PUMP ACTION
I woke up this morning fully intending to go for a run and I didn’t, which now means I’m suffering from that horrible affliction of self guilt. No one else is making me feel guilty about it, but my own head is spending every few minutes taunting me about laziness. I have a reasonable excuse – my blood sugars were very low when I woke up and going for a run would have caused a hypoglycemic attack. However my head is like the harshest of drill commanders and has decided this is not an excuse and I keep berating myself for not flipping out in the middle of the park in a pair of shorts and a tshirt. This even more harsh knowing full well that in Finsbury Park no one would notice and I’d be left there for some time. Again, whilst I worry this is some sort of severe self paranoia, I’m pretty sure my conscious has it in for me. This is possibly because I slept in and have been neglecting it. Yes I slept in and didn’t go for a run. I may as well pick up my fat card and eat a cake.
This is all the pump’s fault so far. I mean, I’m loving it, but it will take several days before all my blood sugars adjust to the fact a tiny robot is sorting them all out. My sugars have been up and down more often than a bipolar sufferer in a lift. The nurse said I’ve got to spend these next few days just getting to grips with it then they’ll tweak all the important bits on Thursday. Tee hee, tweak the important bits. I went in at 9.30 yesterday morning and I was out by 12.30, despite that they normally say it takes about 6-7 hours training to learn. This makes me hella cool and intelligent. Just call me genius. Or you could call me ‘man who didn’t really listen, just nodded where appropriate and will no doubt be flipping out in a park in a day’s time’.
Aside from that, I’m constantly flitting between showing the pump off to people and then feeling all a bit conscious about having something attached to me. I’m sure it’ll become like second nature and I’ll be strutting around in nothing but pants and a big red arrow drawn on my stomach to point at the pump. Or not. Actually, I really hope not.
PREVIEW
Preview number 12 last night and the best one yet. Looked at my notes only twice and all the words seem to fall into place like a verbal Tetris. It seemed like it was going to all go wrong at first. The room was boiling hot and made worse by a problem with the drains outside so it smelt like someone was grilling cow pats on a barbie. I’m assuming it was the drains and not someone grilling cow pats on a barbie. Kingston doesn’t seem the sort of area to condone such things. They can’t charge me £6 for parking and then allow someone to cook poo. So it must have been drains. Then the show went on for ages and ages. Jon Richardson opened with his excellent preview. I think Jon is such an excellent stand-up, but I still enjoy watching his early previews purely because its the closest I’ll ever get to seeing a man have a breakdown live on stage. Then in the second section, the first of the ‘special guests’ who shall go unnamed, overran stupid stupid amounts, followed by some ace stuff from Milton Jones and all in all, it was 10.05pm before the second interval happened, after which I had to apologetically tell people they still had another whole hour from me.
Luckily they sat, listened and the whole thing seemed to work. Goddamn I’m excited for Edinburgh now. Its still not finished but its so nice when something you’ve worked on feels like its actually coming together. Fingers crossed they weren’t the exception to the rule and that my next few previews don’t make me want to start back at square one again.
REVIEW
I’m going to regret typing this about 2 minutes after I post it up, but here it is anyway. I’m fully aware at how bitter and petty this looks, but I feel like I should put my side of this up. Before I harp on further like a drama queen, I was slightly miffed at the Chortle review of Lounge on the Farm from Sunday. Here it is:
CHORTLE REVIEW OF LOUNGE ON THE FARM
Obviously, I’m not opposed to all of it. It’s pretty correct on saying nice things about loads of the acts that were on, Keith and Carl in particular having top sets. Its obviously just the paragraph about me. Now to put this all into context, it was day two of the festival and several people had seen me in that tent the night before when I had done my solid 20 minute set which was much fun. So I thought, for the people, I’d do a different 20, which perhaps in the context of a festival, would not be as strong. I had been sitting in the sun for some time and assessed that the crowd were quite laid back so thought I’d start things pretty chilled. Bad move as they didn’t respond too well straight away. But then the mic broke with an ominous like robot noise and so I upped the energy to keep things going and suddenly the crowd were with me which was great. I asked them if they wanted the same stuff as yesterday or things that may not go down as well and they cheered for the latter, which is omitted from the review. I had a pretty fun set and topped it off with some more solid stuff and left feeling fairly happy about it all.
So really, reading back what I’ve written, its not that different to the review. I think I’m just upset by the ‘solid if unspectacular’ line. Bastard. Sorry I’ll stop sucking lemons now, and calm down. Must not care as much or Edinburgh will be brutal. I blame the pump for this sort of behaviour. I wonder how long I can get away with that excuse for anything slightly untoward? I’m reckoning on at least three weeks.
