I have to go to DFS in a minute and so might take ages over this blog just to delay inevitable arguments about sofas. There is something so mind-numbingly dull about selecting home furnishings that attacks my brain and makes me miserable about doing it. Worse still, we have to go to the DFS in Brent Cross, which is the most soulless shopping centre on the planet (although I have yet to go to Westfield which I hear is worse). I am not fan of shopping centre’s that don’t have windows into the outside world aiming to convince you that you are wandering around Planet Shop, where the ecosystem is based on morons visiting Clinton Cards and throwing KFC at each other in the Food Hall. I’m not sure we need a new sofa. Yes ours is covered in cat prints, looks grey and grubby and is rather worn, but it also has my arse shape perfectly in it for seating comfort purposes which I like. It will take a while to do that to a new sofa. We’ll have to get to know each other first and there will be those awkward first moments where I am not sure where to sit and have to shuffle around making us both feel odd and on edge. Its not that dissimilar to a first date that gets too gropey too soon. Still perhaps it will be love at first sight and we’ll just fit together perfectly and eating crisps and watching The Wire will become a whole new level of comfort. We will have to see.
Sofa So Good
The University of East Anglia is a grim looking concrete prison like base that is currently under going massive building works that help it look reasonably like a war zone. This was not helped by the random few squaddies walking around when myself and the beardy Mr Tom Craine arrived. What appeared to be a grim indication of a bad gig was brightened up by being able to see my cousin who is in her final year at the uni. Its lovely when a gig works out so that you can visit people you want to see but rarely get the chance. I would quite like to send family and friends to live all over the UK so that I could always have someone to look forward to seeing at each venue. This would be bad for two reasons though. One being that some people I know would probably have to live in some not nice places and would also have to revolve their entire lives and work around my gigging schedule. Also I suppose that I would run out of people I actually like fairly quickly and no doubt would get to Derby and have to stay with that long lost relative who insists on taking me through all their holiday slides till my eyes bleed.
The gig itself looked like it was going to be horribly empty and painful, and Tom and I had already decided that there was no fun to be had. Tom started to fall asleep on the sofa and I looked around for someone, anyone, who could say if there was a minimum audience amount. Then, just 5 minutes before we were meant to start, the room filled up with eager, lovely students who very much wanted to see a great night of comedy. I often forget that if people live 3 minutes away from a show, they will not leave their estate agent’s lies of a room (spacious dorm room, with bathroom attached. Reality: If you take a dump your 3 square inches of a room will smell for four days) until they really have to. The only problem now was that we both felt lethargic and as though sleep would be a preferred option to gigging. Luckily one orange juice later (the powers of diabetes!) and I had a lot of fun bantering with the crowd and manage to come up with some new material about MRI machines, which unfortunately will probably never come up again. Or if it does it will probably inappropriate next time. The man I was speaking to designed MRI machines. I can’t imagine the next person I speak to that’s had an MRI experience will be on the technical side. After me, Tom then stormed it too and even got away with trying some new stuff which was all ace.
Then the perfect thing happened, which was that the very nice Duncan Oakley said he would close the gig for us and we were able to get on the road early and head home. Well we would’ve done if either of us had been able to work out how to escape the car park. I drove around the vast airfield like area looking for the payment machines for nearly 20 minutes and there were provisional plans made incase we were grounded in Norwich forever. There was also the possibility of driving through the barriers movie style, but we are just about to renew the insurance so I was favouring the ‘never leaving’ option to having to make a claim. Luckily we eventually made it, and drove home listening, again, to the highlights of the Sean Lock album.
Just goes to show you can never just a gig by its cover (thats my version of it anyway). However we are now about to judge a sofa by its cover and not how it will feel in 6 months after due sitting has taken place. I could be in for the most uncomfortable next few years of my life if we get this wrong. Wish me luck.
