Since I last wrote, I have been on a road trip up to Scotland and north-east England. I had three gigs booked for Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle and thought I’d make a semi-holiday out of it as I now have a car and it would break the drive up a bit.
As the Lake District was en route, i made sense to spend a couple of nights there. For all the locations I was going to, a quaint little town in a car park near the Beatrix Potter museum wasn’t where I was expecting to have anything stolen from my car.
When I returned to it in the morning, I discovered that someone had stolen the glass from one of my wing-mirrors. I never had problems with anyone wanting to take anything from my 16 year old, battered Nissan Micra. It was annoying, but could have been worse. I got a cheap replacement as a temporary repair, which I’ll probably have for the next five years.
If only I could use some Ant-Man technology to make my car tiny to fit on my key-ring, then it would save a lot of hassle about parking and people stealing things. But then people would be able to run off numerous carrying cars at once, so it wouldn’t be without its problems.
I also ate some really nice meals, which I didn’t feel the need to take pictures of and post online. The exception to this was a vegetable and stilton crumble that had a layer of water in the middle. Consequently, there were repercussions that I also didn’t feel the need to take pictures of and post online. This was the same day that my wing-mirror was stolen, so it wasn’t one of my favourite days ever.
The gigs were with the Stand venues and I’d wanted to do all three in a week for a long time, but geography and holiday amounts set aside for the Fringe never allowed this.
Edinburgh was first. When I last did it in 2014, it was the stuff of comedy dreams. This time, it was decent, but not as good as when I last did it. On the plus side, I was staying in someone’s house and not in a cheap hostel with nine very loud Brazilian men.
The Glasgow gig was the best of the trilogy. The crowd were amazing and although a couple of my line lines sank without a trace, this was made up for by bigger laughs for other stuff and crowd interaction. What made this gig even more of a thrill was that it was the very same stage where Stewart Lee filmed a couple of DVDs, including his first one with the Ang Lee routine.
As with most trilogies, the third never quite tops the second and the Newcastle gig was the hardest work. The crowd were great for the first section, but by the time I got on stage following what can only be described as an art experiment that went wrong, I could tell they’d had enough and were dire in need of an interval. By this point, the energy in the room was pretty flat. Even so, I still managed to get them some decent laughs out of them and people came up to me said some nice things to me afterwards, but I would have preferred performing in easier circumstances. Never mind, I will return and do better.
In other news, I’ve finally figured out a way I can write on my laptop and transfer it to my phone for upload. I am still without an internet connection in my flat as I don’t want to pay £20 a month for something I’m only going to use on the few evenings and weekends when I’m actually around. So this should mean I’ll be able to write more regularly.