Last night was a lot of fun. I freshened up at the hotel and went out for the drinks I've been needing all week. Some fun and some friends was definitely what the doctor would have ordered. After drinks we were looking for a taxi when someone noticed a car rolling past with no driver in it. So, I ran after it and caught it and pushed it back up the hill. Don't worry. I'm not saying I'm a hero. The car was a corsa and it was moving on a slight incline at less than walking pace. Having stopped it, I had a new problem. What do you do with a car that will roll away if you take your leg away? We were calling the police when its owner appeared. He failed to grasp that we'd just saved his car from crashing and that he'd better learn to use the handbrake. Always one to attempt to optimise the moment, I asked him where he was going. A free lift, even from a driver who doesn't know how to stop his car rolling away, would have been better than paying for a taxi. It would had some karma thing in there too. He failed to get it. I think we were best leaving him to it. I waited until he was behind the controls before letting go. That was a silly moment in my life. But fun. I think I would have aborted my car catching had it looked like I was actually getting myself run over. As it happened, I was more than a match for a wee car on a slight incline. Power rangers!

This morning I slept in. Yes! I needed the sleep. I still feel a bit groggy, but last week is behind me. Various, well two, workmen have been in touch and my house is definitely moving forwards apace at the moment. I'm pleased and slightly scared. The more work they do, the more I spend. The slower it is done, though, the more it will cost, so I think it has to be done now and fast. I have no time for rest next week. Come the end of Easter monday I will either feel a winner or a stressed out loser. We'll see. At least I'll be able to shower when I get home: mint!

When I finished on the phone with my roofer I headed into Edinburgh via Boots where I bought hand cream and nail clippers. I'm now in a Starbucks on the outside of a coffee and covered in cream. Hand cream. I'm pleased to be back in Edinburgh. I have a long history with this city. This Starbucks is where I have sat before many gigs and during many Edinburgh Festivals. In fact a few feet away is where I remember planning the musical accompaniment to our hilarious dance routine in The Musical!. I've just checked and they still haven't put up a blue plaque. Just kidding. Of course they have.

I find myself referring to The Musical! a lot more than normal at the moment. I'm not sure if it is a response to planning for Fringe 2007 or whether It's a form of regression. Am I rolling my personality back to before my last relationship began? I don't know.

I do know that I'm a 33 year old overweight man with dry hands sitting texting a blog entry in Starbucks while Edinburgh is out there waiting to be walked in. Must go.

I thought I would have a stab at writing something about my half day off work. I took the half day off to better enable me to head to Edinburgh. I got to King's Cross around 2pm after a 12.30 taxi ride from the office. The hour available before my train allowed me to ring up a friend to talk about Glastonbury tickets (incidentally, the phone wanted to write glastonatsy, which I assume is the facist antidote to the glastonhippy). I also went to the post office and bought my road tax.

Then there was a train to Newcastle on which I watched a Jimmy Carr dvd. Then a wander to the cash point in Newcastle and a trip to starbucks. Now I'm back on a train. It's 7 and I'll be in Edinburgh in 80 minutes or so.

Using this phone to write a blog entry is not as much fun as I'd have hoped, so I'll stop. I have higher hopes for Edinburgh itself. I may even shower when I get to my hotel. I certainly need to poo.

Another bit of creative writing from me. I thought I'd let the story and situation reveal itself.

Labels: Friday200

I was listening to the radio this morning on the way to work. There's no surprise there, then. I heard the "thought for the day" person talking about Easter. To my mind he was quoting not from the Bible, but from the gospel according to Jesus Christ Superstar. I suspect that Tim Rice may have used some sort of quotations-from-the-Bible in his libretto. In fact, I think it's safe to say that he did. I really doubt that the Reverend Roger Royle has been bluffing all these years and, in fact, getting his knowledge of religion from the world of musical theatre.

I don't know. It's possible.

It's been a Jesus-ey couple of days, then. I read Richard Herring's "Christ On A Bike" script yesterday. In his script, Jesus-esque quotes can be derived from the theme song back-catalogue of Tony Hatch (that's a very funny joke in context and I am impressed that anyone would bother to write such a thing).

Here's a really sad view on my OCD-like ways. I have 3 versions of Jesus Christ Superstar in my mp3 collection (which both sits attached to my work computer and travels around with me on my mp3 player - two copies of it in total). I also own another version on CD somewhere. I could, theoretically, listen to Act 1 with one cast and then act 2 with another. Except I can't. I had that idea just now. Act 1 just finished playing and I thought - "Shall I go from the Steve Balsamo/Alice Cooper 1996 cast to the original cast Album with Murray Head?" and then I thought "No! I must not switch between cast albums - it would leave the 1996 album partially listened to, and put the other album out of context, starting halfway through".

It's the same show. I don't know why I'm so pernickety.

Or why I have so many recordings.

Well, I do. They're all different and interesting in their own ways.

Easter isn't just about chocolate, then. It's about Andrew Lloyd-Webber.

I'm the sort of person that gets passionate about stuff - pretty much instantly. As soon as I know what is "right", then I can switch on the full force of my enthusiasm and I'm off. Of course, not every subject is a good source for passion, but when I'm in the zone, it can be almost overbearing when I give myself the free rein to unleash my enthusiasm (there are probably too many metaphors in this sentence).

Last night, in an epsiode of Subway, by which I mean I was in a Subway shop, having yet another placebo-healthy-sandwich, I had an epiphany. It was an obvious one, but it was so obvious that it had clearly eluded all concerned.

The door of the subway shop opens inwards. The only thing you can grab to pull it is a yale-style lock. This lock is not a latch, but in fact a dead bolt. You turn the lever through 180 degrees and the blot slides across. You turn it back and it unlocks. Simple. When unlocked, the lever can be used as a mini handle and the door just pops open. Of course people look at a yale and try to turn it, which would lock the door, so there's a neat 2" square sign above the yale which reads "To open door, just pull" or some such. I should have taken a photo.

Edit: I took photos
 

Anyway, I first found the door a tiny bit confusing, for like 3 seconds, then I learned to pull it. I can use a door. When I arrived at the shop last night, though, the door was pushed to, but the yale bolt was across, stopping the door from closing properly. "Oh, someone didn't know what they were doing with the door", I thought, "Perhaps they should learn, or read the sign". I regret thinking that.

I bought my sandwich, sat down, and a child came into the shop, bought a drink, went to the door to leave and started playing with the yale lock. I watched him, amused, as he locked us all in, unlocked us in, eventually looked at the sign, pulled, eventually got the door open, and then looked back, apologetically, as though it was not his fault, and left, feeling embarrassed.

Then it hit me.

It wasn't his fault. In fact, it's not anyone's fault that they don't know how to use that door. The door is to blame. I'm not being sarcastic. This door is to blame. There's a good reason we KNOW the door is to blame. It's the little laminated sign above the lock, the one means of opening the door (and also the means of rendering it unopenable and locked).

Now, I've harped on about the "Patronising Laminated Sign" before, but this 2" square of laminated paper is not a patronising sign. It's something else. This is the "Absolving Laminated Sign". The sign has been put in as a disclaimer. It really says "The responsibility for being unable to open the door is yours now". Why should a door, one of the simplest forms of machinery, require a sign to explain how to use it? There's no good reason that a door wouldn't be bloody obvious.

There is a reason in this case. The yale lock. The only means of opening the door is a small box with a lever on it. The lever "affords" turning. You turn the lever and the door is locked. In fact, the obvious thing to do with a lever is turn it, in the hope that it will release the door. The lock in this case is not the sort which disengages when you turn the lever in the unlocking direction - it has a roller-style end, which means it can be pulled open, even when slightly engaged in the frame. So turning the lever when the door is unlocked won't unlock it any more. It is totally non-obvious to grab a lever and just pull it.

The door needs a big fixed handle. The big fixed handle is what people instinctively would grab for and, since it only affords one action, pull towards them. All the people stumbling at the door can be fixed by taking off the sign and adding a handle. Whoever, fitted the door probably thought a handle was unnecessary, since the door will open from the inside by pulling anything that's fixed, like the yale lock. This "optimisation" has removed the need for a handle, but added a confusing means of using a door - i.e. pulling something that says "twist me".

So, I told the staff member who was serving. He understood, but I don't think he saw it as the revolution. He mentioned the suggestion box. I didn't see him joining my campaign. So I wrote a suggestion card out. I posted it in the box. Then I said to the other member of staff that I bet he'd seen loads of people struggling with the door. I explained about design, affordances and why the door's design is broken. It's really obvious anyway that you put a handle on a door, but somehow it eluded the person who wrote the sign. Writing a sign is not a solution. I told him that I would pay for the handle if it didn't prove to solve the problem.

Somehow I doubt a handle will appear.

If it does, then I will claim it as a victory.

Definitely the best site to recommend at the moment. Read it and read it often - Overheard In New York.

Last night I got into a weird spot, I got into a conversation where I adopted the pattern of missing the last word off each sentence as it was obvious.

Me: Ah, you're selling the... (programmes)
Her: Yes, do you want to buy one?
Me: Yes, hang on, I just wait until the... er... (people have got out of my way)
Her: Sorry about that. So do you want to buy one?
Me: How much do you want me to...?
Her: (Baulking) Er... well... you know, it's up to you, really.
Me: (realising how creepy the above line went) Sorry, I'll finish the sentence. How much do you want me to PAY?
Her: (relief) Three pounds.

Oh, the misunderstandings...

Apparently the shower is connected to the pipes. But are the pipes connected to the water? There is a question. As of last information, the answer is no. Maybe one day. Maybe today. Maybe soon and for the rest of your life.

I feel tired and slightly emotional. What I need is a long day on a train with my laptop. That is the aim. My laptop, some amusing DVDs and the movement of the train. Hopefully there'll even be a power socket, so things don't peter out after 2 hours.

I really want to write a whole new comedy script, full of ideas, that will excite me to perform. I have had such mixed experiences with this in the past. When I write new stand-up material it has a high failure rate. When I wrote an entire play, it seemed to work quite well.

I think it's about the contrivance of the subject matter.

I don't know.

I'm trying to do too much. This is apparent from my "shopping list" of tasks for Easter Weekend. It feels like a plan that is guaranteed to be doomed to failure... but maybe that's just the pessimisim of exhaustion talking. We'll see. Or change things before it's too late.

Tonight is relief night. I shall spend some of it showering (about 10 minutes). I doubt I'll be showering at home. Perhaps I will. Perhaps there'll be a surprise waiting. I don't know.

I have to do some ironing and pack for my Edinburgh trip. I want an early night.

No DIY tonight, even though I'd really like to do some painting.

In the sense that I'd like to do some painting, but can't muster the enthusiasm or energy to do it.

My bottom hurts.

Muscular, not soreness.

I read Richard Herring's blog most of the time. Periodically I lose touch with it for a while, but I always come back for more. He's been a favourite comedian of mine for so long, it's nice to keep abreast of his work and life and warblings.

Today he posted about the posters for his Edinburgh show (2007) and showed a couple of posters from his previous shows. I had seen one of them, but the other one I missed. I think it was one which I particularly wanted to see, but somehow managed to miss. In fact, I know why. I was in a relationship and I didn't have the means of convincing my girlfriend (fiancee, in fact) to come with to Edinburgh or let me go alone. Perhaps I didn't even dare think of the latter. Such a fool was I.

Anyway, the scripts are on his site and I read "Christ On A Bike" and imagined it in his voice. Richard Herring has a fairly distinctive comic voice and I could easily imagine him delivering the material. It made me chuckle. If you like Herring, then read it yourself.

Going to see a favourite musical can be an enthralling experience, or it can be soul-destroying. To see something you love butchered would be bad.

Added to the risk of not enjoying the show last night for its interpretation, was the fact that I was ill, tired and feeling slightly stressed, having calculated the risk of becoming quite poor in the next 6 months - it's a good risk to calculate... until the harsh reality of it hits you.

Anyway, from the first entry into the theatre, the show looked like it would deliver. The set was open to the audience and it looked like Skid Row on there, even though it was a new set. This is the secret to a new production - make it fresh, but give it the character of the original.

When the show got going, it was clear that this was going to be a great production. The three chorus girls, who appear throughout the show like the chorus of a Greek tragedy (I read that somewhere and agreed with it), were very very funny in the opening song. The opening song isn't meant to be funny - it's not meant to be serious. It's just witty. It was laugh out loud funny.

When Sheridan Smith took to the stage as Audrey, I had my doubts. Would she be Ellen Greene? Would she be simpering, rather than squeaky, like the Broadway version? Would she be ridiculous? Or would she be believable AND ridiculous? She was absolutely stunning. We both laughed at her and allowed ourselves to love her and feel for her. Although perhaps you'd have to work hard to beat Ellen Greene's definitive Audrey, I think Sheridan Smith was something very very special.

One of the songs I always found quite touching was "Somewhere That's Green" - in this version, it's played funny until the most wistful verse, then it's wistful in spades. A still hits the room, the audience suddenly understand why Audrey is that most tragic of characters. It's beautiful.

Later in the show, when Seymour and Audrey get together, in the song "Suddenly Seymour", the full pomp of the number is played for laughs, which is probably for the best, since it's a feel good song which does get ridiculous in its writing. You have Sheridan Smith belting her heart out on one side of the stage, sassier than a girl from Chicago, and Seymour on the other doing pratfalls. It bloody works.

Mike McShane as the plant - initially I wondered whether a white man could do the plant. He has such a splendid vocal range that my fears were allayed.

Alistair MacGowan as the dentist (and the cast of "The Meek Shall Inherit") was, for the main, doing an impression of Steve Martin doing the role. But he knows how to perform comedy, and was so physical and so well timed in his execution, that he still made the part his own (even if he was, perhaps doing an impersonation of the dentist).

The whole thing was a delight.

The plant was distinctive and even had some funny movements. Perhaps the plant can steal the show, though this one didn't. It held its own in a strong cast in a strong production.

The only slight disappointment came from the musical direction. On the one hand, they appear to have learned from some of the changes that were added to the Broadway production, but only picked and chosen those which were less cheesy. Not every song deserves the sledgehammer ending that Broadway added. However, on the down side, the musical ensemble was a little thin in numbers. As a result, they missed the opportunity for a fatter sound where it may have contributed well to the mood. Having said that, this musical was written for small-scale productions and perhaps too big a band would have overfaced what was, intentionally, a more intimate version of the show.

I left the theatre in awe and delight.

DJ Bobo's "Vampires Are Alive" entry for the Eurovision Song Contest has these lyrics:



These are slightly more ridiculous than my own entries which include verses like:



and



Ah - lovely Eurovision - it brings out the shit songwriting.

All of the following things are currently on my mind. Here's a way of getting them off my mind. I'll write about them.

Reply To All - Suppression
At work, sometimes, emails come round to everyone asking us all to do something. Invariably, some tosser hits reply-to-all when they reply back to say that it's not working for them. So we all have to see their emails. In the past I've sent a reply-to-all to their reply-to-all which makes a joke of this. Doing this once is funny. It would have to be really funny to justify doing it again. I still want to make a fool of the people who can't distinguish between reply and reply-to-all...

Then, today, someone replied-to-all asking people not to reply-to-all. I so wanted to reply back... I didn't. It bothered me either way.

Edinburgh - Resigned To Committee
I'm involved with a second group taking a show to Edinburgh this year. Yesterday around 100 emails flew around - everyone replying to all, thrashing out the plan. It's not the plan I thought people were aiming for. There are 5 groups (a total of 11 or 12 individuals) to coordinate and a lot of incomplete and second-hand information. It was simpler when it was all theoretical. Hopefully they'll meet and sort it out on Thursday. My plans for Edinburgh are slightly contingent on theirs.

I'll do what I can to help them once they've decided what they're doing. If they were doing what I advised, I would feel less tense about it. As it is, I think they're going to have to work hard to make it work.

Free Parking
I'm due at the railway station in a few minutes. The other day (Monday) I parked there and someone offered me their all-day parking ticket. I said that I felt I ought to buy my own. Now, with very little in the way of change in my pocket, I almost regret not taking their ticket... maybe I'd have change left for the machine now? Or maybe not. I have a homeless-habit. I give money to people who ask me for it in railway stations. Does that make me an addict?

Little Shop
Heading to London tonight to see what is probably my favourite musical - Little Shop of Horrors. It's a cracker. I have also spent an amount of time today thinking about another favourite - My Fair Lady. It's hard to say why I think one might be better than the other. So maybe I don't.

Tiling Stress
Last night's tiling was good in terms of cutting and nearly completing. The fact that I didn't complete, owing to a lack of adhesive, is a stress. However, I can get the last six tiles down tonight, probably, and then it's all done. The bathroom guy starts again tomorrow. Sadly, I think one of my tiles is particularly off level, which may give him trouble, fitting the toilet on top of the tiles. I hope he has some clever system for dealing with toilets which aren't quite on a level surface.

That's the problem with DIY jobs. I'm too aware of all their flaws. Aaagh.

Knees
Last night's tiling was also stressfull on the knees. I lost skin. They still ache. I may have to find something soft to kneel on tonight - perhaps my brain!

Thursday Pressure Relief Day
I deliberately left Thursday free to allow me to do things which hadn't quite finished in time. So far, the list for Thursday includes

• Grouting
• Painting
• Ironing

I reckon the painting won't happen. That's going to make next week busy.

Going Away For The Weekend
Friday is a half day. Then I go to London and get a train to Newcastle, wait a few minutes in Newcastle and then go to Edinburgh. There's a hotel booked. It should be a good weekend. I think. Assuming I don't spend the entire time worrying about undone DIY jobs and wearing unironed clothes!

Next Week Decorating
I'm supposed to know how to put wallpaper up in time to go and do it next weekend in Newcastle. So I need to finish my gloss painting in the room in which I was going to paper. Then I can put the paper up.

Oh.. but I have 2 gigs... so the 2nd and 3rd are my only days for this. Though the gig on the 4th is only 15 miles from home. I may be able to squeeze some DIY in. Aaagh. Pressures.

House Budget
I did some sums. They weren't good. The good news is that there's a lot getting sorted at the moment - especially the roof. This is, of course, all going to cost money. At the current projections, it will get tight. More stress then.

I need a back massage. Now!

Newcastle Decorating - Easter Weekend
I have a frankly ridiculous plan for the Easter weekend and redecoration in Newcastle. The good bit of the plan involves beer and teamwork. The rest may go desperately wrong!

We'll see.

If Edinburgh relaxes me, then all will work!

I often look at the searches that lead people to my site and see what lead them to choose to click through the Google results to get to me. In the case of the search phrase "Karibe Dangogo", there was only hit - this.

Skip the letter and read my response. As a quick joke, it's funny. If you give it a build up, it WILL disappoint.

I remember the satisfaction of tiling a small area of porch in my Newcastle house. I didn't remember, until last night, how much stress it can be. Last night I really worked - except for the hour or so when I went out for something to eat.

Here's a pictorial account of the day.

5pm
The bathroom floor looks like this:



I do a general hoover up, then a sweep up and some more hoover up. Then I cut the matting to fit the space. I cut it as three "tiles". I also cut some cardboard templates for the notching required for the pipes. Then I mixed some tile adhesive - it barely covered an 1/8th of the floor area. It sets in 30 minutes. I'm panicking, so I went and mixed a load more. I put down the first mat, then the second. Mixed even more adhesive (this was going to be an issue) and then the third bit of mat went down.

7.17pm
The floor looks like this:



I go out for something to eat, then I come home, do some paperwork and start planning the tiling. I even play with my tile cutters to see how well they'll work for the job. I wasted one tile this way.

9.17pm
The first lot of adhesive has set and it's now safer to spend time on the floor. I lay all the tiles out with spacers, in the planned configuration, and start to cut.

11.40pm
Now I'm tired, and it's time to lay the tiles.

I lay and lay. Working at a pace. I run out of tile adhesive, so the last six tiles (in the doorway) won't get stuck down tonight.

1am-ish
I'm pretty much done. I start to wash my bucket and tools - they'll set hard otherwise. The floor is now like this:



By the time I've gone out for a shower and returned to bed, it's nearly 3am.

Last night's sketch show did exactly what I imagined it would do. My gig radar was saying that it would be a quiet one and my technical planning skills were telling me that I'd got my CD right and that I would have fun running the show.

I did have fun running the show from the box. I also got to participate in one of the sketches. The idea of the sketch was that the performers start doing something that's really poor and the sound man, incensed by this, starts heckling. The idea was to make the heckling sound like you could hear into the sound box, but not like it was an announcement over the microphone. So, I brought in and connected up something that was more like a room mic. Soundwise I took out some of the bass that make a vocal mic sound rich, and I made something which should have felt more like an intercom voice.

This was really useful as it was, essentially a handsfree microphone I could also use to enable me to talk down to the stage level while running through all the cues prior to the show.

I reckon we put our enthusiasm into the craftsmanship of the things that we're given to do. So, my contribution was to wire in a special microphone and set it to be a bit tinny.

The show was a bit juddery and I even managed to both screw up a sound effect - accidentally playing it before a sketch started - and then escape blame for the mess up, as the cast hadn't even gotten onto stage when I brought the lights up. So I had to rescue the empty stage by taking the lights down, playing some music, waiting for them to arrive and then re-starting the sketch... it was all just the sort of thing which happens in live theatre. One should expect that sort of thing. I'm surprised we haven't had it sooner.

Anyway, it was tough work for everyone, but I think the audience enjoyed it. Some of the sketches went really smoothly and some of them had me chuckling away in the box, enraptured.

I like being involved in an off-stage capacity.

That's twice today that I've found myself the victim of a comic impulse. I ordered lunch today with a fake scottish accent. By that I mean that I adopted a scottish accent to order lunch, rather than asking them to provide me with pseudo-scots-speaking-food. There came a point where the joke seemed to be wearing thin, but I ploughed through it and never really tried too hard to be a stereotypical scot, just a slightly Glaswegian speaking normal person - with a few scots words thrown in. It was fun. The fact that they knew I didn't speak like that added to the difficulty of the accent and the ridiculousness of my resolve to pull it off. I don't know why I did it. I enjoyed it, though.

It would probably be better to adopt fake accents in shops where people don't know me. Then it's more of an acting challenge.

Second stupidity of the day was the email I just sent asking the Black Cat Comedy Club if they would book me. I made a typo in the start line and called them Black Bat. Then I decided to just go for it and replace all the occurrences of the letter "c" with "b". This is an old Monty Python sketch and it was funny for them. I did well with it, pointing out that I appeared to be making that joke. Then I directed them to www.ashleyfrieze.bo.uk and it all got a bit mental. They'll probably not appreciate my "whacky" appeal for a gig, but at least I had fun doing it. Trying to be funny while asking for gigs is a real taboo. Still, I couldn't help it... so at least I had some comic fun from them, even if it wasn't on their stage.

Don't ask me why I'm in such a playfully subversive mood. I don't know. Probably stress.

Well well well. Here we are again. I have looked back at my blog for any descriptions of the last time I wielded the absolute power of a tiling trowel, but there's nothing obvious in there. The pressure is on now, though. I have to remember how to tile a floor and it all has to be done before I next do any sleeping. How did it get so urgent?

Well, I couldn't tile the floor before the radiator was in. I couldn't get the radiator put in until the wall was plastered. I didn't imagine that the bathroom would take so long and I kind of assumed that the floor would be boarded, leaving a piece of board out, for access to the radiator pipes, with everything else fitted and just the floor remaining to be tiled. The builder had other ideas.

Quite reasonably, he suggested not boarding over the floorboards, but using a flexible matting - Ditrimat. He also suggested fitting the toilet and skirting board on top of the tiles. This means that the radiator goes on midway through the bathroom works and then the tiles have to go down before the toilet.

I got a note this morning (I'd missed it last night) which basically said this. "I've stopped work until the tiles are down. Please leave me a big cheque and call me when you're tiled."

I knew that I'd be tiling today, but I didn't realise that I'd also be losing a day of the builder for not having tiled last night (which I couldn't do because the radiator only just went on this morning). So, not only was I suspecting that I was the bottleneck AND on the critical path, I've definitely been proved as a roadblock in the process.

You'd think that he could have put the sink in, and maybe the shower, and maybe the door for the shower, but no. Downing of tools - in the sense of stopping work, rather than swallowing a pint of them.

So, the pressure's on. I picked up four boxes of tiles this morning. The returns policy is excellent. They will take back any unused tiles. Individually. Brilliant! So, if I make efficient cuts and don't screw up too much, then this should go quite well.

The plan for tonight is quite scary. I have to do the following in order:

• Screw down the remaining floorboards
• Sweep out the floor to remove all detritus
• Cut the matting to fit the floor
• Mix some rapid-set tile-adhesive (once mixed I've 30 minutes to...)
• Lay the matting on the adhesive
• Wait 2 hours for that to set
• Lay out the tiles without adhesive
• Do all the cutting and notching of the tiles
• Mix some more adhesive
• Put tiles down as quickly as possible
• Remember to work from the furthest point inside the room, outwards
• Sleep

I'll probably not do the grouting until Thursday!

Hopefully tomorrow morning I'll be writing of my immense success and the joys of my wet-wheel tile cutter.

As a comedian, one of the tricks is to shorten the distance between your brain and your mouth - allow the thoughts to just come out, in time, rather than pontificate over whether to say something. So, you indulge the voice in your head which says "say this, it would be really funny" and you try to be creative and proactive in your approach to communication.

Sounds good?

Well, it's not. It's just the artificial dropping of a social boundary that usually stops us from getting into trouble as we should consider whether what we're about to do is really altogether wise. However, I'm, apparently, developing immunity to this circumspection and so I find myself acting out my thoughts. Again, on the stand-up stage, it usually gets the right reaction. In real life, it can go wrong. I think I've been lucky recently. The following scenarios could have ended worse, but my instincts and luck got me the reaction I wanted:

On A Train
I was sitting on a train, bound for London. It was last Monday. I was due at a show in Camden. I noticed some school children mucking about. It was annoying. I think that this behaviour needs challenging because children benefit from boundaries. People these days are frightened to be responsible adults around children - frightened because children can be little bastards, and also because they're frightened to look like they have too much interest in children.

I glared at the child who was swinging on the hand rail and kicking the toilet door. I said "Don't break the train". He looked back at me and protested, but actually he stopped being so monkey-like. Result.

On The Street
The following day I was walking round Newcastle's pedestrian district. A twat in a four-wheel drive, using a mobile phone, drove through these bit of paved street. He was allowed to drive through, slowly, but he was clearly an irresponsible wanker, using both his mobile phone and a big gas-guzzler of a car. Given that there's new legislation on mobile phone use, and given that I take this sort of thing seriously, I decided in an instant to have a go. As he went past, I snapped my fingers. He looked at me, I mimed a mobile phone, he started swearing at me and drove off. Result! I'd pissed off a wanker in an expensive car who thinks he's above the law. Har de fucking har.

Leaving A Gig
Last night, having had a middling reception at the gig, so uncertain of whether I could really use my comedian-post-gig-has-carte-blanche-to-say-anything-and-it'll-be-funny rights, I walked past various people, saying goodbye. Around the door, there was a group of people either side of the corridor. I pondered whether, if I jumped, they would instinctively put their arms out as a bridge to catch me. So, I ran at them and declared "Stage dive". I jumped, but landed on my feet and they laughed.

Phew.

That could have been a lot more twattish than it seemed to me at the time that it was.

I don't know what they said when I'd left ear shot.

"Twat" probably.

Still, at least I have the illusion that I've breezed through the last week without causing any real harm.

This weekend was about many things. It was largely coloured by my cold, which was deeply unpleasant, but I managed to achieve a lot, considering.

Friday Night
I raced away from the office and headed to a tile shop, where I spend more than perhaps necessary, on some lovely floor tiles for my new bathroom. I also bought the various accompaniments, like tile underlay matting, adhesive, spacers and grout.

Then to B&Q where I bought a water-lubricated tile cutting machine and some other handy bits and pieces.

Then back to the house where I painted the whole of the bathroom with a 50% water and emulsion paint mix. I had bought some kitchen worktop wood from B&Q which I lay in the shower cubicle, allowing me to put a step ladder in the shower without knackering the shower tray. Neat. I painted every paintable surface, and then, exhausted, sat in bed and watched some of Look Around You before giggling myself to sleep.

Saturday
I awoke at the usual wake up time for work. I went to get breakfast at Subway - never had that before. I resisted the urge to go 12" on my sandwich and put some energy in my system.

Back at home. I then went round the bathroom with bathroom paint, with the radio playing downstairs. Pure brilliant white is aptly named.

Already exhausted from the bathroom, and at about 1pm, I headed downstairs to wash my bathroom painting stuff. Then I painted the ceiling and cornice in the downstairs hall. That was even more exhausting.

I washed up the painting stuff again. Then I headed to Tesco.

By this stage I felt like a limp rag. I was hot, thirsty, out of energy and felt unable even to drive. At Tesco, I bought a late lunch, plenty to drink (non-alcoholic), cold remedy medicine (mixture of paracetamol and caffeine) and some lockets. I sat in the car, listening to the radio and consuming a lot of what I'd just bought. As expected, it perked me up and I was then able to drive 50 or so miles to my sister's house in London.

I sat around at my sister's playing with my niece a little, talking with my family, and chilling out. Later, I made a fix to the broken bathroom door lock - it was more of a bodge. Then I went home.

More Look Around You. More giggling. Setting the clocks forward. Then sleep.

Sunday
I awoke even earlier - in every sense. The absolute time was an hour earlier then the clock time. The clock time was earlier than I prefer. It was early.

I went to pick up a friend from town. He would otherwise be killing time in the outside world, rather than spending it in a house with internet access and, albeit distracted with DIY jobs, company. I brought him back to mine, he played some music while I did some tidying up. Then I put a new string on my guitar to replace the one which snapped at my gig on Tuesday. We played some guitar together and then went for breakfast.

Subway.

Again.

I'd only had my first Subway breakfast on Saturday and my second was the following day. Weird.

Then back to the house. My friend kept playing YouTube comedy clips while I painted the third coat in my bathroom. I was getting tired again, so once it was complete, I decided not to do any more. I washed up, got dressed back in real clothes (not painting clothes) and we went out to B&Q together. I know how to show someone a good time.

Though we went to KFC first. Naughty. Chickeny. Unhealthy. Quite pleasant.

I dropped my friend off at his bus, got a shower (not at home, sadly) and then went off to my gig.

The gig was a charity night in Leamington Spa. I'd be lying if I said I rocked. I did, however, try some new material - written this weekend - and some of it has potential. I also did some of my lower-key stuff, in an attempt to save my voice. It was fun and I'm glad they didn't let me chicken out of it with my man-flu.

Arriving back home late at night I had to make some revisions to the sound-effects CD I will be using tonight. Some of these revisions involved me making the sound effects myself by combining freely-downloaded FX from the internet.

I wish I'd been able to watch the last two Look Around Yous, but they'll have to wait until I have more time.

In Summary
All in all it was a damned taxing weekend and I don't think it cured my cold.

I could so easily have stayed in bed this morning, rather than come into work. I feel really flimsy and yuck. I'm prone to fits of the sweats and my head is both light and heavy at the same time.

However, I have a technical supporting job to do tonight and the show must go on. Though I could have sacked off work and just gone straight to the theatre, I have a rule that you don't party on a schoolnight if you've taken the day off sick. It's a good rule. It's the moral high-ground and also the one where you don't get sacked. I genuinely believe that it's the first reason that motivates me.

Anyway, the point is that my general sense of malaise, coupled with my general sense of perspective about people working in call centres somewhat tempered my enthusiasm for a good shout when I rang npower earlier to ask them what the hell was going on.

First I rang their debt-collection line and was told that the letter was issued automatically. I was about to explain how outraged I was at the heavy handedness of this when I was cut off. Fair enough. I then re-read my letter of apology and decided to ring the number on that one to see if I could at least make someone else apologise to me. The woman on the end of the debt-collection line had been a bit defensive, which would have been something to get my teeth into from a debating point of view... but... well... the long wait for customer service and then the nice geordie on the other end, coupled with my feeling of tiredness and weakness... I couldn't be bothered.

I made my point that, within 6 weeks of issuing a bill, I'm receiving letters the likes of which should be reserved for bad debtors who have ignored things for months, and that this is deeply offensive. I made the point, but I didn't raise my voice, or particularly try to annoy the person at the other end. He was quite clear that it was just a system, and one which had failed. I was clear on that too. In fact, I just asked him to pass the matter up. He'll probably pass it over.

For the 5 people that read this blog, I'll say this. I am deeply disappointed with npower. I have found their service to be lacking and I don't believe that their prices are good enough to warrant staying with them. Go to an energy switching website and switch away from them if you use them. I don't believe that a company which treats its customers (or even ex-customers) in this way deserves to be validated by receiving continued business.

I was fairly flimsy on the phone, though. I'm weak.

Following my complaint on 12th March that I don't appreciate a 4 week old bill being followed up by a final demand, I found two letters waiting for me at my Newcastle house:

My comments in italics



A pleasant letter. 12th March. The day I sorted out my bill and complained that they had been heavy handed.

Then. The following day:



What!? Seriously?

We're sorry, but here's a dagger to the face!

Radiator is fitted Tuesday. No tiling this weekend for me.

I'll still buy them.

This cold has really gotten to my head. My words aren't coming out right - either from my mouth, which sounds a bit raspy, or through my fingers to the screen. I even made a punctuation error in a previous post, the likes of which I'd normally call the police in over.

I feel like my head is stuffed full of cotton wool, both physically and psychologically. I think that this cold has made it more possible for me to feel stress. I couldn't sleep for a couple of hours last night, just running through the tasks I need to achieve in the next few weeks (not employment related) to keep projects in two houses on the boil. I know I have an over-ambitious plan for Newcastle, but the plans for Reading are also in an awkward state of flux.

I don't like things getting in the way of the critical path. I'm facing some conflicting dependencies at the moment and I'm not sure how they're going to resolve. I think I probably won't end up tiling my bathroom floor this weekend, unless there's a last-minute call from the radiator-fitting cavalry. I will probably buy the tiling stuff on my way home from work, though. I can then start tiling on Tuesday. I'd do it Monday, but I'm techying a sketch show. This all poses problems. Many problems. I'm away next weekend from Friday lunchtime.

Still, while away, it won't matter whether my shower works or not.

I nearly tried to put the last straw on the camel's back. I stopped myself just in time. Here's the situation, as an illustration of how my mind works. On Monday I'm doing technical things for a sketch show. One of the sound cues is currently on a CD in someone's hand and I need a copy of it before Monday. The person whose hands it's in, will post it to me, her hands, though, are healing hands. She's a very nice young lady and a massage therapist, who has offered free massages to people she knows in order to get some practice in. She lives in North East London. This weekend, I'm due to visit my sister in North London. I'm also due to do a shed load of painting in the next 20 hours. My back is already a bit achey. Time is very tight.

I nearly got as far as suggesting to the massage person that I somehow squeezed in a trip to her place in order for her to apply therapy to my aching back in between my painting and sister visit during which time I could also pick up the CD.

It sort of makes sense.

But being massaged by someone I know is a bit weird... as is running round even more like a bluearsed fly in the name of placebo convenience. She can post the disc and I can do without the manipulation.

Though I think I need a massage.

A long sleep would help.

I was in a really dark mood today and wanted to write something depressing or dark. Maybe a piece on pedophiles or full of death and destruction.

I forced myself to write a pointless children's tale.

Please ignore it.

Labels: Friday200

Last night we went out for food and then to the movies. I was feeling under the weather and needed to relax. The food was good, as was the pre-movie playing of the quiz machine and eating of too much ice cream. However, the movie... Jebus H Wannamaker Christ. What the fahey!?

We went to see Premonition, which, out of ten, scores PI - that's about 3.14159. The reason it doesn't even score an integer is because I want the people who made and marketed the film to have something better to do with their time than write another thing similar. They can, instead, spend their time writing out PI - my review score for their film. Given that PI has an infinite number of decimal places, this will keep them busy and out of harm's way.

This isn't the first time I've watched Sandra Bullock in a time-traveling film with deep inconsistencies in its plot. Previously it was a bit of a girly movie and was cute enough not to matter that much - it even introduced me to a Paul McCartney track which I still listen to now. However, this movie was meant to be more of a chiller, and had, on the plus side, some interesting use of photography and music to create mood.

The plot, on the other hand, was flimsy and full of cliches. To make matters worse, the film made extensive use of flashbacks at the end to bring itself to a conclusion. I'd say climax, but it wasn't a climax. It was an infuriating wrap up of the "evidence" which left me wanting to wring someone's neck. It was like there was no ending, so they just thought they'd stop. I think they probably had the idea for the film and started making it before they knew where it was going. So, they borrowed the usual trick of having "someone who knows everything about this sort of thing", in this case, a priest in a church who mysteriously had a pre-prepared book of post-it-note-marked premonition cases (oooh, X-filesy), and who explained that it was probably an absence of something in Sandra Bullock's life (a good agent!?) that meant she was encountering a weird week (where she seemed to flit between days out of order). This man's advice, apparently, meant that everything could be solved if she did nothing and let nature take its course... or maybe she had control over her destiny, though that didn't seem to make sense either. So maybe the whole thing was pointless.

No reference was made to the fact that she was put in a mental home briefly in the film, but ended up not being there by the end. I suspect that the writers are now in that very mental home, hopefully tied to a chair.

With a twat whispering a commentary to his tart of a girlfriend behind me, unaware of either my stares, or the meaning of the sounds "Ssh" and "Will you stop talking?", and an ending which made me want to scream, I'd have to say that my expectations that Premonition would be a great heap of steaming turd came true. Spooky. Why did I pay good money to see it?

Fate.

This lunchtime I just agreed to spend several thousand pounds on a flat for the duration of the Fringe in Edinburgh. I still don't quite know how long I plan to be up there. Probably two weeks, which somewhat scuppers my plan to go to America and Canada at the tail end of the year. It "somewhat" scuppers it. It may not actually scupper it. We'll see. I do now have an extra day's annual leave in my contract, thanks to a unification of contracts as the company I work for manages to merge all its consituent parts into a giant jam.

I hope my own house is complete by August. Maybe while I'm in Edinburgh I can buy another! It would probably be cheaper to buy a house in Edinburgh in July, live it in for August, and then sell it in September. With property prices rising, it would probably work out cheaper!

For probably read, "not at all".

If it had not been for the fact that I had a builder due to come to the house to start work, and the fact that my mobile phone's battery was dead, thus preventing the calling, I would love to have called in sick today and just spent the day in bed.

I've definitely caught some sort of lurghi - probably a case of being near cold and other germs in my weakened state. I'm weakened from a year or so's living down south. 8 hours in Newcastle was enough to introduce enough into my immune system to keep it very busy.

So far, symptoms are: feeling a bit bunged up, having a rather sore throat and speaking like an ill person.

I'll struggle on a bit more, shall I?

I hoped to wake up around 10.45 Wednesday morning. Given that it was 5am when I finally got back to bed. It was no surprise to discover myself dozing until lunchtime. After a chat with my builder, I got myself motivated and went for petrol (driving 600 or so miles really drinks the fuel) and to put oil into my car (it burns that too, apparently).

Then work. A half day.

Returning to Reading, I decided to eat first, DIY later. I ate Subway, put my car through a car-wash, drove home, put lots and lots of windscreen wash in my car, and then considered the DIY. I did some. Yay. Less than 2 hours, but as much as my body could withstand. I was in Newcastle for less than 8 hours on Tuesday and I got a bloody cold. Geordie land managed to rain, wind, hail and snow on me, and I got a disease. Result!

As a consequence, my DIY was shortlived, but useful nonetheless. I decided to further a bodge job on a bit of skirting board I'd done badly. I don't mind the board not being straight, either to the eye or spirit level. I don't mind there being a 13mm increase in its height over the length of 435mm. I do mind the gap that leaves under one side of it. The carpet I put down won't be 30mm high. That's far too much. So, I cut a wedge-shaped piece of wood that would fit the gap. I sanded it, glued it into place, primed it with paint and I'll paint it at some point in gloss. This will then make the skirting board better.

It was a silly process to glue this to the underside of the existing skirting board. I used the handles of some teaspoons to locate the wedge correctly and pressure it into the glue. If you're going to bodge, bodge in extreme.

Less bodgey was the painting of the newly plastered downstairs hall ceiling. Using a watered down paint, I rollered myself a nice finish. I'm pleased with it.

That was that. A shower and then home to play with the piano for a few minutes before blogging for 2 hours.

Time for sleep now.

It's worth saying, in a post all its own, that I was chuffed by the number of people who came to the gig I did on Tuesday night. I was slightly concerned that they'd not enjoy the rest of the night, or that things might go a bit odd-shaped, like they did at the "farewell gig" I did before leaving the city, but my fears were unjustified. People came, drank, laughed and were merry. It was a pleasure to look around the group and marvel at the good people who will turn out when I'm parading my ego about the place.

I am forging a life for myself down here in soft-southerners-land, but I do miss the people back up North.

I had a day and I half's worth of holiday to kill, rather than lose. So I decided to drive up north to do a gig I live too far away from. I got up at 9am and spent the day driving. At three, having listening to Bill Bailey's Cosmic Shindig (nice) and lots of Radio 2, I parked on the roof of the car park I used to use in Newcastle when I worked nearby.

I walked into the city and went looking for socks. I had no agenda. I'm dangerous when I have no specific agenda. I was glad to be able to go looking for socks, I've not found people selling pure cotton socks outside of Newcastle's Greenmarket. I've not looked that hard, but I was glad to get the chance to go back and seek out the stall where I knew they would sell me my socks.

The stall wasn't there. The market was closed totally.

Thrown, I went on a wander looking for an audio lead for my mp3-player/car-radio interfacing. This is a problem I've been meaning to solve, the lead I have being weathered with an intermitted connection in it. I went into Richer sounds. I explained the sort of lead I wanted. The guy tried to sell me a £10 lead and I didn't think the headphone-plug end of the lead would fit. He then tried to upsell me to a £30 lead. I said that was a silly price. He then turned on the "but surely you're serious about music angle". Given that I'd been gigging for 6 days straight, I wasn't in a mood to filter my mouth. What happened was something like this:

Ash: Oh come on. You can't sell me any of the gold-plated plug bollocks. This is a simple lead to connect an mp3 player to a shitty car stereo. Don't give me any bullshit about audio quality. The lead is a bog-standard thing - should cost about £3.
Shop man: (looks round to check nobody is looking) What about this? (pulls a lead from under the counter).
Ash: Yes. That's the one. How much?
Shop man: £4
Ash: I knew it. You were trying to upsell me. You're the sort of person who sold my mum a £30 gold-plated scart lead because "if you don't get one like that, it might suffer from erosion". Erosion!? The action of the sea against rocks!? In a scart lead!?

It must be said that this was all done in a jovial way and the guy was smiling along - slightly overfaced by the power of my delivery, but not offended. We had a laugh about the erosion. True story.

The guy in the music shop, where I went for a look around, was less impressed with my ballsy motormouthiness. However, I was on my holiday and having a good time. If I want to rabbit on about stuff and be very jovial and hearty, then I will. I bought a practice amplifier from the shop, which I used to frequent a lot when I worked near it. It's a nice bit of kit. I haven't used it yet.

Then I went to the office I used to work in. I pretty much told everyone how impressed I was at how much it appears to have improved since I left. The company has gone through a lot, but they have regrouped and should be proud of themselves for the atmosphere in there. Of course, 16 months of not working there has given me a great deal of distance and the ability to be dispassionate about it all. It was good to see people again.

I returned to the streets of Newcastle for more wandering. Trying to buy arbitrary items from shops proved a good distraction. I failed to find a box set of TV themes. Shame. I could really have used that for the journey home.

I stopped to buy the big issue from the big issue seller who had noticed my absence, and whose name I remembered. We had a chat. She's looking reasonably well, considering the fact that she works most hours of the daytime out in the cold of Newcastle. I'll probably not read the magazine.

I did a bit of director's commentary as I wandered round:

Ooh, there's that hairdresser's I couldn't afford to go in. Ah, that's the "shop that never used to be there". This used to be a fountain. That Starbucks is missing. That Starbucks is new. This piggy went to market (probably the Bigg one). Where's the pub I'm supposed to be meeting people at again!?

It was fun. I have missed Newcastle and I should return there again. How about a week on Friday for an hour? And again a week on Sunday?

When I was just starting out doing comedy, I used to dispair of the sort of act who made it their mission to be offensive or provocative to the audience for its own sake. These were people who felt that their views were more important than their audience's sensibilities and, more importantly, the jokes. I'd hear words like "I'm going to ruffle some feathers tonight" before they went on, and then, when they got there, they'd make some wan references to marijuana and porn to a stony-faced crowd and then they'd feel like they'd said something important.

I don't want to be that sort of act. I don't want to offend for its own sake. There must be a laugh. An audience's sensibilities are important.

However, the jokes must be told.

Over the last week, where I've gigged every night, there have been incidents where I've caused offense to an audience. Sometimes it's been funny and I stand by what I've said. Sometimes I've felt perhaps a little embarrassed/cringey/unimpressed by my own behaviour. Here's a quick run down of the week in being offended.

Thursday - sang a deeply un-PC song at a charity gig for Comic Relief. A punter complained that I was gleefully mocking the very people the charity was there to help. I started to try to point out that it was so ridiculously un-PC that it couldn't be real, let alone meant, but ended up just apologising unreservedly for his offence. Looking back, it hadn't been so funny at the time that it was causing someone offence... though it can be funny if the room "needs" it.

Friday - I was offended to be playing in a room full of drunken twats. As a result, I invented some insults which I threw at various members of the audience. Some were deserved and may stay in my mind as useful ambush jokes (in fact, one got re-used on Tuesday and got a round of applause). The audience weren't offended by my material. If only they'd understood how much I looked down on some of them... they would have been offended enough to maim.

Saturday - No offence caused. Lovely gig. Lovely crowd. Lovely promoter. Shame I only came second in the competitive aspects. Great conversation on the way home on the subject of racism and I really learned something.

Sunday - Another tough gig. For the first time ever I bottled out of a song because it only works if a crowd is ready to take hedonistic pleasure in its slightly dark offensiveness. My mind was so convinced that it wasn't going to work that it purposely deleted the lyrics from the screen behind my eyes where I read my words from when I'm performing.

Monday - The Catface Cabaret. I used a joke I've been doing now for a year. It's at the end of a routine where I've become ridiculously intimidating in song form, and comment that the person on the receiving end looks scared. The line I use is "Sorry about that. You're scared, I'm out of breath. This isn't a gig. It's a rape!". The point is to ridicule the moment. For the first time ever, and the small crowd and theatre setting were partly, if not entirely, to blame for this, this didn't get the usual laugh. It got an "ooh" from the girl in question and a tension. I then pointed out that it clearly wasn't one and that "it's all just a bit make-believe" (a Gavin Webster phrase that popped out of my mouth in a slightly desperate attempt to defuse the situation). It didn't kill the room, but mirth had stopped. I pondered in a split second whether the girl in question might have been the victim of a sexual assault and decided she probably hadn't. I finished the gig fine and it was fine. Another girl came up to me, though, and said I shouldn't joke about rape. She also said I could maybe use another phrase like "sexual assault". She said there's nothing funny about rape. What I wanted to say was that "rape" is a powerful word and that's why it's funny in that context, especially with the way it sounds - the rhythm, the sharp stab in the air of the word. However, I told her I agreed that there's nothing funny about rape. I guess she couldn't see the joke. Describing it now, it doesn't seem that funny. Maybe it's only funny when I've created a slightly cartoonish rapey mood and then debunk it by pointing out that it's supposed to be a gig, not a rape... Anyway. Rape is a funny word, but rape is not funny.

Tuesday - the rape joke brought the house down. The "racist material" didn't.

I'll describe my behaviour on Tuesday in a bit more detail than the other days. It's my decision-making process from Tuesday which I sort of regret, and I'm sort of glad about. I was at a try-out gig, with a bunch of people I knew in the room. I felt fairly safe to do whatever I thought was, or might be, funny. I was also going to do a bunch of stuff which previous experience told me was funny. I was also closing the show. I had a lot of rope and I planned not so much to hang myself with it, as twirl it around my head and lassoo the crowd in. Don't you love it when a metaphor gets out of control?

Anyway, I decided to play with fire. Fire's fun. Fire can be funny. I did it in a controlled fashion - like putting a sparkler into a metal bin full of sand (oh dear - a metaphor AND a simile). I decided that I was going to do the Cheryl Tweedy material which had worked really well first time out and then died sorry horribly, causing me to be considered racist, on its second time out. I decided also, if the Cheryl stuff worked, to do the material I blogged the other day (here).

I didn't really offend anyone - except perhaps the comedian who missed the sarcasm in my post-gig comment. I said something like "I was being a bit edgy there" and he said something like "no you weren't, you should have just been racist". I replied that I thought I'd probably stick to mildly amusing slightly rude comic songs as normal. The thing is, I didn't so much break boundaries as stop being funny and start a pointless and facile lecture on the power of words to offend. This helped me exorcise a demon, but was more about words than it was using them. Going into the 3rd person in a comedy set - i.e. talking about the material you're doing - isn't an aid to comedy. It's a turn off. I won't do that again. It wasn't edgy.

However, the Cheryl Tweedy material worked and, with my central aim of tweaking taboos if necessary, but not actually hurting anyone, I reckon I know how to do it again to more sensitive audiences without offending them. The problem with this material is that I have to use an acronym. The gag is that I don't like the lazy journalistic use of the word "WAG" to describe an individual person. It's a crap word and it's inaccurate, since it stands for Wives And Girlfriends. The correct term should be the acronym for "Wife Or Girlfriend". The problem is that that's a term of racial abuse. Saying the word "wog" on stage, even when you're referring to a white geordie girl, and even when you've already set it up as an acronym, is, to some fucking imbeciles, an act of racial abuse. Twats. They probably wouldn't enjoy this paragraph either. However, the problem with the word, even when qualified with the context I've described, is that an audience that's only partially listening, might not realise what's been said, just hear the word and then be offended out of context. I've been here before.

At the very least, Tuesday night's version, put the point of the joke right up front and then backed it up with the racism skeleton from Cheryl Tweedy's past, so that I could point the finger of racism at someone other than the messenger (i.e. me). It worked pretty well... though I forgot a bit of it.

The material about the power of the word "Paki". Well, it wasn't that funny. It was quite funny in discussion with other comedians backstage somewhere... but I think comedians can find the saying of any taboo word funny. That's what comedians like to do. It's not edgy and it's not clever, it's just getting drunk with the power of the microphone... which is what I used to hate in those open spots at the start of my comedic career.

Jim Jeffries and Brendon Burns have both dealt with these taboo subjects in a way that I can't. I'll leave my need to push those buttons unsatisfied and I'll just do it vicariously through listening to their CDs. It's not edgy, but it's more me.

Monday night's gig was fair of face. Or is that Monday's child? Well, anyway. I left work early so I could get to Camden in time for a 5pm meeting at the venue where the Catface Cabaret is held. I didn't know a great deal about this show except that I was required to do a full cast dance routine in the show (I've done them before) and that it was usually a sell out, mixing a whole bunch of silliness with the spirit of variety.

I was pleased to be doing something different, which is why I asked to be allowed to leave work earlier than I would normally be able to.

When I got to the venue I did my usual soundcheck. Knowing the venue as well as I now do, it was fairly straightforward to get things working - in fact, I'd brought the special bits I needed with me. The Etcetera Theatre is rapidly becoming one of my most regular haunts and I like it there. It's always nice to plug a guitar into your favourite venue's PA system.

Once guitar checked, I sang a straight song I rarely sing. Purely in the name of warming up. Then, my embarrassment at my poorly written lyrics subsiding (the song was written in 2003 and I'm not incredibly proud of all of the lines - though I like some) it was time to learn the dance. When I first saw the routine I laughed at how complicated it looked. However, after a slow tuition, I think I picked it up reasonably well. By the time we did it on stage, I pretty much knew what I was meant to be doing. Some of it I even did.

There were problems however. One was sweat after going through the routine so many times. However, the other problem was that an act dropped out. This act was meant to be the magician of the night. It turned out that he was neither coming, nor was he ever a magician in the first place. Oh dear. Then, as the show was due to start, it turned out that audience numbers were the lowest they had ever been for the show. About a dozen. In a theatre that seats 42, a dozen is still over 25% capacity, but it still put a damper on proceedings a bit. The problem with 12 people in a room like that is that they can't actually laugh that hard all the time and so a performer feels like his/her act isn't working. Then, if they show doubt, the audience can stop finding them funny, even if they did.

I was closing the first half of the show. The acts before me had varying degrees of success, so I steeled myself for a tricky time on stage. I actually enjoyed myself greatly and did some material I rarely ever do (either because I've retired it, or it's rarely appropriate to do it). It was fun.

The show went well once it got going, and I truly enjoyed the second section, during which I was in the theatre, rather than waiting outside, where I got to see three splendid acts - two stand-up and one sketch. I laughed like a drain. I often do.

Hopefully the next shows will go back to sell-out-crowds and I'll be allowed to come back. I think I know the dance now.

One of the organisers of Tuesday night's gig is very disappointed that I haven't yet blogged about it. I'd accuse him of being narcissistic, but, to be honest, one of the reasons I hadn't yet written anything is that I got distracted looking at a whole bunch of photos of myself, which were sent to me from last Thursday night's gig. I look fat and sweaty in those.

I'll get on with the description of the gig last night, as far as I remember it.

Long Live Comedy is a gig I wish had started about 3 years ago. In some ways it's the same sort of gig that I have such fond memories (and a few recordings) of, which ran for about a year at the Chillingham Arms pub in Heaton/Byker. The formula is simple. You take a bunch of newer/newish acts, occasionally add in a passing very experienced comedian (not Tuesday - that would be claimng that it was me, and I'm not in the league I'm describing), you cultivate an audience and a "scene" and then you just have fun. What unfolds should be eclectic, should have some really dead responses to bad jokes and some really enthuastic responses to cracking lines. That's how comedy should be. It should be a safe environment to have a laugh in.

Now, I'm not going to drop my memories of the Chillingham Arms, just because I had a great night last night. The amazing Gavin Webster, MCing a full and excited room, with the one-off appearance of Ross Noble, for instance, would be almost impossible to top. However, the past is gone and what's important is what you make of the present. From what I've read of this gig, which recently got voted best comedy club on Chortle (which means comedians like it), it's a cracker. I had high hopes for this, and wish I'd been living in Newcastle to support it all the way along its progression.

The guys who run it are three. Two of these folks are people I knew from the Chillingham days. One is someone whom I only know through his blog and podcasts. How geeky is that!? I really felt like I knew him from the off, which is nice. I knew his style and found no surprises in the in-the-flesh meeting. That's the beauty of the net, I suppose.

Anyway, I'll do my quick run-down of what I remember happening.

James Christopher, who spoke very loudly to me when he said hello, as though he was MCing his meeting me again, was a nice MC. He had some material which worked nicely, and some which fell flat. That was okay, though. The room could take it because they liked him.

Tom Mitchell was first on. His well-written material and delivery went down well after a slowish start. The initial MCing had been so easy going that I'd forgotten that the room would still need an opening act that could wear the process of warming up an audience at the start of the night. Tom did it with aplomb.

Then Don Moses came out with a bizarre football oriented and slightly surrealist set. He ran out of steam, missed a bit of his set out and got off the stage promptly. People seemed to enjoy his bumbling presence, though, and he's forging a style for himself.

A break followed, and then Pete Thompson proved that his MCing skills and improvisation outweighs his rapid-generation-of-new-thematic-material. The audience really liked him and he had a knack for phrasing things in an off-beat way which made the most of his naturally funny speech patterns. He introduced Ed Gamble, who came and stole the show. Act of the night. A work of high-writing-craftsmanship full of linguistic tricks and plain silliness, I wanted to hear more of Ed's stuff. Brilliant.

Lee Chamberlain had a more hit and miss set, his geekiness and dyslexia causing the audience to, perhaps, show more pity sometimes than his jokes required. However, there were some excellent jokes in his set and it's all grist to the mill.

After the second break, the gag competition yielded some beautiful entries and then some fat man came on with a guitar.

The audience was made of a good combination of acts, regulars and random people (admittedly, I'd brought some fo the random people).

I had a great time and my throat is sore from some of the bellowing I did in the name of laughter. (Bellowing laughs out, mainly.)

So. Long Live Comedy!

This is a superb piece of musicianship and comedy rolled into a package of joy.

It seems you're never safe from the scam-spammers. I am a member of a site called MyBlogLog, which allows me to keep tabs on how my blog is being used. It is an online community of bloggers and blog readers and, as such, has private email within its system. Here's the message I just received. My comments are in bold:

The publishing of this blog is tricky at the moment and it's having a very discouraging effect on me. I want to blog stuff, but the thought of having to either struggle to get it online, or not get it online immediately, makes me question why bothering. I guess I like the immediacy of the push-button publishing I got accustomed to.

I can't quite see where the problem is. It's frustrating.

Also in the frustrating category is doing a gig to an apathetic room where they're talking over you. Such was Friday's gig and, sadly, such was tonight's. Although I purposely through some laughter-pauses at my audience this evening and heard them fill with the expected laugh (god, it sounds so predictable - like some sort of well-rehearsed ritual), I also came off stage feeling like it had been a tepid gig, compared both with last time I played there, and also the gargantuan effort I made on Friday to quell and raise laughs from the near-impossible audience.

The last act did a really good gig tonight and that's either because I managed to bring the room into a state that was ready for comedy, or because he was simply better at smoothing a room into a receptive state. Maybe both. Probably just the one which doesn't make me feel better about myself.

I didn't get the endorphine rush of a job well done. I didn't get the depressing loneliness of a job done badly. I just got a sense of ambivalence. I was also a little sad about the state of students today.

One of the organisers was very complimentary towards me, remembering the last performance I did. I hope that tonight's showing doesn't knock the shine off otherwise happy memories.

So, I played to rabble, silence and the occasional laughs. Big deal. Tomorrow I get to go and play in a little fringe theatre in London. And I get to do a dance. And I get to have a day off after. Yay.

Today I had a sleep in (I didn't get back until well late last night, so it's ok) and then went on the DIY buying rounds. Then, DIY stuff bought, I fitted some lights, a switch (though I regret the switches I've committed to) and then spent about 3 hours sanding all my primer and then painting gloss paint. I hate gloss paint. I hate dust getting into the paint. I had dusted before I started painting - vacuumed in fact. I hate dribbles too. I specifically hate cleaning gloss paint brushes. I made a reasonable fist of it, but I suspect the brush will start losing its hairs from now on, and there's no point in shaving it to grade 0.

Friday night's gig was predictable.

I had my hair cut on Friday lunchtime. I bet my hairdresser that the audience at the gig would be difficult. I said that if they were a dream, I would give my fee to Comic Relief. I couldn't lose. In the situation where I had to hand over the money, I'd have bought (from the comedy gods) a nice crowd. If they were a bunch of bastards, then I, at least, got to keep the money.

I kept the money.

The crowd didn't want comedy. They didn't want to listen. They wanted to be excited and shout abuse. They made me laugh. Hard. I laughed at the sheer ridiculous hopelessness of putting a comedy night on in that setting. Then I laughed with schadenfraude at the other comedians' deaths. Sorry, but it's often quite funny to watch this...

Then, after everyone had had a bad night, and I hadn't gone on, I was offered the chance to walk away. The landlady would pay everyone's fees and I didn't need to go on. I thought "Sod it. I'm here anyway." and offered to go on. I don't know why. I just did. I went on.

I reckoned I'd give it up after 5 minutes, or make it work somehow and last longer.

I was on for nearly 20 minutes.

It took a lot of energy that I didn't have, and I broke two guitar strings with the vigour I used to break through the wall of indifference and abuse. I even found a new punchline to throw at someone. It was bloody horrible... but my own death was, itself, funny to me. I left the stage and had a hysteria fit. I remember when such gigs used to depress me to misery. Now I think I know the value of comedy in a non-comedy situation and find it bloody hilarious to do something so ridiculous.

The combination of shouting my set to an audience and screaming with laughter on the way home - cathartic but vocally intensive - meant I had a very tight voice the following morning when I woke up.

And it was morning. Not early, but morning, nonetheless. I had to wait in for a guitar technician type of person to come and pick up my guitar, so I did some basic housework, which involved changing my bedclothes and tidying up a fair bit.

Then, after guitarage was sorted. I went out, got lunch, bought some DIY things and a printer (on a whim) and came back. The printer seemed to have an extra £5 deducted from the price, and I had a £5 off voucher for the shop. In the end, I think the assistant only applied one of these discounts, but given that I was unaware of the discount on the box when I picked it up, I can't say that I'm feeling particularly fussed.

The DIY things included light-fittings, one of which I managed to both install and break in the same go. It's just a bit of cracked plastic in a ceiling rose. I'll just have to buy a replacement. Not the end of life as we know it.

Then I was off to my gig in Devon. I'm sure I've been telling people that it was Dover, but it was Devon.

It was a competition, though I was there for the fun, not the competition. If there's such a thing as comedy karma, then I was there for that. The Comic Relief night had been tough on Thursday, but I'd made people laugh. I'd also upset some people, so perhaps Friday was my punishment. If both those gigs were tough, then surely a student gig, probably full of pretty late-teenage girls (i.e. 19, not 16!) was probably the remedy. I had a tough gig back at the end of last year at a particular club, and its promoter was one of the acts too, so perhaps I'd get a chance to be funny in her presence again (she was always supportive, but I wanted to feel like her last impression of me as an act was better than that night when it didn't really work well).

I didn't plan to win the competition. I was going to do some of the material I don't often do.

But it brought out the competitive spirit in me. So I did a set full of bankers.

I came second.

I drove the winner home. We talked. I talked a lot. He put up with it and also had stuff to say. We discussed racism and comedy - my two favourite discussion points.

Then I drove myself home.

The tinkling sound of girls' laughter is still in my ears. Bless the students. I have another student gig tomorrow night. Ahhhhhh.

Life as a comedian is fun.

There have been problems with my ISP. I've been blogging, but it's not been getting online.

Hopefully I just sorted it out.

If so, then there's a backlog to read.

Hazel over at her blog has the habit of writing a blog while watching a TV programme - or at least about the sequence of events in a TV programme. I've decided to spend the next hour or so at my desk in the office recording a Bill Bailey concert that truly makes me happy to listen to. I'm tempted to try doing a real-time blog of what happens along the way.

It's possible that this blog will turn into a "isn't it weird sitting alone in an office chuckling away to yourself" session. It's also possible that this will turn into a really naff director's commentary - in that you don't get to read it alongside the material I'll be reacting to. There's only one way to find out.

18.56
At this moment the show hasn't started. I've shut a bunch of programs on my computer and tried to avoid anything which makes noise from being able to do so. The recording is going to be made by Audacity, which records everything the computer is putting into my headphones - it does it digitally, so I can make as much noise as I like, but the computer generation of any sounds will be picked up. As a result, I can have a streaming audio player, like the BBC Radio 3 player, running and anything which comes out of it can be recorded. That's the idea.

18.57
Is it normal to have butterflies in the stomach while listening to Radio 3? Why do I feel under performance pressure? I'm not about to perform. I guess I don't want to miss the start of the gig. I had to remember to press my red button. I've no idea whether this will even work. Theoretically there's enough recording space on the disc for about 30 hours of constant recording. I need 1hr 45 minutes.

18.59
Make that 1hr 47 minutes. I put the recording on earlier. They were playing some Flanders and Swan at the end of the last show and I thought it might be interesting.

I'm just a pirate.

Apparently it's a song about a "G-nu".

It's a funny song.

I could parody it relating it to "GNER" - I'm "G-ner"... except you don't parody a parody song and anyone who does is a numpty!

19.01
It turns out my clock is slow. The previous programme is still ending. I'm still excited.

19.02
The continuity announcer has made two crap jokes to link between programmes.

It doesn't matter. The introduction has started and I'm excited.

19.03
The sound quality isn't great and the orchestra aren't incredibly tight, but it's started well. The opening gag I remember as being so funny has not appeared yet.

19.05
There's a dutch hip-hop joke I don't remember. Must be new. I'm pleased. I should listen, rather than blog.

19.11
Ah, they're playing the Emmerdale theme. It's smooth and loving.

19.15
I'm laughing out loud at the Bassoon playing the Bee Gees.

19.19
The William Tell overture will be playing in a moment and this is a great thing. I sort of missed the opening gag when I saw it live. So I'm getting to hear it again. Beauty.

19.24
Playing the DVD opening credits live. It's ridiculous. I laughed out loud again. Still feels weird in the office.

19.36
The jazz Eastenders theme. Neat.

I've been listening and enjoying. This gig doesn't feel as tight as when I saw its warm up. The script is tighter, but Bill seems less relaxed and in tune. The orchestra aren't that tight too... But it's still mint!

Oh, and the audience aren't that responsive. The difference between a Saturday night and Monday night crowd.

19.41
Eastenders is being done as a melodrama with some amazing film music - it's so warm. Anne Dudley - if she were only younger.

19.44
The Leg Of Time - a full orchestral version of it. Sounding good. It was always a good piece of music. I can't see any punchlines or laughs in it... but Bill carries it off with aplomb. It's a lesson in commitment and joy in what you're doing.

19.46
The crowd are going mental. This is a great moment - captured in an echoey way by the 44kbps real-player. Shame about the sound quality. Still, this is the best way I can think of getting a copy of it. A USB DAB radio would have been better... if they exist.

19.50
The cop show music starts. This is a massive routine, enlivened by the whole orchestra.

19.54
The cop show parody music is still going and it's already feeling quite self-indulgent. Some gags aren't really working... but they're good.

19.55
The bass clarinet gag brings the audience back, and the orchestra is winding up to serious atmosphere. Who cares if it's indulgent. There are plenty of nice call backs to previous setups made in the last hour. This is a cracking bit of slow-burner writing. This is why we're on radio 3.

19.58
A Keyser Sozer gag. I get it now. Yay!

20.00
A ten minute cop show music routine. That's quite something. With a full orchestra, there's been a lot of effort put into that. Big respect.

20.03
Hats off to the Zebras. Sounding nice with the orchestra providing a warm string pad and french horn counter melody. The guide to the orchestra forming the start of this show has helped me identify this. Neat.

20.07
Carnival of the animals is about to be played. This impressed me when I first heard it. Bill plays well with the orchestra. Or at least did on the 24th Feb.

20.10
The fossils part of the carnival of the animals is playing. Bill plays piano provocatively... I am enjoying hearing this again, though my attention is waning a bit. Perhaps the edited out interval has hindered the enjoyment. I would still buy a legal copy of this, mind.

It will probably be followed by the carnival of the forgotten animals - the new composition that they made... which I didn't really see the point of.

20.12
It's called the Calvacade Of The Unloved. They're about to do the wasp.

20.13
It's done. It didn't do much for me. Sorry Anne. You are still lovely... but a bit old for me.

20.14
Now the chameleon - this is a more atmospheric piece, but I think it will probably lack a climax. The problem is we're not sure whether it's meant to be funny or, indeed, why it's really happening. It's still good to hear an orchestra playing about with something for the sake of entertainment/art/amusement.

20.16
No climax. The bemused audience applauds politely.

20.17
The red crab with a solid russian theme is a bit more rousing, I think. Though it does sound like it's mimicking Prokofiev quite strongly.

20.18
The jellyfish even gets its own theme. Saint-Saens might have covered that with the aquarium theme they played 11 minutes ago.

Having said that, I really like this theme. It's sumptuous with a horn and an aquatic wiggle of the strings. The theramin is also employed to delightful effect, though Bill has trouble with exact pitching of it. The bottom line, though, is that orchestras sound great and I regret not one second of listening to this.

20.21
They're about to do the orchestral version of "Insect Nation" - a rock opera. Cosmic Jam didn't do this well. 10 years later, with a bit more of a War Of The Worlds vibe, and a 50 piece orchestra, Bill finally gets to do it justice.

20.28
Insect Nation comes to a massive climax - it's been like 7 minutes and it was truly stunning. I am, of course, deeply awed.

20.29
The love ballad is being set up.

20.30
The orchestration hams this up so beautifully - there's more Scott Walker in the percussion than I remember.

20.33
The love ballad finishes. The audience go wild. I release a massive fart in appreciation - unaware of the exact volume of it and whether anyone left in the office heard it.

20.34
They saved the theme from Shaft for a finale. Interesting. I wonder why. I think Bill must just like playing that wacky wacky guitar.

20.38
The show comes to an end with Bill thanking everyone.

The End
It was more fun live and I think Bill enjoyed it more without anyone recording it.

My recording of the recording will take about 10 minutes to save to my disk. Wow!

So much to report about the house. Well, actually, very little. I did some painting, the plasterer did some plastering and I did some sanding. However, I'll string this out to a longer description for the hell of it.

The DIY situation is feeling positive. If I wake up at a reasonable hour tomorrow, I should be able to get on with some more room preparation. Heck, if something mental happens, I might be doing more painting, or even hanging wallpaper this weekend. We'll see.

Last night I wanted to continue the work I'd started on Tuesday and failed to complete on Wednesday. I had re-primed the skirting boards and windowsills, leaving the more detailed window-frame for later. Last night I tackled the window frames. I also reprimed the top of the window sill as some of the colour of the varnish that I'm covering in paint, had seeped through. The primer is there for two reasons. It's a base coat to avoid seepage of the paint into the wood or of the varnish up into the paint. Secondly, it's an undercoat to make the top two coats of gloss look better. So, skimping on the painting of the primer won't do nobody no good.

The primed/undercoated wood work looks pretty good. I'm happy with it.

The living room had some sections of wall which I'd plastered and, given that I was using bodge plaster and given that I'm not a plasterer, I needed to sand it smooth enough that it will seem very smooth once my lining paper goes over it. I think I managed to achieve such sanding last night too.

The plastering job has been very satisfactory indeed so far. The smell has been deeply unpleasant - it smells like they've been using poo on the walls, or a garlic dip of some sort. I'm sure they haven't. It's still very unpleasant. However, as of the last viewing, the bathroom had a skimmed ceiling and the walls were base-coated. The plasterer should have skimmed everything by now. He'd definitely skimmed the ceiling in my downstairs hall, which is nice. In fact, once that's dry I can set about painting it. I could actually get my hall totally repainting. There's not a great benefit in doing that in its entirety, as a catalogue of building works may well destroy a lot of that.

Actually, having written that, I'm not so certain. There are works to do in the top two bedroom, but that's just plastering. I feel like the decorating in the rooms that are thoroughfares should probably wait until a bit later, but maybe I can bring them near to the final coat and then just whack that one in a jiffy once everything else is pretty much done. As always, I'm not yet sure and I'll play it by ear.

The bathroom man/joiner/builder (I don't know how to categorise him) returns on Monday and, I hope, will really get going with the whole putting it together. The room feels smaller than I'd hope it would, but once I get it decorated all white, I think it will be a nice place to wash and poo.

And that's probably a good way to define a house, really. It'll be a nice place to wash, sleep, eat and poo. Maybe watch TV. Maybe avoid the housemates/tenants. We'll see. I'm not yet excited. Just trepidation at this stage.

Oh, and there's the small matter of month or two of having only one tenant in Newcastle, and having to foot the bill for that... and the few days next month I'll be spending up there doing shed loads of DIY jobs to get it a bit more presentable.

Mind you, I might get to buy a scaffolding tower/platform or some such.

P.S. Looks like I might even get a roofer on Monday... watch this space.

I managed to brave the cavernous and foreboding menu system of PayPal and get through to Carolina. This lovely latino lady (try saying that with a mouthful of chips) talked me through the transactions and adjustments that have been made on my account. Some of them were just plain random. At one stage she seemed to be suggesting that I should keep the difference between a £53.01 and the £19.02 I expected for a correction. I explained that I wanted the account to balance at 0, not some extra cash for me. As it stands, though I'm still £466.19 down, even though one adjustment was random and wrong.

Carolina has agreed to push harder at the people who un-fraudlificate accounts and get my final $1045 returned. This will be converted to fewer pounds than it cost me at the end of February. I've asked her to get them to make a currency adjustment such that the surplus of the £53.01 wrong adjustment is accounted for. So long as it goes back to 0 before my credit card bill arrives, then I'll be happy.

It was a pleasant exchange and I think Carolina was getting all giggly and flirty towards the end of the conversation. Given that she's in America, she need never meet the person who nobly announced that he didn't want to benefit from this fraud any more than he wanted to be out of pocket from it (that was me).

The reality of me is far more complex than the concept.

Why do I do it? Why do I see the self-destruct button and push it so gleefully to see what it does? Last night I was involved in the Comic Relief stand-up event in Manchester to end all. A world-record 24 hour marathon involving about 120 acts. I was second on. Second in a line-up of 120. Wow. I was in a good mood, even though it was going to be a late night performance and an even later-night drive home. Somehow I reckoned I could do anything. My comedian brain was engaged and I was raring to go.

I got to the gig and there was a photographer around. He asked me for £5 for photos he was going to take of me during the show and in general. After he snapped a few during my soundcheck (and I really liked them), I acceded. I may be tight with money, but it was for charity and my vanity. I can't resist either. Some of the shots he got made me look like a serious musician/comedian. I was happy with them. I should get a CD in the near future. Nice.

My confidence was buoyed by the interview I gave for the radio, where I also got to play a song. They wanted a clean one. I did my spoof Eurovision song-contest entry. I cleaned up a few swear words and even took out the line about the pope being a nazi. Well, no need to cause needless offence, I thought. It went well.

But for every action there is an equal and opposite. I'd performed live on the radio without making a mistake and I'd been pleasant and inoffensive. The audience of this gig looked like a short-attention-span sick-minded bunch to me. A number of them were comedians, who wouldn't find my usual shit especially funny. I wanted to do my sickest material, in the assumption that it would either bomb or be a legendary performance - preferably the second.

Despite my best attempts to signpost the sick material as ridiculous and hedonistic, the novelty wore off before I'd completed the song (I did the noble thing and stopped it at the 2/3rds mark, rather than plough on to the end - though I didn't admit that I'd done that). Not only that, but someone (well, two people, or maybe just one person with a nodding mate) took real offence at it.

I'm not going to defend the song, nor even explain what's offensive about it. What I would say is that it contains combinations of words that I would not use in polite conversation, or be proud to say that I use on stage. That's the point of the song. It's a ridiculous saying of the wrong. As the complainant pointed out, it's not comic fodder, and it's a lazy use of cheap laughs. I'd perhaps disagree a little with the word lazy, since it was a carefully crafted combination of cheap button pushes. However, the fact that someone came up to be in distress after the gig shows that I wasn't being funny (in this man's opinion at least). To cause offense when you intend it - perhaps to silence a heckler - is a good thing. To cause offense at a charity gig, where the offense has been taken by a charitable person who feels like the stage has been used to make a mockery of the very cause that everyone's there to support... well, that's above unfortunate. It's just wrong.

Now, I'm feeling a little guilty about the effect of my ill-judged decision. But only slightly. Most people would brush it off and say that the pursuit of the laugh comes first - anything else is secondary. I think the comedians were generally supportive, rather than embarrassed. Indeed, one of them steamed into the situation with this guy, who was actually being quite reasonable in his complaint to me, and leaped to my defence. As it was, I was going to take the guy out of the way a little and give him the full unqualified apology that he deserved. I might even have been able to distance the gig a bit more from the material he disagreed with, but the intervention got in the way of my diplomacy.

I'm left with the unresolved resolution we reached. The guy left (well, he was probably going to find something offensive at some point) and I couldn't truly defend my right to sing joyous songs about the most disgusting of subject matter. I'm in a quandary. I love the work of Bill Bailey and he can do his songs in front of an audience of virtually any age range without having to defend his right to do it. He doesn't have to resort to filth. It's just cheerful silliness. In fact, it's exactly what I want to do. Yet I stand up in pubs and sing silly songs with occasional rude words/euphemisms in them. Not what I'd plan for myself. So why do I do it? Well, I find it funny too... and I do it well... so I do it.

And I find dark humour funny as well. The think you're not supposed to say, under the right circumstances of trust, is deeply cathartic to say because you know you can and it's not going to be taken the wrong way. Unless it is. Or if you say something that's so wrong that it's almost too wrong and people laugh at it, then perhaps it's just simply surreal. Absurd, even. And I love the absurd. "Did he just say that? Did we all just sing along with those words? In that way? Why? That's just weird!" That's dead centre of my humour. Dark and surreal stuff can both achieve the same frisson in my brain - misfiring synapses, ending in amusement.

Unless it goes wrong.

Let it not go wrong.

Let me learn better how to judge whether I can do the naughty naughty hedonistic pleasure of my wrongness from time to time. Or let me buy the audience's trust more readily...

There were moments last night with this firecracker of a song, when it was genuinely funny that it was unfolding the way it was... but it backfired. And when a firecracker backfires, then there's a mixed metaphor somewhere.

It's not like I'm even a controversial sort of person, or an in-your-face guy with issues. For goodness' sake, I'm sitting here, as I write this, listening to a Mary Poppins soundtrack. I like cuddly bouncy things. Somehow I can just get a bit wrong sometimes.

However, having unburdened myself a bit on this blog, and having chatted on the subject with gusto, and with my passenger back to Reading last night, I can't feel like I'm taking too much baggage away from the situation. A gig is a throwaway thing. It's history immediately. A smile and a hug (thanks to those who gave both) is enough to put it to rest.

Anyhoo. I had some really positive moments last night and the photos will be a nice reminder of it. Plus, I leeched a recording of my radio interview from the net. Listen again is ace. Downloading a radio interview with yourself is narcissism in extreme... and it's also surreal. Plus, I was interviewed by a woman in the venue, but she was collaborating with a guy in the studio, so I didn't hear all of the conversation at the time. Now I have. It was interesting to see how it all fit together and how the awkward pauses sounded.

The life of a comedian, eh? Who would want that!?

It's the end of the week and I'm quite tired. No surprise, then. It's been a busy week. However, I'm feeling vaguely sane (albeit a bit more chatty than I normally am - apologies to all victims of that problem). I'm awake and I've got a gig tonight that I'm looking forward to in a perverse way, and I've got on a shirt that's too small for me.

My weight is now starting to feel like a problem ready to bother me. I really need to get back on the wagon properly. Next week. Definitely. I will be putting weight on steadily at the moment and if I don't sort it out now, it will be screwed forever.

Today, one of my work colleagues left the company forever. It feels quite significant that a lot of people have left the company recently; a lot of them have been here for a long time. Sure, working for a company has its own natural lifespan and cycles, and sometimes it's just your time to go. However, it's a shame to lose someone who was such a positive influence on one's working practices.

Still, the end of a contract of employment doesn't have to be the end of life as we know it. It's opportune that the day of this colleague's departure was also the day that we decided to see a performance of a character comedian that I've always felt I should enjoy, but not quite got into, and which he really likes but hasn't seen live. Though sometimes the life of going to gigs can keep me apart from the people I know, it can also be a good focal point at which to meet people I know with a shared interest in something, or something like that.

I'll blether about the gigging and the DIY separately for people who like me to categorise my life for easier digestion in blog form.

Other Friday news is that I've finally managed to get my removable hard drive working. It's been a long haul, but the third replacement drive arrived yesterday, went into the assembly in seconds and worked right away. That's that, then. I have all my music on this drive, which I own, rather than on my desktop PC (where it was impeding performance like a mo' fo') and I'm happy.

I was also tasked, yesterday, with copying some DVDs, which is something I've never done before. I assumed my PC, which has a DVD burner, would have appropriate software and capability for doing the job. It worked a treat. Simple. Yesterday was a day of electronic things just doing their job. It was good.

I have managed to make some software work today, though I feel a lot of the day has been occupied with admin or meeting things. I really need to make a cut-off point today and think of next week as being the start of a whole new project - one where I'm rapidly heading towards some sort of impressive success. I think this week is the week where I can tickle the outstanding problems. So that's what I've done. I'm less impressed with it than others might be.

I know I've been burning the candle at both ends this week, and next week has some candle burning in it too, but it's more bounded by time away from the office, which is better - more restful. In fact, to take the candle metaphor to its ridiculous limit, I haven't so much been burning it at both ends as putting it in the centre of the room and building a bonfire around it. To give you an idea of what I did between leaving the office and returning to it, here is what I achieved:

• Drove home
• Refuelled the car
• Refuelled myself
• Put a litre of oil in the car
• Inspected my plasterwork
• Did some painting
• Copied a DVD 3 times
• Changed clothes twice
• Had coffee and biscuits
• Drove to Manchester
• Went on BBC Radio Manchester for an interview
• Went on stage and performed in a world record attempt
• Drove back from Manchester
• Listened to 3 comedy albums
• Went to bed
• Woke up in time to return to work

It's not a bad to-do-list for an evening. Yikes.

Tonight is a particularly exciting prospect for me. I've decided to stay in the office until 8.45. I've got a gig tonight in Southampton, which I'll go to on time. However, there's a Bill Bailey gig on the radio and I'm going to record it on my PC. It's really that good. When I've finished enjoying the gig. I'll drive to mine and perform. It's a night out. Well, in. Well, out really.

I should probably prepare myself for a late night in the office, but I don't know how. So, I'll see what happens. Maybe my PC, which needs serious defragmenting, will be defragmented by the time the gig starts.

Maybe I should have thought through what I want to say in this post before writing it. It's a bit fragmented too. Like my nerves. I've got to hang on until Sunday before I can really sleep without interruption. I'm sure my brain will continue to work.

This week's Friday 200 is something I've always wondered about. A story written in the 2nd person.

Labels: Friday200

A comedian should expect a large proportion of what he or she writes to fail when tried out in front of a live audience. Spoken material can be built up a few sentences at a time, and, as a result, if a line doesn't work, you drop it and forget it ever existed.

With songs there's a lot more to do before the song comes into existence in the first place. You have to pluck the concept out of your imagination, go through a couple of drafts of lyrics, find a tune that suits it, rewrite to make the words hug the tune, ensure everything rhymes as it's meant to, rehearse it, rehearse some more, and then you have maybe a minute or two of potential hilarity to share.

When I first perform a song it almost always goes wrong. There have been some notable exceptions to this. In the case of the notable exceptions, which have become instant bankers - virtually never failing - the songs have almost written themselves and I've instinctively known how to play them. However, I don't necessarily believe that something needs to work first time out for it to prove to be as funny as it was in my head when I wrote it.

Last night I tried to play my third attempt at a McFly parody. Why I'm parodying McFly is a good question, and there is a reason, but it's not worth explaining. I think I probably diluted the effect of the material with reference to how it's a McFly spoof, but I was really trying to dispell the notion that you had to be a McFly fan to get this song. It's a self-contained piece.

Just for completeness, here's my McFly parodying history:

• November 2005: Wrote "We can write a jaunty tune" - which used McFly's musical tricks to talk about the band
• July 2006: Tried to show how McFly make a cheery song out of their superficial understanding of serious subjects - "Weekend Dad" was the song which jauntily sang about the troubles of the divorced father. It could have worked, but had a first version which overlapped another comedian's spoken material (unintentionally) so I dropped it. There's a rewrite, but it's never been tried
• March 2007: Wrote "Only a real woman" - a McFly-esque song, sung from the perspective of a 33 year old. This takes the standard McFly setup of seeing a pretty teenage girl across the street and singing about it

What happens in an adult man's life that he takes three attempts to write McFly songs. In all three cases, I'm really pleased with the musical treatments I've given the songs, and each has a good degree of wordcraft in the lyrics. I wrote three separate songs, rather than try to reword the same tune. I really want to do the whole boy band thing. I think I need to work on it some more. I think my song is funny.

However, it's possible that the song isn't funny. The only laugh I got with that routine last night was with the alternative title. I decided, during the pre-show rehearsal, to throw the alternative title out there. It's not how I would name the song myself, but it's a good gag of a title. I've told the audience that I'm about to sing a song about a teenage girl and that I'm 33. So I call the song "She's legal, but it's still wrong". Part of the reason I wanted to do this was to make the song less about pedophilia (as in, not at all about it) and more about the fact that the gulf between 19 and 33 is a big one. I'm too old to date an 18 year old. It's not just what's culturally acceptable. 18 year olds are, for the most part, children. That's quite a scary thought. I remember when being 14 seemed mature.

The problem with the song might be that it's intended for a 30+ audience, but relies on a cultural reference for a 20-something (or younger) to get. Maybe it is too confusing. Maybe only I get it.

Or maybe I didn't do it justice on first performance. Where the first performance of spoken stand-up involves just talking about something and trying to make it make sense, I've got to make my sung material hold together musically. So, I'm trying to remember the exact lyrics, the chords, the strumming pattern, the body language, the tune and the tempo (and I always end up going faster than planned, making everything else harder). Maybe there's not always room for the actual funny. A song can block out interruption. I know enough about comic songwriting to know how to signpost a gag and where to put a pressure point (I'll give you a clue - it's usually the key word on the second line of a rhyming couplet), but sometimes that's not enough.

In general, if an audience don't go for the first couple of punchlines, then they'll rule out any further "getting it". My song fell flat last night.

Do I do it tonight? Maybe. I'll see.

The problem with stuff I've spent a while preparing is that I get quite attached to it. It's like a child. I don't want it to fail, or flounder, or die. I made it to be happy and get laughs. Songs are also infectious blighters - they get inside you. The tune for "Only a real woman" is still in my head and I really want it to work. Maybe it needs a harder hitting start. I laughed when I thought of the first punchline. It's really subtle, but it's a totally ludicrous thing to sing in a song. Even so, I really hammer home a few things in the middle of the song. The final section is so true-to-life that, again, I think it's absurd to be in song form...

...but just because it's absurd doesn't mean it's a definite laugh.

You can hear a version of the song here - it's a rehearsal recording, so lower your expectations accordingly.

I'm attracted to the subject of racism like a moth to a flame. I know that if you play with fire you get burnt, yet I can't quite resist this subject, despite having had the occasional singe from it. I know that intellectually I'm not a racist. I also know that this country's culture gives me prejudices relating to all sorts of attributes, be they cultural, racial, social, religious, whatever. That's human nature. If I see a nun I will act differently towards her than a woman in a hijab or a girl in a shell suit, or someone in a business outfit of some sort. There. I've said it.

Thing is, I love the power of words and ideas to make people react. My mistakes with use of humour on the subject of racism is misinterpreting the effect that humour has had, or not making clear my position, or not gaining the trust of the audience to believe that position. It's hard. The more you protest, the more you may as well be branding yourself a racist.

I came up with a stand-up routine last night, which I think is very funny. I know that I can't do it. It makes a point or two, but is more based on people sensitivities about words and how words should not have a power unless they're used in the context of that power. I write that here and even I'm not sure I believe it. It's a reasonable rationale, but perhaps part of the glee from this routine comes from the ability to say the unsayable - an ability I don't think I've proved I actually have. But let's say you have the right to say the things you shouldn't say, then you'd be chuffed to use that ability.

Here's a routine I don't expect I would perform. I've put it in a box to demonstrate that this is a comic routine and not some racial tirade. It's to be taken as a humourous attempt:



Some of that routine is bracketed with the material I sometimes use about racism, but the middle section (virtually all of the routine, in fact) involving the power of words, is the bit I don't feel I could do. Even though there are some good poo gags in there.

I managed to wake up this morning later than planned - no surprise - but not too late. I was expecting a plasterer at 8.30, and I awoke at 8.25. I had been dozing since about 7.30, and had somehow got myself confused enough to believe that it was still 8. I managed to move, but I couldn't quite get out of bed. Then I thought I heard the doorbell go. So, I whacked jeans on over my pyjamas and went to investigate. It had been. But I had not, as far as they could tell, left them waiting. Good. I don't want them to think I'm a lazy-ass guy who can't haul his ass out of bed.

Then I asked them if they could wake me up tomorrow morning when they arrive. I explained that I'm a lazy-ass who can't get out of bed. Well, I actually explained that I have a late-night return tonight and that a kick on the door in the morning, if I'm not up to meet them, would do me a favour. They understood that it wasn't actual laziness.

Well, I'm paying for them to do the work, they may as well help me with other stuff.

I've left them biscuits, a kettle, a bucket to flush the loo with, and a room to plaster that will involve a lot of running up the stairs with buckets of plaster, since there's no room to set up anything bigger in the bathroom. Sorry.

Still, by the weekend, I'll have a plastered bathroom and my downstairs hall ceiling will be well beauty.

I always knew this week would be tiring. Well, I didn't "always" know. I knew before it started. It hasn't disappointed me in terms of how tiring it has been. It has met my expectations bang on. Well done, the week.

Last night's plans were made months ahead. Then, a few days ago, they were changed. I was going to double up. I had a gig in Farnham and another was offered to me in Maidenhead. Doubling up is always challenging, even when the distances between gigs are short. In this case, I was told that I'd be on stage at 9.15 at the first gig and that I'd need to arrive at the second for 10.15 to be ready to close it.

Thank goodness that the second gig, the double-up, was pulled (or at least I was sacked from it). I didn't go on stage until 9.50 last night. The prospect of doubling up would have been a building stress/impossibility. It just wouldn't have worked. Had I opened the show last night I could have done the doubling, but I'm not as good an act as the person who did open the show.

Indeed, the opener absolutely ripped. I think maybe I was laughing harder than the rest of the audience in a few places, and it's one of the first times in a while in a live comedy club that I've heard a routine that's actually made my face squeeze up with glee so much that I can barely see or breathe. A very good act indeed. Nice guy too - gave me (at my request) a few useful tips after the gig.

My downfall, was due to a combination of factors, probably including how I felt I couldn't overlap the first guy's material/tricks (some of which I have common ground with), the fact that I haven't done a gig in a couple of weeks, the fact that I wasn't at full strength (with words not quite coming out of my mouth when I wanted them to), and the fact that I insisted on trying a new song on this crowd. I didn't die on my arse. I did have a flat section. I also had a slower start than I prefer. Yet there were sections when I got the whole room, and people were generally nice to me after I'd been on.

Having said that, I had a gig downer the moment I'd left the stage. A wave of disappointment hit me. I know I can do better. But, as I was saying to someone before the gig, the advantage of having a busy diary and having done around 400 gigs, is that each individual gig is such a smart part of the whole that it doesn't necessarily matter if one isn't quite perfect.

My ex-girlfriend knows me all too well. I had intended (and I told her this) to leave the gig after my spot, go home and do some DIY. Of course, I stayed around for the headliner and to say goodbye to the other acts etc etc. So, I didn't return to Reading until just before midnight. I stopped over at her house for a shower (she wasn't in) and then went home to bed. My life is surreal, sure. Thankfully, the primary cause for bizarreness is back under my control. Silly combinations of gigging and running round the country and wearing myself out are much more the primary stupidity in my life, rather than the fact that I still rely on my ex-girlfriend for washing facilities.

I arrived home with a woozy head and a sense of exhaustion. The thing is that I've not really done a great deal of the hard stuff this week, yet. Tonight will be the really hard bit, and then keeping it together until the weekend is out will also be tricky. Next week has a Newcastle trip, but I have a morning's lie-in to use to enable me to recover.

I remember when I was doing this while still living in Newcastle. I was also spending weekends with my girlfriend and driving back on the red eye at 3am on Monday mornings. I was tired, but I don't remember it taking only a couple of late nights to make me so sluggish. Apparently, I'm getting older. Either that, or I'm out of practice. Yeah. It must be that I'm out of practice. Once I get back into the pattern of requiring little sleep and being able to function with a tired body, I'll be well on top of this.

In truth, though I woke up quite slowly this morning, I feel fairly chipper today. My brain isn't lagging far behind and my bones don't ache. Let's see how I feel tomorrow morning.

In a post-work, pre-gig act of time-filling, I've been looking at the things which people do Google searches on and which bring them to my blog. So, here are some more Google Search questions answered:

• body reactions to di - not sure if you mean "di" as in "Lady Diana Spencer", in which case I wouldn't expect your body to react to her at all, unless it's some psychosomatic shock about her death, in which case I say - "It's been ten years. Get over it". Unless you're like a relative, in which case take all the grieving time you need.
• sell your stuff on ebay station road whitley bay - yes, even if you live in Whitley Bay, you can still sell your stuff on eBay. They haven't put any statute of limitations in. Just because an item has been stored in Whitley Bay, doesn't mean it's a lesser item. Though perhaps lie about your location in the item description, just to be on the safe side.
• parki - Is this a misspelling? Are you being a racist? Do you mean Michael Parkinson - the chat show host and person whose Sunday morning radio show I miss, not because it's not on anymore, but more because I'm usually sleeping, rather than listening. It's a shame. I used to do the washing up on a Sunday morning with Parki playing in the background. They were happy times. Now I haven't even got the capacity to dirty enough plates to warrant washing up. Or maybe you meant "It's a bit parki outside" in which case it's "Parky".
• mazda 626 - yes this is my car. It's a Mazda 626. It's a good car, though I got overtaken by a bloomin' Toyota Prius the other day, and the car burns oil. Perhaps I need something more arrogant. Maybe after I've blown all my money on house repairs.
• arrowspeed tyres - these are the tyres I was looking at when I got my car retyred in August. I think I went for Pirellis in the end, though.
• challenge mitre saw - sounds like a good idea for a new TV programme - a bit like Challenge Anneka. In this show, Anneka Rice gets strapped to a table with a mitre saw - the winner is whichever is still working by the end of the show.
• homemade bridge - nice if you're making models, not so good if other people have brought their jam to the coffee morning. Conversely, if your home is across a river and you make your own shortcut, there are a series of civil engineering tricks you may have missed out on. My advice is don't.
• tesco - my second home.

Right, well that's that. I'm now going to go and look for a Starbucks in a Sainsbury's. Wish me luck.

Since I have been mining my recorded archives for my amusement, here are a couple of links to some songs that have been online all along. I used to think it was funny to record a song at half speed and then double the speed to make me sound like a hamster. I still think it's funny. Though this first one starts slowly, I love the ending on this version of Besame Mucho. I was singing so slowly and deliberately, that it sounds very comic at the end there.

A friend of mine was into hamsters and I decided to make her a barbershop-quartet of hamsters. This second song has pointless lyrics and no ending, and the harmonies aren't truly barbershop, nor are they what I would make them if I were to do it again now. However, it's quite a sweet little ditty for 16 bars or so. The hamster quartet. Enjoy.

Well, I just learned something. I was about to trot out the old saying about the best laid plans of mice and men often going awry. As is now becoming the norm with such things, I pondered the exact wording of the saying, who had said it, whether it was just something from a John Steinbeck novel, or, basically, what.

Well, I found out. There's a poem by Robert Burns called To A Mouse which starts with the line "Wee sleekit cow'rin' tim'rous beastie" and progresses to "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men; Gang aft a-gley". "Gang aft a-gley" - that's a phrase and a half. So, the famous quote is actually a paraphrasing of this. Why "of mice and men", well, the poem's addressed to a mouse. All this time, I wondered about the somewhat surreal suggestion that mice and men have planning in common, and it's just happenstance. If Burns had been ploughing a field and found a rabbit, then perhaps Steinbeck would have written Watership Down. No, wait, that doesn't make sense.

I think I've mined this subject enough for now.

I think we all learned something.

Onto the monotony. The plans for last night went a-gley for sure. However, the night was a success in its own way. I had originally planned to do a night's DIY, but there was a meeting in London for a Sketch Group that I help out with. They were talking about going to the Edinburgh Fringe, something that I realise I've been doing for the last 4 years. In fact, I've even produced the following shows at the Fringe (or at least paid towards the production of):

• 2004
  • The Musical!
  • When Hedges Attack
  • Rehab's For Quitters
• 2005
  • Wife Idol The Rivals
  • The Great Big Comedy Picnic
• 2006
  • The Great Big Comedy Picnic

So, I guess I know a bit about the process of spending a lot of money in the name of entertainment.

I had decided that I would bracket this meeting with DIY. I went home from work at an earlier time and did an hour's painting (a little more, in fact) in my house. Then, I washed my brush (paintbrush, not a euphemism for something), walked to the station and got a train to London. I'd planned to be home by 11pm and get another couple of hours' painting and other tasks done.

The best laid plans of overweight comedians and DIY enthusiasts often gan a whoopsie (there, I've made my own). At about 9pm, someone suggested we get a round of drinks in. I left the pub at 11. I got on a train at 11.45. I was back in Reading at 12.45. I got a lift from the station home, which was nice, but the bottom line is that I had, instead of rushing back home to do some DIY, decided to have a couple of pints of strong lager (by which I do mean 2, not several), and talk bollocks with people in a pub.

I enjoyed it far more than I deserved to, the work-avoiding fool that I am.

As a result, I gave myself a little lie-in this morning.

Despite having a gig tonight, I will do some more painting once I get home.

Unless my plans "gang a-gley".

Surely not two nights running!?

If I'm writing about 40,000 words of this blog a month. And I am. And if a novel is about 120,000 words. And it is. Then you don't have to be Albert Enstein, Albert Tatlock, or even Prince Albert and his amazing penis ring to work out that I could just as easily be writing 4 novels a year in my spare time, rather than this crap.

Well, "just as easily" is probably a bit of an exaggeration.

"Not as easily" would be more accurate. I write this shit and then forget about it. I don't try to make it hold together or form a single coherent pattern. I just blether.

Blether blether blether. That's what I do.

I open my mind, give my fingers the chance to do what they're now doing almost automatically, and form sounds into words into sentences on the screen. I almost always have a blank Windows Notepad (for that is my editor of choice) sitting on my desktop, like a blank sheet of diary, waiting to be scrawled on by my over-fertile allotment of word-soil.

Word-soil?

Ridiculous.

I was trying to explain the merits of blogging to a girl on a train as I went to London last night. I came across as a bit of a geeky zealot. So I did myself justice, then. I think the point is that the process of writing is simultaneously unreal (it's only words after all... and in some cases not even words - suyzygakdiyf - it's not even a sound!) and also a way of revealing the truth. Sure, I hold stuff back when I'm writing. I'm not going to divulge everything I think, because I have to have some private head-space. However, I'm also revealing more about my inner state with the way that I write than I'm necessarily aware of at the time.

So, you might read a particular post and think - "mmm, he's not got a healthy distance about that", or "mmm, he looks on the brink of total mental collapse" and you might be right. I'd probably be unaware of it at the time of writing, though I do often read back and see how nutso I sounded in the past.

The process of accounting for myself in words gives me a constant rationale of what I'm doing and why. So, though this may be the world's longest and most unpublishable novel, it's doing me some good to write it.

I'm a trivial person. Of that there's no doubt. There are some none-earth-shattering things in my life which cause me quite a lot of head-time. I will share with you two bad things and then two good things. None of these are important in the grand scheme of things.

Bad 1 - My Mobile
That bloomin' mobile phone is a nuisance. I need to reset it because it keeps wearing its own battery down by constantly lighting up for no reason. To reset it, I first need to copy the contacts out of it. To do that I need to connect it to the computer and I just can't get myself motivated to do it.

Then there's the fact that it's a pile of shit. The software in it is just total bumsticks.

Bad 2 - External Hard Drive
My attempt to save some money by ordering components and building my own external hard drive, making some money back by selling some identically specced duplicates on eBay, has fallen on its arse, after I've had to return not one but two of the hard drives I've received. One of the returned ones was the replacement for the first. Not surprisingly, the compnay that supplies the drives is questioning whether I know what I'm doing. So am I.

Except I do. I will beat this thing.

Good 1 - Borat
I bought the Borat DVD last week and I watched it last night. I hooted again. I laughed at the standard "big fat naked guy" joke, which will always be funny. I laughed at the extras. I laughed at the bulk of the movie and I laughed some more. It was funny. It make me want to wee.

Good 2 - The Forgotten Songs
The advantage of recording gigs is that I end up with a version of the songs I write, perform once, and then forget about. There are a few such songs which I would never dream of performing on stage... but why? Maybe they could be fixed? Maybe they aren't stand-up friendly, but are good in themselves? Maybe they're just memories of times when I wrote more than the usual shit I perform gig in gig out.

So, on Friday, when I was driving to Leeds, I listened to some old recordings. I'm building up a collection of some of my own rarities. Maybe I'll bring some of them back out. Maybe not. Either way, it make me smile.

It make?
I'm just using the term "it make me" as a tribute to Borat.

What's the bloody point of taking my sandwich order if you're going to forget it? What's the point of asking me every day for over a year whether I want spread, when I never do? What's the point of asking if I want my roll cut in half if, when I say no, you go ahead and cut it in half anyway. What's the point of earning money, breathing and eating, if all you do with your life is sit on your arse at home getting fat watching crap on TV, just so you can come back to work the following day to talk about it at the exclusion of the work you were supposed to be doing, which might earn you a shred of self-esteem if you did it well?

Just a thought.

That's the new, more accurate, description of DIY. DSWSFS. In the case of doing something with noone for myself, then it's equivalent to DIY. On the other hand, doing something with Ol for Ol (yes, Ol, you got a mention), still counts as DSWSFS. It's also DIFSE (doing it for someone else).

The point is that, for the last 3 days, I've done something involving a house. I think that in all cases, the work has been carried out with enthusiasm and according to the best emergent plan. I'm pleased with the work. I'm also slightly chuffed that my shower-installing-type-man complimented me on my skirting boards, even though we both know they're a DIY job (especially in the corner where they go up by an inch in only 20 inches or so).

Anyway, compliments aside, I'd like to catalogue what's been achieved in the last few days. I'll work backwards. I think that a facet of the work done recently has been the development of a suitable ad hoc plan and then the completion of tasks within that plan. In other words, you review where things really are, you determine a discrete task that will get you a step forward in the right direction, choosing something at the top of the priority list (as well as the most possible thing) and then you bloody get on with it.

Home Improvement
Last night I planned to spend about two hours sanding some woodwork in the living room. I did neither two hours' work, nor did I do any sanding. That's the beauty of adaptive planning. When I returned home, I realised that the room I was going to turn into a vault of dust, contained a bunch of my builder's stuff, that he probably wouldn't want to be so dusty, and which I didn't want to either move or crawl around. I decided to jack it in for the night.

Then I decided not to jack it in. I want to get stuff done. Start some inertia and the inertia will build. So, I looked at tasks I could do. Two stood out. There was an electrical cable, which had been surface mounted, which my electrician had submerged into a cavity in the wall. I believe the term is chasing. It has been chased into the wall. However, the cavity hadn't been replastered. So I had a section of plaster patching I could do in order to get this wire fully out of site and wall-paper-over-able. The other major task was the fully sanded room. The woodwork in that room, including skirting board and wooden window-surround (not window-frame - the windows are metal double-glazing units), all needs painting.

So, not two hours of sanding. Four hours of painting instead (with a side order of some plaster-patching. I had to wire in a replacement light-switch too, and work by the light of a plug-in lamp, when I was plastering, so as to avoid using wet plaster around live wires. Just a precaution - everything was insulated.

"Everything was insulated"
That's possibly the best description of the weekend's work in Leeds. The sheer enormity of the Leeds project is such that, if you view it incorrectly, you may as well conclude that you could do nothing and achieve the same as doing something. The house needs so much work doing to it, that even a day's work is a mere drop in the ocean. From afar, the result of a day's work is so small that you could easily say that the distant view is identical, whether you do the work or not. Alternatively, you could stand in the place, with so many possible jobs to do, that just to review the to-do list will exhaust you and crush your spirit, thus making it impossible to start any one thing.

The point of going along to join in the work was two-fold. Firstly, working in a pair with a good friend is always good fun. It has the benefit of providing a worthwhile activity, while simultaneously making room for conversation and general amusement. Plus, working as a team is always a rewarding activity and can cause both parties to spur each other on to work harder and get the job done. Though I seem to find reserves of motivation sometimes when working alone, it's the hardest thing to do, when there's nobody to notice if you slack off. Working with someone else, who can spot if you're not pulling your weight, and who will be impressed if you give a good push and get the job done well/rapidly/beautifully... well, it's instant joy and motivation.

Second-fold, there was the aim to get the Leeds project back underway. Inertia builds. Breaking through the inertia and building some momentum was intended to be a gift to my Leeds friend. I think we achieved that. Well.

On the first morning, we had about an hour, once we'd got to the house after breakfast. Very poor planning. We had a two hour lunchbreak planned (so we were like professional builders). What can you do in an hour? Well, we found a job that could be done in an hour. So we do it. It involved a lintel. The roof was propped up with props, rather than a lintel. When we were finished, the props came down, but the roof didn't. Mentalismio.

Then that long lunch-break.

Then we returned and did various things relating to insulation. There was some plaster boarding first, then it was time to put up roof insulation. We started, devised techniques for doing it well and started to get some momentum up. We called it a night at about the point in time when we ran out of materials and still had time to buy some from the DIY shop when it closed.

The DIY shop was staffed by a nasty chav girl, who yattered into her phone while walking down the aisle with me to find a price for some drywall screws. Yuck.

An evening meal out, in which I renamed the waiting staff, and then there was sleeping, ready for a morning start.

We retrospectively earned the greasy-spoon-style sandwiches we bought at a different DIY shop, along with some other materials, by completing the roof insulation challenge. We devised special techniques for fitting the insulation into gaps and between roof joists. It was fun. We ended up with a job that took slightly longer than planned, but which we could be proud of.

And that's what it's all about.

Apart from the overrunning (though I'd technically used planned slack-time to make the overrunning ok).

Labouring
It has been an enjoyable few days with the labouring. There's something relaxing about doing physical labour. That's good because there's a lot of it needs doing in the next few months, and I'm probably going to be stressed and tired for a lot of it... so hopefully it will make me relaxed and non-tired.

The key to it is the bit where you earn the chance to step back and look at what you just made and go "yeah - that's good and I made it".

Labels: DIY

There's the PLS - Patronising Laminated Sign. Then there's the PPE - Patronising Pointless Email. I think that this next one counts as an FPPE.


Putting aside the inverted commas in the subject line, which for me always has echoes of someone bending their fingers in the air as they "say" the word, so as to point out that it's not what they actually "mean", what does this email mean? Do people need to be warned that if there's stuff happening as they walk past it, they should not walk into it? Is this a "Please look where you're going"? Is this a "Sorry for any disruption caused"? It's not. There's no apology for disruption. I think it means one of two things:



or



Surely, nobody in this building needs a patronising email to tell them to watch out for builders. Surely people should be treated with respect. Here's how I would have worded the email:



Of course that would require the person organising the works to give a shit.

Which I doubt.

Note to self: while the name "AshleyPedia" rolls off the tongue and probably describes, quite accurately, what this website has become, going as far as setting up www.ashleypedia.org (or something similar) has two distinct disadvantages:

• It's a bit vain (a bit!?)
• It's a bit close to being branded a pedophile (albeit with sound, rather than idea)

So, I'm not going to use the name AshleyPedia. There. That was easy.

It's been two weeks so far this month that I've not had a single gig. This is good in the sense that it has allowed me to get on with house things, see friends, and generally stay sane. However, in the remainder of the month I have 7 gigs definitely in the diary another one pretty much sorted and then I've also applied for a couple more. So March may end up a 10 gig month in its latter half. That's the equivalent of a 20 gig month for the duration of the gigging period. Gulp.

I can't say no. More specifically, I can't stop myself trying to push my way into any gig that looks even vaguely available. The reason for this is fairly obvious. I'm rebelling against the past situation I had, when I had responsibilities to ther people, which meant that I had to keep control over how much silliness I indulged. I'm also rebelling against the received wisdom which suggests that you can't do much during the week because you're at work. This is nonsense. You work for 8 hours, you sleep for about 6 - so what about the other 10 hour? I think we all know... Perhaps sleeping for 6 hours seems a bit mean, but I don't think I sleep much more than that on a work day. Even if I'm not out gigging, I'll be awake. The point is that the time can be flexed to fit everything in.

However, I'm looking at this week's plan and, when you factor in some other requirements I have, like trying to keep my DIY moving along, I'm actually a little fearful that I'll just snap. It's this fear that keeps me keen, I guess. I'll write a DIY post next, to talk about all the tasks I've recently achieved, but for the time being, let's just say that I've got a load of DIY to do, and my definitely spare evening (this evening) has now been double booked - I'm nipping to London tonight to a meeting, regarding a sketch show I help with. So, if I'm to achieve any DIY tonight, it will have to happen later on. I suppose I could do 11pm to 1am on the DIY tonight, in order to give myself a bit of a kick in the right direction - then it will be almost as though I hadn't lost tonight to something else. Almost.

The weekend looks like a busy place too... though I have to do some DIY then. It's essential. The house must not stop. £40 for each day I stand still.

Quick week plan:

Tuesday: Meeting in London
Wednesday: Open spot near to the office - so maybe some DIY after?
Thursday: A comic relief benefit gig in Manchester - very late night, though. Very. Late.
Friday: Wake up. Wake up. WAKE UP. Then work. Then a gig in Southampton.
Saturday: Another lie in is probable, but should not be allowed. DIY! Then I have agreed to do a gig in Dover. Another charity gig. So leave home 3.30pm. Dover! What am I thinking!?
Sunday: I can lie in on Sunday. I'll have to. I'll be too knackered. Then I can do some household things. But I have a charity gig in London on Sunday night. Shouldn't be too taxing.
Monday: I have to rush out of the office a little earlier than usual to go to a gig in London, for which I need to arrive early to learn a dance routine. Dance routine!
Tuesday: I have the day off. However, I'm going to wake up a little earlier than usual and head up North for a gig. That's how I take the day off.
Wednesday: I will have returned late night from my northern gig. I will sleep until late morning and then go to work for the half-day. Then onto the DIY...

It's a lot to do in those magical 10 spare hours every day. In terms of why I'm doing the gigs, they're all unpaid and they're mainly for charity. The one up north is for the sheer hell of it. The one near the office is an open spot which should, if it goes well, contribute towards getting a reputation as someone who ought to get paid work. But, come on, I'm not an idiot. I can read the above list and see that it's way too much to fit into my life, without the risk of compromising something. I fully expect to miss out on sleep and DIY progress, but for some reason I refuse to believe that it will be impossible to get through the plan.

I recently, in fact it was on my birthday, had the benefit of seeing someone else's view of how busy I am. Someone commented to me that I, apparently, run around like a blue-arsed fly for most of my life. It was a received opinion, based, perhaps, on previous weeks when I've been as busy as the above. I couldn't see it as a true reflection of my life when I heard it. Comparing that view with the above list, it's obvious. I don't know when to stop. I've got gluttony in my soul, and whether it's food or fun activity, I can't stop myself indulging myself.

So, I'm scared of losing control of things (not least my car on a late night drive home), but I'm resolved to put my shoulders forward and blast my way through this series of challenges. And why not!? I'll appreciate the quiet times more. Or maybe I'll just find them too quiet.

If you want something doing, give it to a busy man.

Talking of people who can sod off. N Power can do one too.

Here are a couple of facts. Firstly, I switched to N Power back in July 2004 when a young girl knocked on my door and randomly calculated that I'd be better off going with her favoured supplier. Never one to be rude to a female house-guest (albeit one paid to come into your house and tell you to switch supplier), I agreed, assuming it may or may not be cheaper (I guess one of those would definitely be true). Over a period of a year and a half, I failed to send them a meter reading, but eventually did, once I'd managed to move out as part of my "leave your home and move down south" scheme. N Power changed my monthly payments from about £40 to about £140 to accommodate the miscalculation and previous backlog of unpaid-for-gas. I rang up, complained and asked if I could pay the backlog and get the monthly total back to something realistic. I was told that I could. It didn't happen. In February this year, I switched suppliers again and they were given meter readings etc. Mid-February I received a reckoning showing that the electricity was in credit and the gas was in debit. I had direct debit set up and rather hoped that they would just direct debit what I owed them and maybe deduct what they owed me.

No.



I put the "I'm a twat" bit in myself. So, within a couple of weeks of calculating final bills, despite having the means to just debit what they want, they're writing threating to send the heavies round. What a bunch of bastards. I particularly don't like the words "debt", "very overdue", "we may appoint a Debt Collection Agency to call at your property" and "this could affect your ability to obtain credit in future". As far as I'm concerned, these terms are reserved for the sort of people who spend above their means, perhaps wear sportswear and worry about whether their kneecaps will be removed for the sake of the last item of sovereign jewelery they bought from some catalogue. Sorry, I'm being all middle class about this. As far as I'm concerned, you don't have debts, you have outstanding invoices.

And what's with the "We want to help and look forward...". What's that like, a small sugaring of the pill? Do their debt collectors stop the kneecapping and setting of their illegal fighting dog on you to make you a nice cup of tea for your trouble, before continuing to smash your face in and take all your electrical items for putting on eBay? Ridiculous!

Anyway, I rang up their call centre today to sort it out. I'd had a weekend of partly stewing over this, and partly rationalising my approach. There's a great Mitchell and Webb sketch where they staff a call centre entirely with children so that people can ring up and shout at them like they're naughty children. I don't know whether it's meant to be a surreal thing, or an off-the-wall stupid thing, or whether the script writers were making a point that, if you're going to ring up and shout at people, it may as well be children as adults because it won't make shouting any more effective. What I do know is that you don't necessarily get anywhere, especially when you're only really dealing with how offended you are, by shouting.

My objectives? To pay what I owe in such a way as doesn't compromise my standards for fairness - i.e. I'm not goint to pay them what I owe them before they pay me what they owe me. Also, I wanted to make it known that I was deeply unsastisfied with being treated as a bad-debtor, given that they hadn't had any trouble with me and had messed me about by putting my monthly utility bill payments through the roof, despite my request to let me pay off this deficit a year ago, rather than have it whittled away with monthly payments.

So, I could have rung up, shouted my head off, made someone either apologise or justify something that wasn't even their fault, and gone out in a blaze of twattishness. Or, I could do something less "Kevin Hutchinson" and sort this out with at least a shred of dignity. So, I rang up and clarified the full situation before starting my complaint. I gathered the totals, the dates of the bills and the strategy we could use to sort it out. I.e. subtract the amount they owe me from the amount I owe them and then pay the resulting amount over the phone by card. We decided that. The guy who helped me, whose name I won't broadcast to the internet, was very nice, very polite and, I think, quite wooed by the logic behind the complaint I then presented to him. I presented the complaint in such a way as to point out that he was the friend/helpful one/reasonable voice, and that we were both to be impressed by how evil this Kevin Twat Hutchinson had been. I think I left him wooed. He agreed to present the issue to his manager as an example of how not to treat a customer.

I paid, I was pleasant, I still got to defend my right not to be threatened with debt collectors, and I almost enjoyed the call.

N Power are still bastards, though, for using their powers to send such evil letters. If only they could manage a letter of apology. Perhaps with Kev Twat's resignation attached...

Start the week as you mean to go on, then. I'm feeling deeply knackered this morning, aching in my bones and needing a jolly good sleep. This is unsurprising. I put effort into the weekend, in terms of trying to be awake before 10, doing labouring in a house, and also making good efforts to enjoy the evening and company. I think that all three of these were achieved, and, when coupled with a pre-8-am wake up this morning (even though I added a snooze facility to that), I'm quite worn out.

In a good way.

This week is the start of a frenetic burst of activity and I haven't time to get all soppy and knackered. So, I'll just have to drink plenty of coffee and live with this apparent exhaustion. There are two evenings this week for me to do my own house-things in, and my plan is to finish the sanding in my living room and generally head towards painting. I haven't decided whether I will actually start any painting. It would be immense if I could at least prime the skirting boards in the downstairs front room, but we'll see.

The bathroom man has put up some of the stud-work and generally prepared for having a toilet. I may not need him to install me a new soil stack. That's probably a good thing. I'm aware that this week hasn't been a massive progress as far as I can see, though it's quite possible that there has been a lot of work done and that the stuff which appears to be big (like making a working toilet or sink) are the easy bits that snap together in 9 minutes after a couple of weeks of solid preparation. I don't know.

There's a plasterer coming this week to do the bathroom and I have opted to have him skim my downstairs hall ceiling too. There aren't many surfaces in the house that I intend to turn into a flat paint finish. The hall ceiling downstairs is surface where it's the preferred option. I wasn't certain, after I'd removed the polystyrene tiles from it (and the block of polyfilla), if this ceiling could just be skimmed (as opposed to boarded and skimmed). I wasn't sure if, had I asked someone to skim it, it would be likely to end up cracked and shit. So, I asked a plasterer, who was in the house as part of the damp-proofing works, whether it would be a good idea to skim the ceiling (as opposed to doing something else to make it flat). His answer was "well, if you want it smooth, it is". I do, and I will. Just with a different plasterer, that's all.

This week is also quite gig intensive. My original plan to double up on Wednesday has been felled. The added gig has been substracted, leaving me where I started. The reason it was withdrawn is down to the fact that someone better offered themselves to replace me. This sounds horrible. Essentially, I was going to have to close the show, which wasn't a natural place for me, but which would have worked. Someone else offered to be in the line-up (I think there may have been a drop out) and could only be put on as a closer. There was no way I could open the show, and no way that this person could open it either. So, my lesser-status, coupled with the risk of me not even turning up on time, was enough to get me dropped from the line-up. That's showbiz folks. However, there's no hard feelings. I'm quite relieved, really. Plus, I'll get to do the gig in a later month. No problems then.

However, I have Wednesday in Farnham, Thursday in Manchester, Friday in Southampton, Sunday in London... there's a possibility of Saturday in Dover (WHY!?)... it's a busy gig week. So tonight and tomorrow night are critical for the DIY. I may come home early on Wednesday (for a gig night) and so some stuff too.

It's going to be a hell of a week.

I'll probably write about the weekend later.

Today I have to go to the dentist.

This post is getting random.

Enough.

This morning's spam email contains an offering from "Sofia Ambro", claiming to offer a "Vacancy From Financial Company". Whoever this person is, they don't understand the use of the indefinite article. This is a total sham of an email and even comes in the form of an image, rather than plain-text, to try to sneak it past the spam filters.



I like the opening "If by any chance you are the person who would like to get an extra income-than you have opened the right email". "Than"? Surely "then"? It should, of course, read - "If by any chance you're a gullible idiot, then I think we may be able to con you out of some money".

What is also near is the way that they claim that FIC Ltd is working on charity projects. They're not criminals after all. No, they're not going to make you rich quickly. They're first going to raise a lot of money for the "National Charity Fund" (or NCF) that famous charity that all criminals pay into.

This is a deeply polite email, but just becasue they're being nice, doesn't mean they aren't killing babies or shooting prostitutes or something.

Another 200ish word writing from the pen (well typewriter) of yours truly. When I was 16 this would have constituted half of an English GCSE assignment. Now, they just flow out of my head in a few minutes (7).

Enjoy.

Labels: Friday200

I've just been reading Hazel's Blog. She writes about a bunch of subjects, but her reviews of Dragons' Den are definitely a highlight.

Note: It's "Dragons' Den" and not "Dragon's Den" as I originally wrote. The reason it's the former is that the people in the room are referred to as "The Dragons", so it must be their den, and so, therefore, must use the plural possessive, not the singular. I thank you.

Following my couple of hours' work at the house, which left me feeling dusty and wishing I'd worn my face mask, I decided to get some food and relax a bit. I could have gone to Subway again, but I'd sort of set my heart on some Peri-peri chicken from Nando's. I used to eat a lot of Nando's chicken, and I really like it. I hadn't had any in a while (I could probably look up the date, but that would be sad - in fact I remember, it was Feb 18th). So, I parked in the car park in the town centre and walked to Nando's, a place I've bought numerous takeaways from and dined at with my ex-girlfriend plus members of her family.

Last night I was alone.

The shop wasn't busy, so I didn't feel especially out of place at my table-for-four-with-single-occupancy. In fact, the chicken was so engrossing, that I didn't really bother too much about my dining alone at all. I did my usual time-filling trick of text swapping.

I relaxed nicely.

After I'd finished, I returned to the car park. The people before me in the queue for the ticket machine were scraping together their two pound car parking fee from silver coins. They had just enough, but their last ten pence's worth was in the form of two five pences. They were struggling to get the machine to accept it. They apologised to me for the delay. I said I didn't mind and that it was nice to watch them paying together as a team. The two women in question were in their mid to late 30's I guess. They seemed more bothered about the inconvenience they were causing me than I would have ever been bothered about it myself. They hit the realisation that their last ten pence, in two five pence installments, was simply not going to work. The machine only takes ten pence pieces, nothing smaller (no, that would be CONVENIENT). At this point, I said "Here, let me." and whacked a ten pence piece into the slot. They were thankful and maybe they wondered why I'd do such a thing. I explained that "I just wanted to be part of the paying team".

In truth, I think I realised that the price of ten pence was less than the inconvenience they were suffering and I just threw it into the machine as a favour. Or, maybe it amused me to join in the paying. Or maybe I could pay ten pence and get myself to the front of the queue to pay for my own ticket. Probably all three. Generally, it felt like a minor bit of generosity on my part would sort out a problem right under my nose. I didn't think twice. In fact, if I'm honest, I'd sort of predicted the problem and already located a ten pence piece just to be on the safe side. The women were grateful for my intercession and thanked me. I shrugged it off. It really was nothing. Then one of them said something which I thought didn't summate my motivation at all - "Ah you've helped some damsels in distress".

Though I'm all for chivalry, I don't think I view women as helpless creatures who need some big strong man to some along and save them from nasty things. I think that attitude is demeaning towards the female gender. Sure, an individual may have needs and I'd like to think that I could step in and shoulder a burden, but just being a girl doesn't make you a damsel or in distress. Still, I smiled and they walked away, and I didn't feel like a sleazy 30-something-singleton, using any excuse to meet available women. Because I'm not. Yet.

As I walked to my car I mused over the exchange. I thought of what I could have said in response. I would not have said this, nor even wanted to, had I thought about it at the time. But it occurred to me that it would have been funny (for an onlooker) if I'd said it. This is one of those Esprit d'escalier moments (see here) - the "thing I should have said". The French gave it this name, because you think of it on the stairs leading away from the encounter. In this case, I was not on some stairs, but here's what went through my mind:

Her: Thank you, you've helped some damsels in distress.
Me: Really? Oh, I would have thought a damsel would be a lot younger.

I chuckled, laughed and guffawed my way to the car.

Then I went to Tesco.

I had a plan for Tesco. I was going to buy some tea bags and some shampoo. That was all.

I spent nearly £50.

It wasn't my fault. I'd decided at some point, in my head, prior to arriving at Tesco, that if I saw the Borat DVD for cheap somewhere I'd buy it. It gave me such a laugh when I saw it at the cinema, that I'd happily see it again. It was under £10 in Tesco. Into the basket it went.

Then my appetite was whetted.

I found a copy of A Clockwork Orange for under £6, and I feel like I ought to see that movie. I've never seen it.

Then I went through the CDs. Then my night became complete. For £3.93, I bought a CD. No, not a CD. A double CD. Chas 'N' Dave. Yes. Chas. 'N'. Dave. They have two apostrophes in their name and they're both in the right places! It was the greatest hits CD with a bonus "knees up" CD. Chas 'N' Dave. Genius! It so surely made my night. It was definitely worth the £4. No I'm not having a breakdown. I bought it ironically, of course. Any-old-iron-ically.

Having said that, you have to be careful of doing things "ironically". There's no such thing as an "ironic wank", as a wise person once said to me. I may have bought this CD expecting to laugh at its inadequacies and appreciate what makes the genre so cringeworthy-yet-somehow-amusing... but I still bought a Chas 'N' Dave CD. I'm 33 and I'm buying Chas 'N' Dave. Whatever next!?

Well, to balance things out, I bought an Oasis CD too. That's not really being "down with the kids". This CD was released during my student days (or thereabouts), so it's young people's music of my generation. I also bought the previous Kaiser Chiefs CD, which is young persons' music of today... but I still like it... and I'll probably buy their next album. Ha. And nobody will tell me I'm kidding myself. And it doesn't matter, because one of them went to my school, so I'm just supporting my school (that's a crap argument).

I have a long drive to Leeds after work today. I suspect that these CDs will come in handy.

The tea came with a free soft toy, which is now in the proud possession of my ex-girlfriend, whose shower I used last night, my own being somewhat "not online yet".

I had planned to go to sleep on the other side of watching Borat, but realised that it was midnight when I got home, and so there wasn't time. I've a lot coming up next week, and I can't be messing it up with heroic efforts at movie watching.

There are two floors in my house which are presently undergoing works. There's me in the downstairs, trying to bring two rooms to a decorated state. Then there's the shower room upstairs, which I have already wrecked to the point of being bare brick walls, and which I'm employing someone to turn into a real room with appropriate fittings, cubicles etc.

Yesterday I returned home, after giving a lift to a work colleague, whom I may give lifts to quite a lot from now on, given that he lives round the corner from me and would otherwise have to take two hours' worth of public transport to get home. Public transport sucks. I returned home with trepidation. I was expecting to see the skeleton of the new shower cubicle, maybe even some boxed pipework or something. What I discovered was amusing. There were three pieces of new wood in the bathroom. In fairness, they were beautifully cut and attached. I looked around, trying to see what else had been done. There was also a hole cut for the extractor fan, and another for the drain from the shower. Oh, and there were four holes in the ceiling for the lights. I was still amused, though.

I think that the builder has been called away from working on my house by other jobs. Surely that's the explanation. He does have a problem at a nearby property he runs, so he must have been called away.

Still the work he's done so far is of a good quality, and he seems to have some nice tools, so he must know what he's doing. I'm not paying him by the hour, so it shouldn't matter to me how he does it. Perhaps he's a person who plans and plan and then, in a fit of herculean effort, suddenly makes it all happen in one single day's spurt of activity.

I don't know.

I had a bit of a slow night last night myself. I wanted to replicate my efforts of the night before where I got a whole room sanded and filled, ready for painting and papering. I couldn't do it. There were a few reasons. The fact that the shower room guy had used the living room as his place for keeping his lengths of wood for the shower cubicle hampered me a little. This room was also full of all of my tools, in a random jumble too. So, I did the only sensible thing. I sorted out my tools and swept the room out first. Then I did some sanding. There's probably another 4 hours' work to do in that room to get it up to standard. However, I'm not sure whether I want to make the shelves and boxing inside the alcove cupboard in the room before I commit any paint to it. If I'm going to make the shelves, then I may as well do it before properly dusting the room out, because it will make a load of dust. The shelves can then be painted with the rest of the woodwork. It seems like the right thing to do.

Maybe on Monday I'll do the sanding and some filling. Then perhaps on Tuesday I can set about making the inside of this alcove cupboard. I should probably even do some of my patented amateur plastering in there. Actually, I'm not sure one can patent being shit.

This weekend, I'm off up north to help someone else in their house. I'll hopefully be motivated more when I return. Or totally knackered.

Labels: DIY

I've just done something quite foolhardy. I hope I can make it pay off, though. I got offered a gig in Maidenhead on 14th March. Thing is, I've already got a gig in Farnham on the same date. So, I looked into it, the two are 35 miles apart, I'm due on stage at 9.15 at the first and I'm closing the show at the second. So... well, I agreed to do the second one. I've told the second gig organiser what I'm planning and it could work.

Admittedly, it would not take too many factors going off key to totally ruin the night, but I'm optimistic. I'll make it work. Somehow.

In a week's time, it will be the day after and I guess I'll be reporting whether I succeeded in the dual mission of turning up to both gigs AND making people laugh at them.

Amusingly, I start the evening as a 10 minute open spot and end it as a 25 minute headliner. That's career progression!

I seem to be offering myself up for charity gigs a lot at the moment. I think there are a few reasons for this:

• It seems public-spirited
• Maybe I'm less motivated towards earning money from gigs
• Maybe I want to gather a more eclectic range of comedy experiences
• I see comedy at the moment as more of a vocation than a career
• I think I'm trying to recharge my comedy self before getting back into punting at serious clubs
• I want to do some gigs which are bloody difficult
• I want to have more than the echoes of laughter to go home on - the feeling that I've contributed something worthwhile to charity is a good one
• It will be worth looking back on the times when my self-indulgence was used for the greater good

It's one of the things I got wrong when I was in my last relationship, but now I'm back in a relationship of one - i.e. Me and me alone - then I'm back to getting it right. I now take great pleasure in scheduling things into the diary. I got a gig offered to me today, and I took it. Yesterday, I booked to go and see a musical. Sometime soon, I'm going to book some more tickets for musicals. If I see a gig that I can do, and I can get it, then I'll stick that in too. I can schedule a weekend away. I can have days when I do DIY (and I'm still feeling motivated towards doing that). I can even have a few hours here and then when I go shopping.

I like being busy.

It's hard to be this busy and still make time for the other person in your life. Unless the other person is also a diary obsessed freak who "books you in" for things too. If you're reading this and thinking "I'm a woman who would really dig this dude" then perhaps you should return to the 70's you weird-talking freak-woman (or get in touch on i'm_a_weird_talking_diary_obsessed_hottie_freak@ashleyfrieze.co.uk). This is probably why my last relationship worked best when it was a long-distance relationship. We had to book ourselves in for time together, so everything I did in my life was essentially a gig.

So much for Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage".

I was in fairly high spirits last night, following my hard work in the house. I don't remember being so motivated and efficient at DIY jobs when I used to work on my house in Newcastle. That was a long time ago, and maybe I was more prissy, and maybe my larger size meant that I spent more time huffing and puffing than actually doing anything useful. Who knows. Maybe I was just as effective, but maybe the fact that I was aiming to paint walls meant that they needed more preparation.

I've just gone totally off the point.

This is not the bit about the DIY, this is the bit about the post-DIY haze, when I went out to get food and fresh air - my nose full of dust. I went to Subway and ordered an expensive sandwich. The people in there have worked out that I go there virtually daily, and they were nice to me. They didn't have any parmesan cheese for my sandwich, so offered me a discount. I pointed out that I already had a discount - better than the one they were offering. They tried to offer me some other sort of recompense for a lack of this condiment. I pointed out that they didn't need to, especially since I was prepared to buy more stuff both as part of that order, and in future. They know that I need them more than they need me. Still, I tried to make it understood that I was thankful that they were being nice, but that they simply didn't have to give me anything. I like going to the shop and I like the people there.

I sort of lied, though. I do like going there, but I'm actually getting a bit sick of it. It might be good for an occasional, or even frequent treat, but I feel like I've done Subway now. A bit of variety might be better. Plus, although it can be healthy eating, I'm frequently tempted not to eat healthily there.

Still, I'll have a weekend away from Subway, and maybe next week I'll get some chicken from somewhere. For a change, like.

So, relating this to the title of this post, which was my original plan for what I was going to write about, I would say that Subway is a convenient shop and I like going there. So, not worthy of the title.

After I'd dropped into my old house for a shower and to bestow my washing upon the place (I think "bestow" is a good word to use in conjunction with washing), I decided to get some fruit juice to drink. I was still thirsty after my sandwich, and I don't like to drink cola or coffee after 10pm, since I think it does keep me awake. Aware that I'd like to have a lot of Zinc in my diet (I have no idea why I'd like that) I decided to get the nice Minute Maid raspberry juice that comes with Zinc supplement. I buy it often from the garage down the road. I like garages that are open all night, they're convenient. They have a reasonable range of stuff you can buy and they're like little islands of open in a sea of closed businesses in the night.

Sometimes, the garage is on night pay. I hate night pay. I won't buy stuff there when it's on night pay. I don't like being denied the right to browse. I want to be allowed into a shop. I'm not a criminal. I've been buying stuff at that garage for the last 14 months. I should be allowed to go in whenever I want. I'm always polite.

Still, the garage was on night pay and, for the first time ever, I decided to stop there and use the night pay. I queued patiently. A conversation in the queue ahead of me, alerted me to a new wrinkle in their night pay policy - the ultimate insult to the late night shopper. I'll give you a script to illustrate how sodding ludicrous this policy is. This isn't quite the conversation that happened, as I was already wise to things when I got to the front. This is what would have happened.

Me: Hi there. Can you go and get me some of that Minute Maid raspberry drink I buy.
Him: Sorry sir, I can't go into the shop.
Me: Surely, it's me that's not allowed in the shop, owing to the fact that you've closed the doors, and pulled the shutters, and forced me to talk to you through a hatch. Surely you are actually the only person allowed in the shop.
Him: No sir, I'm not able to go into the shop.
Me: But you ARE in the shop.
Him: No, I'm behind the counter.
Me: But the rest of the shop is right there. The other side of the counter.
Him: But I can't go into it. I'm here alone.
Me: And?
Him: Well, if desert the counter, then what might happen?
Me: I don't know. Surely, what would happen is that you'd go and get something I want to buy and then give it to me after I've paid you for it. Through the hatch.
Him: I can't desert my post.
Me: Ah. I get it. There might be a chance that, while your back is turned, one of the customers turns into a gas, slips through the hatch, turns back into human form and then steals some Snack A Jacks from the display, or perhaps a copy of the magazine "Reveal".
Him: I just work here.
Me: Unless I want cigarettes or petrol, your working here isn't going to provide me with any value.
Him: I'm sorry about that.
Me: This truly sucks.

So, I went to the convenience store down the road and bought some Tropicana grapefruit juice. I am still gobsmacked that the night pay system even precludes getting stuff that's the other side of the counter. Ridiculous. I understand why they have night pay. When there's only one person on duty, they have to protect the staff and the stock, a single-handed worker isn't enough for that. However, it's totally inconvenient and insulting to trade with people on this basis. I'm not a criminal. I'm not even slightly evil. Maybe we should have some sort of membership system. I'd get a card saying I'm allowed in any BP garage that's open.

Maybe I'll write to BP.

Or maybe I'll shop elsewhere.

I don't know exactly what I thought I'd be doing in the house when I got home last night. I mean, I don't know what my exact plan was before the point when I started. I know what I'd prepared for. I'd prepared to do some sanding and I'd bought some flexible filler, which I assume I was planning to use. I have two rooms in the downstairs of my house which required the attention of the sander, both having been reskirting-boarded this weekend past. Both rooms need painting, lining papering, and painting some more.

I knew that I wasn't planning to do any painting.

I think I was planning to sand everything and do some filling. I don't know. I don't think I was expecting to complete anything.

The two rooms in question are the living room and what will be a downstairs bedroom in the rented version of this house. The living room also contains a bunch of tools at the moment. The other big room only really had a radiator in it, a few offcuts of skirting board, and the tools I'd been using to sand things or attach skirting boards. I realised, as I was about to get started, that I should try to turn the overall process of making these room less undecorated, into a series of steps. I also realised that I could get a greater sense of success if I focused my efforts on one of the rooms and tried to progress that one room towards decoration.

In the long road to success, steps included - 1. Sand everything, 2. Apply the flexible filler. The "sand everything" step, included using coarse-grade sandpaper on recently filled screw holes, then using medium and fine grade on everything else. I have an orbital sander (I had two, but the older one finally broke apart under the strain of use), which I could use for flat surfaces, and I have my hands for the sculpted bits of architrave and skirting board. I also wanted to do some light sanding to the walls as a way of scrubbing off any detritus that was left after wallpaper stripping - this isn't necessarily the right way to do things, but I reckoned it had a fair old chance of success.

At just after 6pm I started work in the non-living room. I focused on task after task, with the radio playing and my energy levels staying reasonably high. I sanded, I scrubbed, I swept, I sanded some more, I swept some more and the time went by. I only heard James Blunt once on the local radio station, and that wasn't even during the DIY-athon. A couple of hours in, all the sanding was pretty much done in that room. I hadn't used the flexible filler yet, so I decided to do that too. I did the flexible filling, and a reasonable job I made of it, if I do say so myself.

So, by the end of the session, I had managed to get one room from where it was into a condition where I could, theoretically, start decorating it. I think I may still want to look at whether the walls need some further scrubbing before lining paper goes on them. I also need to deal with the quantity of dust that is probably still adherent to the wood in the room. I hate getting dust into the paint. I also hate paintbrush hairs in my paintwork.

Tonight, I get the choice of either doing the same trick in the living room, or putting some paint on in the room I did last night. I think the first thing I need to do is sort out the tools that are cluttering up the living room. If I can get control over my workspace, then perhaps I'll be a lot more effective. If I can do another 4 hour DIY session in the house tonight, then I will have really pushed myself this week, and that will be good.

This weekend I'm off up North, so there'll be no progress in the house without me. Unless you count the fact that the shower room is presently being worked on by the builder, which means that I'll get something nice to look at tonight, and also means that, when I return to the house on Sunday night, there will appear to have been progress over the weekend (even though it will have happened while I'm out at work tomorrow).

Given the amount of footfall through the living room, it may make sense not to decorate it as early as this month. The other downstairs room might tolerate being decorated this early on. Perhaps next week. The advantage of decorating the room will be that it brushes up on my painting skills (yuk yuk) and also gives me a chance to learn wallpapering in anticipation of Easter Weekend, where I'll be up in Newcastle redecorating a room which needs re-wallpapering. So I need to learn the skills sometime soon.

This weekend, up North, I don't know exactly what manner of house-maintenance I'll be helping with, but I expect to learn or at least perfect some skill or other in the process.

Then I can retire from computers and become a joiner.

Or painter.

Or comedian.

Or probably not retire from computers, and just stay a dabbler.

Labels: DIY

It's all very well being sold something more than you need - it's not necessarily that much more expensive, and it might be convenient, both for you for now and for the seller, who wants to make a little more profit. However, it's not necessarily a good thing for the environment to be overbuying all the time.

Today I had an odd combination of experiences. Firstly I refused to be upsold, and then I found the seller missing the point of selling. I had returned to a mobile phone accessories kiosk at a shopping centre in Aldershot, where I'd previously asked for a little adapter to enable my new mobile phone to connect to my older chargers - of which I have several from various previous incarnations of the same phone. He didn't have the part in stock. It costs £5. He tried to upsell me to a £10 new charger. I pointed out that it was more expensive and that it was also a full charger, which seemed to waste the fact that I had several existing chargers.

I asked him when he would get new stock in. I'd return. I'm often in Aldershot anyway - they have a Subway sandwich shop. Mmm. Subway. He said it would be next week before stock came in. Then he suggested that I could go to the market and find an adapter. I said that it was ok. I'd come back to his shop when they had stock. But he was insistent. You can go to the market and get your adapter. I was insistent too. I can come back to your shop and buy it from you when you have it in stock. Don't you see? You'll get the business? That's what you exist for isn't it?

Weird!

Somehow, despite feeling like I was on the brink of getting into March, there were a few obstacles in my way. First and foremost, there was a spending obstacle - a result of my credit-card/PayPal fraud (I'm the victim, not perpetrator). The combination of the fact that last month's payment took five days to process, coupled with a keen credit limit and the fact that someone had deducted £2000 from my card illegally left me with no ability to use the card. This wasn't good. Although I now pay my credit card off in full each month, I do rely on the ability to pay the bill retrospectively, so suddenly switching to cash was a bit of a bind. An obstacle.

Yesterday, the obstacle was cleared. On the same day, my request for a new credit limit (yes, I used brute force to make the card work again) was agreed AND my payment went through. I can buy shit online again. Though, bizarrely, I can't use PayPal yet. Their solution to the fraud is to lock my account so I can't use it. Brilliant. They'll let some imbecile steal £2000 from my credit card, but I can't buy a DVD. Someone's getting a bum deal.

Last night I went to see a local amateur youth production of Tommy. I was due to meet my co-show-watchers at 6.30. Owing to an overrunning and deeply unsatisfying job interview, I left work later than planned. I then spent an hour and a half in slow-moving traffic. For no apparent reason. I hate that. I'll admit that I eventually flipped out and shouted very loudly at all around me. There was no reason for this, except to vent frustration. The car in front was not closing the gap in the traffic ahead, and felt like it was dawdling... so I lost my temper. At the same time as losing my temper, I also had a voice in my brain keeping a sane eye on things and stopping me from actually doing anything stupid - except shout loudly in a pointless act of anger at something that was nobody in the vicinity's actual fault. I'd like to say that it made me feel better. It didn't.

I was driven to the actual venue, worrying all along the way that we'd be late for the 7.30 show. I was late for my 6.30 arrival (by about 25 minutes!). I didn't want to be the reason we all got in late. As it turned out, it was only 20 minutes to the venue and the show didn't start until 7.45. Plenty of time for a coffee and a chilling out. Then we were watching the show and all of the drama of the real world and our nation's combination of poor drivers and clogged roads was forgotten.

Yesterday also had me up and waiting for my bathroom fitter at around 8am. The call at 8.30 which told me I'd not be expecting him that day after all was a small frustration, but still, I am generally patient (notwithstanding shouting at traffic). Today, after a similar wake up, followed by some piano and guitar playing when no builder was apparently knocking at my door, another call came. He'd be late. But he was coming. Ok. I waited.

Would you credit it, the guy came. We had a nice look around the work that needs doing and, apart from my being given a sink waste where I should have been given a shower waste, I had pretty much provided him with the essentials for his work and he's starting. Right away.

The month is back in gear. I can spend money. I have works happening in the house (the electrician finished his work yesterday, on time and pretty much in budget). I have gigs in the pipeline. I just bought tickets to see my favourite musical - Little Shop Of Horrors - I have a new found understanding of Tommy, and I plan to see some more shows in the near future. If this is life, then I can live with it.

I'll be doing a gig in Newcastle on the evening of 20th March. It's called Long Live Comedy and it's at the Dog and Parrot in Newcastle City Centre - opposite the station. It promises to be a good night of comedy, and I'll be happy to see any friendly Newcastle-types there.

To Father Ted fans, there's nothing like following up this picture:



with this one:



On some comedy forum somewhere, I was the first to put the second picture with the first. Yay me. I'm such a freak!

I use a site called MyBlogLog, which allows me to keep statistics on how much of a readership this site has, as well as what searches bring people here. I'm increasingly getting readers from bizarre Google searches, as my eclectic and increasing quantities of writing are luring people here. If you write on every subject and Google indexes you, then ultimately you'll be a hit for everything. Anyway, here are some really odd Google searches that have resulted in page clicks for Incredible, recently. I've included comments on each, for a laugh. Given that my site is clearly authoritative on these searches, I feel I should justify the hit with a suitable explanation.

• diy porn mature - well, if you're advancing in years, maybe you'll find DIY to be extra stimulating. My advice is to just wander round B&Q, there are tons of DIY things there, all for the gawping at... and they're just ASKING FOR IT. You can even take some of it home for some fun in your own private space, though you have to pay. Beware of cheap tools.
• ready mixed patching plaster - I bought some of this, grey stuff, made by Rawlplug. My favoured plaster would be from Hanson, but it's not ready-mixed. Mixing it is easy, though. Add it to water. Not the other way around.
• my favourite things play free julie andrews - ah, the original Sound Of Music recording. You want it free? Nah. Just buy it cheaply from Amazon
• audrey hepburn singing - well, indeed. You could buy the special edition of My Fair Lady, in which Audrey can be seen/heard singing in the DVD extras, as opposed to being overdubbed by Marni Nixon. However, if you want to hear her singing in an officially released scene, then try Breakfast At Tiffany's.
• nissan micra - I reckon that this is a search for this picture
• cost of running convection heater - I don't know. I've been doing it for a while, and I suspect it's quite high. They run about 3Kw, so it's 3 units per hour of use.
• is there a railway station scene in the musical oklahoma - no
• oops i - most likely a request for the video for "Oops I Farted Again". I can't be arsed finding it, but you'll probably find it somewhere online.
• cast iron baths scrap value - I pray that it's minimal, since I've destroyed the one I had in my bathroom.
• peugot 306 revs on its own - spooky, maybe it's haunted. Or maybe it's the modern-day Herbie. Or maybe the electronic engine control unit is knackered.
• jason donovan - once appeared in a production of Sweeney Todd.
• free sheet music "there is nothing like a dame" - why is this site becoming a haven for Rodgers and Hammerstein nuts? That's The Sound Of Music, Oklahoma and South Pacific all in a couple of days' worth of hits!
• screenplay format- example of a documentary script - good question. Have you checked out The BBC Writers' Room?
• paint bathroom pva - you want to paint your bathroom with PVA? Well, that might seal something or other. Bathroom paint is also conventional. Or tiles.
• how to make a plinth wooden box - 1. buy wood. 2. cut wood. 3. Attach wood to other wood. 4. Box.
• capped bathroom pipes - yes, you can cap bathroom pipes, especially if you don't want water to gush out of them. Compression fittings are easiest. You put the nut on the end of the pipe, then you put the "olive" on, then you wrap the screw-thread of the cap with some PTFE tape. Then, using two spanners (one to hold the cap in place, and the other to screw the nut onto it) you tighten until you feel like it won't tighten any more. Then it should hold. Or you'll get wet. Either way, it's a laugh.

Of course, this will only mean that more people searching for those things end up here.

I just received another offer for cheap Viagra with the subject line:



Doesn't that sound like some weird optical-equipment-oriented epsiode of the original Batman TV Series?

Brain dump, that is.

Delays
Things take time. Sometimes things that take time get delayed. I'm definitely having mixed feelings about March. On the one hand I can't wait for everything that's meant to happen to get on with it and start happening. On the other hand, I need to do a lot of things and wish that there were more time in which to do them. You can't have it both ways. I can't demand that the month rush by so that my bathroom can get installed and yet wish it would slow down enough for me to do various preparation tasks around the house, enabling other jobs, dependent on those tasks, to get done before the month is out.

Official Stupidity
It's confusing. But still, at least I'm not the sort of person who needs to read or even send a message explaining our company's change of address. The change of address comprises renaming the name of the building from "Old Company Name House" to, can you guess?, "New Company Name House". And they pay people to email everyone to tell them this scintillating fact. The email came with this subject line:



This may get an award for the most gratuitously overblown ellipsis at the end of a vacuous subject line. Perhaps it would have been better with exclamation marks:



Or maybe just, simply, the following:



Or maybe I'm just in a bit of a mood this morning.

Bad Start
I am a bit tetchy. I didn't get as much sleep as I wanted to, and I managed to fail to wake up when I planned. When I did get out of bed, I still didn't start the morning as I wanted to. The result of the morning was that I arrived in work in plenty of time to start the day. The annoying thing was that the builder, whom I was awaiting from the moment I hauled my sorry ass out of bed, didn't manage to turn up. Now, in fairness to him, he rang me up and explained exactly why he wasn't arriving, and rescheduled for the following day. Given that, a week ago, I was expecting at least 10 days' delay on him, the idea of him coming tomorrow to get started, to a degree, at least, is a brilliant one. However, he managed to get my hopes up on Sunday night by suggesting that he might be starting on Monday. It's not his fault that he can't make it today - there's been an emergency flooding situation in a house he manages. If I were him, I'd fit stuff around it.

The electrician was in residence for all of yesterday, and will be for some of today, he's fitted a new fuse box and replaced all of the electrical sockets in the house. He's also added some sockets, which is excellent. The house feels better for it.

DIY last night
Last night I took some filler to the gaps in my newly installed skirting board. It looks better for it. I also painted the screws over so they can be filled. I only did about 90 minutes' work in the place. I did a bit more plaster patching too, just to make the wall flush with the skirting board - that sort of makes sense. I stopped when my general inertia took over and when I realised that I didn't have the sort of filler I wanted for putting between skirting board and wall. I'll have to get some, then.

Tonight I'm off to see a musical, so there'll be little done in the house, though I might try to fill in the screw holes, since the filler for them needs to dry before I can do the skirting board sanding.

Oh dear, I got all DIY obsessed again. The DIY is certainly keeping me pre-occupied. It's a series of interdependent tasks, which I think appeals to my obsessive tendencies.

Comic Songs?
On the non-DIY front. I sat myself down last night and recorded some songs. Actually, I was standing. It was using my little mp3-player/recorder, so the sound quality isn't especially brilliant and the vocals sound echoey, as a result of being recorded in a large echoey room. Most of these songs were done in one or two takes. The aim of the exercise was to record either new songs which I've not learned properly yet (recording is a good way to force me to play them through without stopping) or old songs that I'll probably not perform on stage anytime soon. While I love my songs individually, I must admit that some are more capable of generating laughter than others. However, it's nice to have a version of them that I can go back to, since, if left unperformed for a while, they'll drop out of my head and be gone for good.

So, if you're interested in my comic song-writing (and there's a health warning on it) then you can go to www.ashleyfrieze.co.uk/songs.html where you will find a list of every song I could think of ever having performed on the comic stage (that I'm prepared to admit to - there may be a few I keep secret) plus some which have either never been performed, or have only been performed once. Those with icons next to them can be listened to. You do so at your own risk.

I was starting to feel like the house had reached a hiatus last week. I felt like I was doing nothing much to advance it towards being a home. I spent about 2 hours a night working on it. In fact, it was probably less, given that there was time at each end taken up with slacking and changing in and out of work clothes. I was preparing for skirting board action. Friday was rock bottom as far as DIY went. I hit a wall and, being metaphoric, I couldn't even skirting board it.

Although Saturday ended with me collapsed in bed, feeling very very ill, and Sunday started with a morning of slacking, including messing around with instruments, this week already feels like it's a huge leap forward from last week. I have 100% skirting board coverage (well 98.7% if you include gaps between boards). I have an electrician in the house today, hopefully not noticing any electrical cock-ups I've made, or at least fixing them without substantial financial penalty to me.

More importantly, after an initial false-hope that it was to be today, I have confirmed with my bathroom installation dude that he'll be coming tomorrow to start work (he's not really a dude). The electrician will be around tomorrow too, so they'll be able to collaborate on anything electrical relating to the bathroom. Excellent. Before I can truly live in the house self-sufficiently, I need the means to:

• Be warm: sorted
• Wash myself: coming
• Use a toilet: currently only in liquid form, but soon to be sorted
• Wash clothes: technically I have a washing machine, but it's still simpler to, erm, delegate
• Cook: that's still weeks away, though I have enough of a kitchen to wash-up in, so I could microwave stuff... however, I'm going to destroy the kitchen next, so best not get used to having one

This is indeed encouraging. I will, hopefully, get a chance to chat about amended plans for the kitchen/bathroom with the bathroom fitter and see what he makes of the new scheme - hopefully it will seem more realistic and, thus, more schedulable.

I think I shall do a lot of sanding and general decoration preparation this week. This might lead me to being able to get some lining paper on the walls. Bizarrely, it now feels like, after a week of feeling I was getting nowhere, that things are happening a bit quickly. I really want the heating people back to put radiators back on the walls and to install the bathroom radiator. However, I want the walls to be papered before the radiators go on them. I think some industrial-strength sanding may really help me get on top of things. And filling.

I'm going up north this weekend, which should also involve a lot of labouring. If I eat sensibly this week (and that's a long shot) then all this labouring could well see me turn into a fitter dude (I'm not a dude).

If it looks too good to be true...



No, I won't be subscribing... not even as a way to recoup the £2000 that was stolen from my credit card via PayPal.

I headed out of the office with a mission on Friday. I was going to get started on my skirting boards. The idea of installing skirting boards has been rattling around my brain ever since I discovered that my damp-proofing works would be at the expense of the existing skirting boards. Though I can pay people to do things like put skirting boards back, I thought I should challenge myself to have a go.

At B&Q, I bought a compound slide-action mitre saw with laser guide and 7 lengths of Victorian style skirting board. The plan was to get started right away. I drove home expectantly and unpacked this new electrical dangerous device.

There are two important cuts on the skirting board. There's the cross-cut, which is the line that runs vertically when the board is against the wall. On skirting boards, this is usually perfectly vertical, though if you had a strange fit to make, you could make it slightly off the vertical. With the mitre-saw, this setting is the mitre. Then there's the angle that you turn the saw through to make two ends of skirting board meet up at both front and rear faces. This is called the bevel. If your wall has a 90 degree angle, you bevel at 45 degrees and the two bevels touch and make a perfect join around the corner.

That's the theory.

I was very excited about this saw which was reduced from £60 to £40 (I later discovered that I'd been charged full price for it anyway). It seemed pretty basic, but I only needed to do a few skirting boards. I should point out that the skirting boards themselves cost nearly £20 a length. So, making mistakes with this wood was not a cheap game.

I'll be honest. Friday night stank. I struggled with the infernal machine and I struggled with my limited abilities to measure the angles of my corners - I had the technique of drawing on the floor (the right way to do things) and then measuring with a really small protractor (the wrong thing to do). I soon discovered that the mitre saw I'd bought was simply not cutting straight lines, nor was it cutting the bevels I wanted. After wasting most of a piece of skirting board. I stopped. It wasn't worth the effort.

Depressed by this turn of events, I got out the house and went round to my ex-girlfriend's house, primarily to get a shower and use the toilet, I think. I hung around being miserable, watched a movie, then eventually got myself home to bed.

Take Two
I woke up Saturday lunchtime and started plotting. I checked out how much I would have to pay to hire a proper mitre saw. It was not cheap. I reckoned I could buy a mitre-saw for the price of two-weeks' hire and be happy that I'd done a reasonable thing. So, I returned to B&Q, threw them the saw I hated, which they refunded no-questions (thank you B&Q), and went to speak to the tools man. He recommended a particular saw and suggested that I'd have more luck with a blade more suited to wood than the one which comes with the machine. He even suggested that the blade might have been responsible for my previous problems. I reckoned that the blade could have been to blame, but the overall crappiness of the machine was probably more to blame. Cheap tools!

So, I bought an altogether more expensive tool. Then I asked about an angle measuring device. There are some which you place on the wall and either wrap around or bend into the corner, and it just reads the angle that you need to cut. The man at B&Q recommended I go to a local shop, called Wokingham Tools. Having returned to my car and looked up the address of this shop, I headed over there. I didn't know the way, so I set up my Sat Nav. Given that I didn't know where I was headed, I even let the Sat Nav navigate me through the horrendous traffic that I usually avoid by taking a back route home. But I wasn't going home, so I just followed the machine.

I followed the machine to a shop that is round the corner from my house. D'oh!. I should have driven home and started from there. I should have recognised the description of where the shop was from the man in B&Q's vague directions. But I didn't. I know where the shop is now and B&Q may get less tool business. This is an emporium of fun tools. They had the sort of thing I wanted and it is a beauty. It is made of two pieces of metal (with integrated spirit level). The two pieces are hinged. You open the hinge until the two pieces of metal either seat neatly in an angle, or wrap around a section of wall. Then you turn a screw to lock the hinge. Then you go and look at a dial which has turned itself to read the angle the hinge is at. Genius.

As you can see from the more effusive prose in this section of the story, I got up and running with my new tools and I was much happier with them. I really should learn my lesson. Spend a little more on tools and they do a better job. Also, don't guess so much. Anyway, before I allowed myself to do the business with the skirting boards, I first had to sort out some electrical things. I'd installed three new lights in my halls a couple of weeks previous and one wasn't working (it turned out to be the bulb) and the other had shoddy wiring. I set about replacing this wiring with something much more suited to the job. It took a while, but now I am happy that my electrician won't pour scorn on the installation. He's coming tomorrow and I want him to give the house a clean bill of health, rather than a rewiring order.

Then onto the skirting boards. I'm not going to describe the techniques any more. I'll say that I cut boards, screwed them to the wall, found that I wasn't incredibly good at it at first, got a bit better and made a lot of dust.

By the last piece I wasn't feeling well at all. I forced myself to finish the cut and call the job done. I had a raging headache and felt nauseous. I wanted to get out for some food or drink, but didn't trust myself to drive in that condition. I went upstairs to curl up and mewl on the bed for a bit. I decided the best thing to do was to get in it. It was 7.30. I slept until morning.

I don't know what it was. It might have been the dust from the saw, though I'd expect to feel more of a respiratory problem, and maybe some warnings from my nose and throat first. It might have been the exertions of the physical labouring. It may have been a bug, something I ate, or just a random migraine. I don't know.

Sunday
Waking at 5am, I watched some stuff on You Tube, checked my email and then took a couple more hours' sleep. Then I went to meet a friend in town and we got coffee. We went to a music shop and discovered it wasn't open. We had to wait until 11am (nearly 30 minutes' wait) before it let us in. It was worth it. It's a good shop. We played with some instruments. My friend liked the one he played with. I liked the idea of the one I was looking at, but the playing of it sucked.

I also played an expensive electric piano. Not that expensive, but more than any I own.

Then we went back to my house to admire the skirting boards, the fiting of which had nearly killed me. I'd completed the living room. There was still the other downstairs room to do. Following some minor admiration, there was more playing of instruments, and then I dropped my friend in town before going to Tesco for some food.

I ate lunch sitting in Tesco's car park listening to the Elaine Paige program all about musicals. It's a good way to spend some of your Sunday. I didn't bother getting going straight away as I knew there'd be a load of traffic heading out of Tesco, which is at the end of a spur off the main road.

From Tesco I headed to B&Q, via a pit stop (or something which rhymes with that) at my old house. B&Q turned out to have 4 more lengths of skirting board and a replacement bulb for my hall light. In the car they went and I was back home, getting ready to do my second room.

The second room turned out to be easier than the first. Perhaps it was experience. Perhaps it was the better walls and angles. I don't know. I made one or two goofs, and there's one bit of board where I know it's wrong, but I can't think of a better way of doing it. It's in a part of the room you wouldn't normally look at, so I don't think it's worth caring about.

The limiting factor turned out to be the battery of my drill. I was wearing a mask this time, so I wasn't going to be attacked by sawdust. I was doing my skirting boards with more efficiency and confidence, having marked out and measured everything in advance (except lengths, which do need a bit of flexing once the boards are in place).

It generally went well. I made one mistake, where I cut a board 10cm too short, having misread my tape measure and disobeyed the "measure twice, cut once" rule. However, I forgave myself, even though I ended up using every last length of skirting board that I'd bought.

At the end of the day, at about 10.30pm, when the last re-charge of the drill gave me enough juice to fit the last pieces of skirting, I'd managed to skirting-board two rooms, using approximately 26 metres of skirting board, a lot of which was turned into 28cm lengths of offcut, or odd shaped wedges, or sawdust.

I end Sunday a lot more upbeat than I ended Friday. Though these new boards will need filling to make me not hate the way the joins don't quite join (or in some cases, miss by quite a noticeable distance), I've actually gotten these two rooms looking like rooms again. They feel like I could almost apply paint in them. I can't, but "almost" is quite a good progression from "building site".

I have pictures.

I may post them later.

There was a time when I didn't take all of my allotted holiday time. I was younger, poorer, and less capable of thinking of things to do with the time. As a result, I amassed tens of days of holiday as spare. Since changing job, which followed a period of really using up that holiday, I've been in a different situation completely. For the first two years of this job, I have a slightly smaller holiday allocation than I was used to having, though compared to how many days I was taking by the end at my last place (using up the surplus) it's significantly smaller. As a result, I have to plan my holiday time more carefully.

I've agreed to let my father pay for me to go on holiday for a week. Aren't I generous?

I want to spend more than one week and less than two weeks in Edinburgh.

Then I want to go to the US this year, to see friends and, perhaps, take a road trip to Canada. Why? Because it's there.

So, the whole year needs a plan. I think I can just fit it all in. It will be tight...

To make matters worse, I need to take a day and a half off in the next 29 days. If I don't they will vanish. If I do, I want to make good use of them. Any ideas?

Sometimes I realise, a few words into a sentence, that what I want to say just can't be said. At least, it could be said, but if I said it the way I meant it, it would so easily be misinterpreted that I'd be in trouble, or, at least, have to do a lot of explaining. The correct thing to do in this situation is not to start saying anything in the first place. Sometimes you can make an attenuated version of the point you were going to make and then get away with it. I just tried and failed this latter strategy. However, I didn't offend anyone, so I'm going to call it a success. Here's how the conversation should have worked.

Her: Oh, I'm a terrible singer.
Me: Well, in that case, we should never have children.
Her: Why?
Me: Because I don't want your tone-deaf genes polluting my offspring's potential musicianship.

If people didn't have feelings, that would have been a great way for it to unravel. However, that wasn't even close to a possible way of playing it. So, there might have been this:

Her: Oh, I'm a terrible singer.
Me: Oh, that makes you a lot less attractive to me, then. I consider ability to sing as important in a relationship. You don't have to be an opera singer, but at least be able to sing without making me want to retch. And our children would have to have a fighting chance of being musical too.

That, at least, doesn't have as immediate a sexual harrassment impact as the "Well, we shouldn't have children", which implies (in my twisted head) that "at least we're going to have sex, right?". However, it still discusses issues of whether someone is attractive, and it also makes an important point on the genetic purity of my unconceived offspring.

Here's what actually happened:

Her: Oh, I'm a terrible singer.
Me: blah blah blah, oh singing is important, blah blah blah, last girlfriend could sing, blah blah blah. Erm... I'm off now.

Bloody censorship!

Another exercise in writing. Read it if you can be arsed. It's a short essay on nothing.

Labels: Friday200

It's clearly "have a go at Ashley" week. In addition to the attempted theft of £2000 from my credit card (and believe me, I won't let that turn into real money!) some internet wag (for "wag" read "wanker") out there has decided to use my "ashleyfrieze.co.uk" domain as the originating source for their spam. What does this mean? Well, when you send an email, you need to provide a return address. When you're sending spam, you don't want a real return address, nor do you want one which is commonly used for spam. So, you choose a random domain (ashleyfrieze.co.uk in this case) and a random name in front of it (HLK@ashleyfrieze.co.uk for example) and then send out a bunch of spam.

This doesn't make me a spammer. It makes me look line one, which is not good. Annoyingly, though, the receiving systems if they don't like the email might bounce back a message telling someone to sod off. Where does that message go? Me. That's right. I'm being spammed by the collective recipients of spam that's spoofed to come from my domain. So, I'm getting about 100 messages a day at the moment telling me to sod off. They're from computers, and are easily spotted. I don't even open them. Still, it's a deluge I don't need.

Could people stop pretending to be me. Being genuinely me is hard enough without all these bloody tribute acts. If you want to be me so much, why don't you come around and help me with the DIY. Selfish bastards!

It's at times like last night, when I'm plastering a wall, primarily to cover some holes caused by wallpaper stripping over unsound plaster, and to enable the fitting of a skirting board, lower than the previous one, that I remember: I'm not actually a plasterer. I'm a guesser. I don't know how to plaster. I don't know how to mix plaster to the right consistency. I don't know how to use a plaster trowel. I don't know how to make it go smooth when it's finished. I don't know how to get it level, nor do I know whether it will stay attached to the wall, or just fall off when it dries out.

However, despite the fact that one particular section will need sanding with some ferocity, and despite the fact that I'll probably have to patch the plastering a bit more, once the skirting board is fitted, I think I did a reasonable enough job last night. This morning I have a tickly throat, no doubt from all the dust I generated in the other room, where I sanded over previous bits of wall-patching (using a sort of non-plaster, rather than the stuff I was using last night).

Although I only put in a scant couple of hours last night, I felt like I was actually motivated to do things, and I'm looking forward to Saturday, when I hope to actually attach some skirting board to the wall. This will undoubtedly prove stressful, but I can look forward to it now, while it's still only an idea. Once the skirting boards are fitted, the unsightly walls (and they're a really bad combination of lots of different types and styles of plaster - from brand new damp-proofed plaster through my own efforts to previous years' bodges) will be covered in lining paper which will then be painted. This will make the rooms look very good. I've never done wallpapering before, so maybe I'll mess it up. However, there's no pattern on lining paper, so that should make the job easier. In addition, I'm going to use the highest-grade of lining paper in order to make it give the best coverage. I'm sure it'll work out fine.

I hope it will.

I'm a professional computer programmer.

The DIY is just a sideline.

At lot of people do this, but it's really helping me out at the moment. I've set my bedroom clock forward a few minutes. I don't know exactly how many. I really have no idea. I know it's more than 5 and less than 30. As a result, the best thing to do is try to use it as though it were accurate, in the knowledge that I might be a couple of minutes earlier than I think. I can't trust it to be late enough to guarantee me immunity from lateness. That's the idea.

As a result, I had a series of micro-lie-ins this morning, in the knowledge of the approximate time, and eventually got out of bed at sometime after 9. About 10 past. I got dressed, went downstairs, filled a bucket with water to allow me to flush the toilet, brushed my teeth reviewing the previous evening's plastering efforts, generally got myself psyched up to leave the house, and arrived in my car at 9.05. The car's clock IS accurate. So, the distance from my bed to the car is on a negative time-line. Brilliant.

I was in work at a suitable time. I've been arriving at work suitably for the last couple of weeks. This is not a foolproof system, but it's working for me at the moment.

I don't know what was going on yesterday. People on the roads were behaving oddly. This could be one of those weeks. There are periods when people, almost as a group, appear to act very crazy. I think that we humans are not consciously aware of how affected we are by season changes. Yet, here I am again, talking about something I've noticed around the time the weather starts to change at the tail end of winter. There are three incidents to mention just from one car journey home yesterday. I was pretty pissed off at lunchtime too, when I went to buy some more plaster in Farnborough - I think that was because I was parking in an unfamiliar car park, with poor signage and a sense of low-council-investment all around me.

Anyway, the incidents are:

• A suited man in a cheap Citroen, seeing a line of traffic ahead of him (and it wasn't that bad) suddenly losing his rag and giving his steering wheel a damn good whack
• A driver that didn't like it when I pulled in front of him, despite the fact that I'd been indicating for about 15 seconds, was in the outside lane, and well within my rights to do so - he waved at me as though to suggest I was mental - this made me wonder whether my left-hand indicator was actually working (had it not been, then I would have looked mental)
• The driver who refused to allow me to pull into the lefthand lane - despite the fact that I needed to, in order to stay on the road, and couldn't go any faster, since a car had just pulled out in front of me, thus limiting my speed. I had my indicator on, and rather than let me pull in, this car chose to undertake me. I hooted my horn at him for about 45 seconds. I was very angry. It still makes me angry.

The message to take away from this is that there was a lot of road rage about yesterday. Maybe it is seasonal. Maybe there are just some real dickhead on the road.

Maybe I'm one of them.

I have to share this with you. Watch the movie on the page too. It's a work of absolute genius. Finally, someone has reinvented the bicycle. I was too stunned to laugh.

Apart from the fact that eBay has introduced me to some hackers, intent on trying to steal £2000 from me, I will probably still use it. I've had various examples of good and bad customer service on eBay. Sometimes I've been guilty of providing a desperate service myself. If you're a blog-geek, you might be interested to read the following on here:

• When my purchases and sellings of Titanic went tit(anic)s up
• Selling a non-bogus non item
• Eventually posting a late eBay item

The current ongoing eBay-ism is the purchase of some hard disks for me to use as a data store for myself, and for selling to make a little money to mitigate the cost of the first one. I returned the faulty drive yesterday and just got an email informing me that I'll be receiving a replacement by courier. Wow. If the replacement comes tomorrow, then I'll be in clover. That would be good service.

My eBay dream is to find some sort of value-add where I could buy a few items, totalling under £100, do something with them to add enough value to make £10 surplus per item on resale. This would be a nice little earner. The problem is that I can't think of anything that meets those criteria and it's not worth doing volume for any other numbers. So, my eBay tycoonery will never grow beyond the occasional bit of crap-selling/economies of scale for mitigating the cost of a single item for myself.

Well well well. I'm currently listening to the original 1975 cast recording of Chicago. This includes Jerry Orbach as Billy Flynn. The fact that he was in the cast amused me, since he was the dad in Dirty Dancing. However, a little bit of reading on wikipedia and I've discovered another factoid in the the sheer incestuous nature of performing arts.

Jerry Orbach was in Chicago, and was also in Dirty Dancing with Patrick Swayze, who was also in Guys and Dolls on the London West End when Dirty Dancing opening. Guys and Dolls also played in 1965 on Broadway with Jerry Orbach. Ya! Jerry Orbach was lumiere in Beauty and The Beast, Disney, with musical and lyrics by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman, who also wrote Little Shop of Horrors. Little Shop of Horrors currently stars Mike McShane in London. Mike McShane was in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves with Brian Blessed, who was in the original production of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on the London Stage. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang originally starred Dick Van Dyke, who appeared in a Night At The Museum with Robin Williams. Robin Williams appeared in Alan Menken and Howard Ashman's Aladdin...

...and so it goes on.

That's twice in the last few hours that some sort of annoyance has been caused behind the wheel. Grrrr. In the spirit of getting it out of my system so I can sleep.

1. The Flashy Bitch
It's been all over the news. You can't drive with a hand-held mobile. Not only will you get a fine, but it's been doubled and you'll get penalty points. Why? Because it's dangerous. Why? Because you need your hands to drive with, not to hold a phone to your head.

I often see people with a phone to an ear and I don't like it. Today I was driving in front of a woman who was yattering away on her mobile with one hand and smoking a cigarette, held in the other. She didn't seem to have ANY hands spare for the driving at all. How she managed to flash me a few times and still keep hold of the wheel is anyone's guess.

She flashed me because I was driving slowly - about 10 miles an hour at some points. I was doing this to annoy her. Actually, I was also doing it to keep her speed low enough that she might actually be able to keep control of her car. I really wanted to block her completely and give her a piece of my mind. However, there were other motorists queued behind her. Just annoying her made me feel a lot better.

2. The Selfish Parker
Having been out for the evening, I returned to my house to find the entirety of my street nose-to-tail in cars, including the gap that's supposed to enable me access to my drive. The car parked there may as well have parked on my drive, since I had no access. I've had to park on a totally different street. I took the car's registration plate, lest the slightly snotty note I've left on his/her windscreen inspires them to take some sort of stupid revenge against me for daring to impinge on the freedom to park wherever.

The note:



Slightly constructive and helpful towards the end, I think. Okay, so a bit accusatory in the "thanks to you", but at least I said thanks.