This blog will be a bit brief today. Not because I have nothing to say but because I have my solo show at the Leicester Comedy Festival this afternoon and I haven’t really changed anything to it since last week. Better late than never as they say, and clearly those that say that are people like me who leave things until the last minute. After hacking out today’s blog I am going to sit in a quiet corner and think show thoughts until its good enough to perform to the 3 people that have bought tickets. Yes, its still just 3. I’m hoping this will increase, but if it doesn’t, 3, as they say, is the magic number. It will be magic in the way that they will all want to disappear, however I am doing my show whatever, so they will have to sit through their hour of awkward.
Those people that say the ‘late than never’ phrase are often also those irritating people who say things like ‘ you can lead a horse to water, but it wont make him dance’ and ‘ never put all your eggs in your mouth and make someone punch you in the face. The only one of those sayings I like is ‘you learn something new everyday’. I think this is true and yesterday I learnt that kids are brilliant, but only if you can give them back at the end of the day. After spending two hours in the Science Museum with a 4 year old and a 6 year old I felt as thought I had run a marathon. In a sense I had after running around each exhibit with Angus (the 4 year old) only looking at everything for 30 seconds. Kirsty (the 6 year old) was brilliant and actually took an interest in several things, but for Angus the museum was just a rather large obstacle course in which he could spend ages making me and Layla worried about his whereabouts. To be fair it wasn’t that traumatic, but I was annoyed that I didn’t get to spend more than 2 minutes and anything I wanted to play on and I have vowed to head back there when its not half term so I can get a go on the bubble machine.
While both the children enjoyed the Science Museum, the highlight of the day was that we took them to McDonalds. Its amazing how when young how the lure of a happy meal works. It suggests that you could stuff a bag with turds and put a toy in the top and children would demand it. I had my first McD’s grub in well over a year and I can’t say I enjoyed it. The veggie wrap they now do is akin to sucking the flavour out of a quorn burger (some might say there is no flavour to suck, but I challenge you to eat a McD’s wrap and you’ll be proved wrong) and replacing it with salt and card. Oh and mayonnaise. The worst thing about being there was not the food, but the lack of tables and the large amount of fat tourists not understanding how to queue barging past us to get a table first. I would have thought having two small children would be a queue jumper, much like being disabled, old, pregnant or so mental and covered in blood. Those are normally qualities people understand and allow for speedy table acquiring. Turns out that fat tourists are so desperate for their processed cow that they are willing to push a 4 year old so that they can eat it first.
One thing that always baffles me is why tourists would choose a McD’s to eat it. Especially the American ones, who, I would assume have them all over their home area. Why not choose something unfamiliar and interesting? Or was leaving the country enough of a challenge that they can only survive with home comforts afterwards and a need to stay as fat as possible? When I worked in Timberland as a student, 50% of our customers were American tourists. They would exclaim that while they could get the boots in the States, they wanted to buy a pair to take home and show their families that we sell them here too. I would often tell them that one day I hope to travel round American searching for tea bags and mild disappointment in order to tell my parents about the UK/US similarities but they would never get it.
Hmm this blog has ended up longer than I thought. It must end now, if only so I can go and pretend to write a show and pray that I can just read out from Twitter for an hour and survive.
