I had a late night, watching stuff, reading, listening to shows, after returning fairly early from dinner with some friends last night. I had a lie-in today which doesn’t equal sleeping. In my case it involved listening to more stuff and thinking about just how uncomfortable my bed is. I’m such a bad sleeper, I genuinely dread bedtime.
I’ve got my first gig of the year tonight. January is always slow but last year I was waiting longer to get the comedy going. I’m back in Croydon this evening - I’m doing a lot of Croydon at the moment. It’s weird as prior to doing the comedy, I’d only ever been in Croydon a handful of times before, like most people, making the decision that if I didn’t live there, there was no need to ever visit the area. Mind you, it’s not necessarily any worse than much of south London. It’s just in my case, while being a south London, my inclination is always to head central or north. I’ve never been one of those patriotic south Londoners. I just think we lack ambition this side of the river and we seem to celebrate things like eating too much CHICKEN and too many natives have an inability to queue up properly for buses or dispense of their rubbish properly. And of course, there is that south London love of eating on public transport, an abhorrent habit. Anyway, details of tonight’s Croydon show can be found on my Instagram
I’m not expecting much from tonight’s show, if anything really. I’m just doing it for the stage time. Comedy is like running. With the foot injury, futher aggravated by the stupid decision to go for a run a couple of mornings ago, I can feel my fitness dropping. It’s the same with gigging. If I haven’t gigged for a few days, that first show back, everything feels slower. Your on-stage movement, your delivery, your thought process and interaction with the audience. I’ll do a light rehearsal this morning before cracking on with some editing of next week’s When Shorts Were Short.
I’m trying to find the positives in each day but as usual, I feel I’m going through the motions. The focus just isn’t there and hasn’t been for a long time.
I finished watching 1923, the second of the Yellowstone prequels last week and it was passable. Only one of the three major plotlines had me remotely interested. I’ve never been one for action movies and to this day have never watched an Indiana Jones film, for instance. One of the major storylines in 1923, involving the hunter character, the youngest nephew of Harrison Ford’s character, struck me as very Indiana Jones and was dragged out for the entire series. Once I got to ep 6 (of 8), I realised, ‘Right, this guy’s not meeting his family until the next (and final) series’, I really lost interest and was glad to finish the series. I’ve now finished the opening year of Yellowstone. Again, it’s okay. Like a modern-day Dallas, perhaps not even that good. Both 1923 and Yellowstone are vastly inferior to 1883. And there was Helen Mirren’s cosmetically-enhanced features to contend with. I remember struggling with the second series of the otherwise incredible Deadwood because one of the new characters that year, who was running a brothel, had had some serious cosmetic surgery and I was thinking everytime she was on screen, “How am I meant to buy that this is 1876?”
In other news, I’ve bought some heated socks.
I just need to work out how to use them now.
Maybe they’ll accompany me on what looks like a difficult week of shows this coming week. Not because the shows are difficult (well, one might be if I learn some new material but I can’t see that happening) but because of this week’s tube strikes. I normally travel to all my London shows (bar one) on buses but these are likely to be rammed this week as travel chaos descends on the capital.
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'I’m trying to find the positives in each day but as usual, I feel I’m going through the motions. The focus just isn’t there and hasn’t been for a long time.' - Yep! Sounds familiar.