I have had two gigs this week, I would have had three but my throat has been giving me grief. Trying to get over the lurgy through not taking any time out is not the best idea.
My first gig of the week was Ruby Tuesdays and we had the best attendance for it in a while, which was nice to see. It was a fun night too, there were a few faces I’d not seen around on the circuit before. I insisted that Langton put me on first, as I was happy to take the hit for the newer acts and I wasn’t sure if my throat would last. My set went down pretty well, but I needed a throat lozenge to get me through it.
Thursday night’s gig took a detour away from comedy and I went to see The Shins. I’d not seen them live in six years, when the world was a very different place. Their first two albums were very much a soundtrack to the last year or two of university, so a lot of memories I thought alcohol had eroded came flooding back.
Then Friday, I was back on the comedy horse for my local open mic gig in Walthamstow. I used to help run it, but due to other commitments, I’d not been there in about eight or nine months. It’s normally in the theatre bar upstairs, but this time it was in a smaller room off the main pub and we had an audience of about seven or eight, including a heckler. One thing that is of note about this gig is that it is only the third gig I have ever done where I haven’t had anything written on my hand. It is a ritual I have to do before I perform and very rarely actually look at it. But I had no idea if I was actually going on, so hadn’t prepared my set. But it all went fine and I enjoyed myself. I took on the heckler and as a symbol of my victory, he bought me a drink at the interval.
I think the new five minutes I’ve been honing for the past six weeks is now safely in the bag for Edinburgh. However, I now have even less idea as to what’s going on for the Fringe, but I’m not giving up on this yet. Even so, it’s thrown my writing routine out of sync. When I thought I was definitely doing it at the start of the year, I was writing like a trooper; but now there’s a high amount of uncertainty thrown into the mix, I’ve taken my foot off the writing pedal. The trooper was driving, obviously.