking at the size of him, this is true, there can't possibly be anything else in there, except maybe piss and vinegar. I'm sure he's made of the same stuff as old ladies that are indestructable.

Many moons ago, when we both used to work in Putney at the Whittard t-bar, I was manager, he was my assistant, we used to have several old women who used to come in on a daily basis, and they'd get to know us, and then over time they'd tell us stories about the blitz, and what they'd been up to with American GIs, and lost husbands who'd given their lives to save them. These were the stories you want to hear. My Grandad's weren't the kind of stories you wanted to hear, they were good but, someone whose husband has given their life for them to live has an operatic quality and a fantastic story arc, whereas my grandad was still fighting the japanese every time he went to sleep, in fact, whenever my auntie Pat had a new boyfriend the family would play a trick on them. They'd get told to go and wake my grandad for tea.

I don't believe in teh 21 years that I knew him that I ever saw him eat, he seemed to survive off cups of sugary tea which he'd never take the tea bag out of, and his other favourite form of sustainance, bottle after bottle of Newcastle Brown. He'd been Ill since the end of the 1960's when, legend has it he was told that he had six months to live. Throughout the 1980's and 1990's he carried on though looking frailer and frailer, but with an emmense level of physical strength.

So every new beau for my Auntie Pat would come round and gett told to wake my grandad, and everyone would do it, not realising that when the family did it they'd do it wiht a long handled broom as he'd go from asleep, to jumping up and straight into the fight. I miss him now, and one of only three regrets I hold onto is that he never lived long enough to see me happy, he died before I came out to my family, and knowing the kind and gentle old guy that he was I'm sure he'd have been happy for me, and I hope that he'd be proud of me and what I'm doing now.

Yesterday I woke up quite happy and ready to take on the world, then I wrote about the previous day, quit dark and introspective and that was enough to make the day a write off, well that and the Phone call I made to my ex.

I'm off to a gig in Gloucester this evening and I'm looking forward to it, even though I'm trying to figure out a way of altering a joke slightly so as not to offend the locals. Anyway because of this gig meaning I'll have to set off fairly early, plus that with all the weather changes recently my knees and ankles are really giving me trouble. For the last week I've had difficulty getting up and down stairs. So I phoned Sarah to let her know that I wouldn't be able to represent the LGBT society at the university charity sports day.

I only agreed to do it because it was for charity, anyone who knows me knows I abhor sport, I don't mind exercise, I think I was the only one at school who quite liked cross country, probably what caused the messed up knees and ankles I'm thinking. Mind you I think I was the only one in my family who did enjoy cross country.

My dad tells a story about how at school he got into trouble, I think he actually got expelled for this, just before he was supposed to do his O-levels, it didn't matter he'd already got an apprenticeship as a blacksmith. If you can picture it, my dad is exactly like hagrid from the Harry Potter books only older with a big white beard these days, as I say on stage he looks like a cross between Father Christmas and Karl Marx, back in the day he didn't look like this, but like all the men in his family they seemed to be built for not realising their own strength and breaking things.

Anyway, at school he was supposed to be doing cross country running in games, but decided "Fuck that!" and nipped off and hid and smoked some cigarettes, timing it so that he could rejoin the main body of the group just as they were nearing the finishing line. The perfect crime, I used this technique years later with more success than my dad did at highschool when we went off orienteering up at Rivington Pike with school, I wrote down all the symbols from all the checkpoints, meaning that whilst everyone else was running around making fools of themselves myself and Adam Waldron sat behind rivington barn smoking.

See the way that we managed to do it better than my dad, was that we were clever enough to make sure that we got back just as everyone else was. My dad failed this and got back about 3 minutes before the first person did. As a result he was entered into the regional finals, and there's no where to hide on an oval track, whilst they're all there suited up and smelling of wintergreen, my dad in his hobnailed boots nearly passed out after the first lap.

Running wasn't for him, Hiking however was. My favourite of his Hiking stories invilved his best friend growing up a guy called Baz, who was constantly getting into trouble and having stupid ideas, on one occasion he'd bought a motorcycle helmet from a police auction, and claiming that it was the best thing got my dad to hit him across the head whilst he was wearing it with a fire poker. It laid him out. The hiking story was that they were walking through the country side and said "I just need a shit." and went to vault over a stone wall which was 3 feet high on the side they were on, it was a good 12 feet down on the other side though.

So anyway I'd phoned Sarah to tell her I couldn't do it, and that I'd been trying to get in touch with her for days, she wasn't happy, and after the last time I'd angered her, I wasn't keen to make things in the house where I've been trying not to live for the last three weeks any worse and so I agreed to turn up and try.

I was supposed to be on the "Lesbian rugby team", how that's different from the "Women's Rubgby team" I don't know, except that they apparently are afraid to join the LGBT society incase anyone thinks they're gay. I don't get that, short of being nose deep in another girl 24 hours a day I don't know how they could make it more obvious that any of them are gay. But that's their choice.

Anyway on top of that I was supposed to be on the dance team, again, I think I'm the origin of the phrase "Dances like a lesbian" Vince Atta after seeing me bust some moves on the dance floor of the frog in an attempt to impress some girl I was talking to came up to me afterwards and said "Wow, you don't half dance like a straight white boy."

Ok so we weren't going to win the competition, but you know I'm prepared to give it a try.

I say I was supposed to be on these teams, because when I got home, having thought I'd left my mobile phone charger here rather than at my parent's where I've been for the last couple of weeks on and off, and when I got here found out I couldn't find it, only to discover it'd been in the bag in the back of my car all the time. I'm useless even for a comedian. Anyway, when I switched it on there where 20 texts from the last three days, the last one of which said "Sports day is cancelled tomorrow." So here I am stuck in a house I don't want to be in when I could have been away for the week. Arse.

The thing was, after writing yesterdays downbeat blog I was a little downbeat, then talking to Sarah left me crying. So it was back to listening to my positive thinking CD and hoping it didn't lead me into a fight again like last time.

Last night was good though, Britain's Favourite Funnyman(tm) Michael J Dolan was sat in Solomon Grundy's in Withington doing some writing, so after dropping Dug "Space Mountain" Shelmerdine off in town to catch a tram to Bury on his way off to York for a gig, I headed on down there.

We Chatted for a bit about stuff, and I fell in love. There's a bunch of photos on the wall in there with the most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life in them looking fabulous. But we were talking about my show that I've started writing. and ended up on our usual subject about Exes, and the realisation that holding on to feelings for them is stupid. Why wouldn't they be into us? And the realisation that it's because they're idiots. And it's pointless still holding on for an idiot to realise that they're being stupid.

Bar XS was quite quiet last night, but the line up was in the main excellent, Robin Ince turned up to try out some new stuff as he was supporting Ricky Gervais up the road in a 6,000 seater venue. I asked him how different it was playing to a crowd that big, he said that Martin Bigpig had once told him that once you've played to 1,500 anything bigger than that doesn't feel any different, and that Martin was right.

Sean Moran did a set in a run through for this Saturday's Leicester Mercury Comedian of the year competition, Sean's a great act and I wish him all the luck in the world on Sunday.

Kevin Precious and Neil McFarlaine were both on top form and last minute replacement headliner Mick Ferry was, as always nothing short of excellent.

Today feels a lot better, though I'm sat in my exes room writing this whilst she's gone off with her girlfriend to get her haircut, if she comes back with the "Lesbian Hitler" like I've got, stern words will be had. The kids in the alley at the back are having half term fun by skimming roof slates at each other in possibly the most dangerous game of dodgeball I've ever seen and tonight I've got company on my road trip to Gloucester. My friend Lyn's coming with me, she's ace and we thought that it'd be better to hang out on Valentine's day as the two sad singletons that we are, combining bitterness for those in couples. She did say she'd break my legs if I didn't get her flowers, and she used to be in the Army. Well the Irish army, so if I don't there's more chance of her putting out a house fire or emptying my bins than any real threat to my life.*

the sun's shining, I'm getting there slowly, and I've got the feeling that everything's going to be alright.

I love you all with all my heart.

*For the hard of thinking, that's a joke.

Leave a comment • Trackback (0)

Comments:

No Comments for this post yet...

This post has 437 feedbacks awaiting moderation...

Leave a comment:

Name:

Email:

Your email address will not be displayed on this site.

Site/Url:

Your URL will be displayed.

Comment text:

Allowed XHTML tags: <p, ul, ol, li, dl, dt, dd, address, blockquote, ins, del, span, bdo, br, em, strong, dfn, code, samp, kdb, var, cite, abbr, acronym, q, sub, sup, tt, i, b, big, small>

Options:

Auto-BR (Line breaks become <br />)
Remember me (Set cookies for name, email and url)
Allow message form (Allow users to contact you through a message form (your email will NOT be displayed.))

Trackback address for this post:

http://blogs.chortle.co.uk/htsrv/trackback.php/566

Trackbacks:

No Trackbacks for this post yet...

This post has 437 feedbacks awaiting moderation...