Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Terrorvision

Well, haven't I been rubbish? I have abandoned you my loyal flock. Yes, that's right, I have written this blog so far with only sheep in mind. If you are humans and reading this then bugger off. I mean it. Yes I do. Oh, so you think ignoring me is funny? Well, see if you can cope with this then.

Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa Baaa

Still there? Seriously weird.

Don't know if it's weirder that I bothered to type all those or that you have read them all. Either way we all need to be sectioned. Except the poor sheep that got caught up in it all. Bless them. Out there in the fields with their little iPads. Terribly obedient things blog addicted sheep. You simply have to love them. Otherwise they kill you.

So, I'm back from Edinburgh - I honestly couldn't blog in the last few days either through incredible pain from the stupid hip in the wrong place, or through incredible hungoverness or through extreme busyness (different to business) with gigging. What an amazing time it was.

Now that I'm back (and have been for all of about 14 hours) it feels like it might not even have been real. The train journey home was intensely snoozeriffic. I discovered that in First Class you get offered tea and biscuits free but that it is apparently not cool to request both kinds of free biscuits. Apparently you are meant to show some self restraint and reign in your incredulousness that this is how some people live their lives. Also, the seats were massive. I sat and watched West Wing most of the way home and tried to ignore the rumbling hangover that was ruling my body. It wasn't easy and I had to try and sleep a lot of it out. Never ever drinking red wine in that quantity again. Ever.

I have decided to have a dry month until my birthday and try to improve the state of my liver and general health. Hopefully my ability to make good life decisions will return again with my newfound sobriety.

Bit of a crap blog today. Unless you're a sheep in which case it's hilarious. But mostly an apology for an enforced absence and a promise that I'm back in the game.

Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Everything has been happening...

I've had a spectacularly 'Fringe' couple of days which due to only sleeping in groups of hours that add up to less than 5, have blurred into one long mish mash of things that I'm not totally sure are actually happening or are a mere hallucination.

So, here is my attempt to cover them all off for you. Ok.

Funny Women competition - it went well. Didn't it? I mean, it went well...? I think it went well. No, it went well. Well, I think it went well. But I have no idea. Was a strong heat I think. I was very pleased with my performance in general and thought it was one of the best 5s I've ever performed - but after a bill of 13 female comedians I got to the end and definitely wondered whether I would remember me by the end of it? I'm not sure there's anything particularly stand out-ish about me that might make people take interest. But hey ho. We shall see. See we shall. On Monday apparently - which will either be a really nice pick me up to the end of the Fringe, or a very dismal feeling on the train home as the phone call shatters my illusions of grandeur and good things to come.

The night after Funny Women...well. Let's have a think about what happened shall we? It started off perfectly reasonably with a bottle of red wine at the Three Sisters and some fun with friends. We then went to the Library bar...and suddenly it was 5am. It was 5am and another bottle of Rose and several pints of cider later...have you ever mixed two different wines with cider? Have you ever mixed them inside a hyperactive midget with a hip that's not working properly? You haven't? Well, it creates a little brunette monster that will stop at nothing to get her hands on a pie.

Any pie would have done. I just very, very badly wanted a pie.

We were turfed out of Library Bar at about 5am and myself and fellow comedian Nicola Bolsover decided the best thing to do would be to go back to her house and watch Jumanji - the connoisseurs choice. But I was a relentless pie fiend by now. I could literally smell it in the air. Partly because Nicola lives above a pie shop and they had turned the ovens on already. But they weren't open. So I made us travel on.

It was approximately 5:30 and I was pretty convinced that somewhere would be open and seeling pies to angry things with blunt fringes and a desire for meat and gravy. In my defense there was a rugged group of locals who completely agreed with me that the air smelt of pastry delights and that if we headed further down the road there was a pie shop open and we would be able to eat there. They then set off at an incredible pace and due to the minor dispute between my hip and its socket right now, we were not able to keep up.

At this point I found a very nice hessian Bag For Life with a naturally handsome peacock on the side. Deciding this was my prize for being such a convincing sack of alcohol, I wore it around my neck in the manner of a peckish horse. I felt a million dollars.

So there we were on the street, lost and alone (not lost, totally in sight of Nicola's flat, and not alone because we were together), having no idea where this pie shop was actually going to be.

This is when we met 'The Three 26 year Olds'. Now, these guys (as I remember it - and please remember to replace "as I remember it" with "severely sketchy retelling of details") were very proud of the fact that they were all 26. This made them happy. This made Nicola laugh. And it made one of the 26 year olds want to kiss people on the cheek a lot. Nicola needed to sit down because she was laughing so hard she couldn't see and I valiantly gave her my new Bag For Life with the Handsome Peacock to sit on so that her bum wouldn't get wet. The Three 26 year Olds were not terribly interesting as I remember it but they did want a flier for our show and we gladly obliged.

But the rumble in my tumble could not be ignored for long and my desperation for pie was outweighing my impatience with Nicola's incapacity on the floor. All but one of the Three 26 Year Olds left at this point leaving the 26 year old cheek kisser to stay and bother Nicola. Stay an bother Nicola? Where was I you ask? I had spotted a group of people up the road, they looked rowdy and drunk. I therefore assumed they were locals and would have a better knowledge of the local terrain than myself so I raced over (hobbled like Quasimodo with a butt plug) and asked them if they knew where I could get a pie...

They were not locals. They were French. French people with a camera who each wanted an individual phot taken with the brave pie hunter they had met at 6am on a Tuesday morning in the arse end of Edinburgh. I obliged for a short while but they were cramping my style and I still had to get Nicola off the floor and get us both to a pie shop before I died of hunger or disappointment. As I broke away from the clammering Frenchies to go back to my fallen friend, one of the Frenchies came forward and through the cidery fog in my ears I detected a note of Gaellic accent...he was a local!!!

He informed me that the mythical pie shop that the original locals had told me about did indeed exist! And if I just headed straight down the road we would get there and all would be well. I snaked a very special path back to Nicola, bid opur goodbyes to Kissy Cheek 26 Year Old and gathered up my handsome peacock. We were on our way.

We walked, and we walked, and we walked and we walked...and the only thing spurring me on was the thought of finally getting my precious pie! I was ablaze with the thought of my pie...it was all I wanted, it was all I could think about...it was all-consuming...

But then we saw a Tesco. And bought bacon. And Cheesestrings. And I ate 4 cheese strings in a row and felt very sick. The only thing worse than a bottle of red, a bottle of rose and several pints of cider, is a bottle of red, a bottle of rose, several pints of cider and 4 cheesestrings.

The Tesco people were neither amused nor thrilled that their first customers of the day had been so messy looking and loud but we now had bacon and bread and the loyal Jumanji disc waiting back at the flat. I was immensely pleased to have something to put in my handsome peacock bag - which was still around my neck.

The walk back took a very long time, there were some puffins in a window that both confused and amused us and there was the difficulty of trying to walk whilst unwrapping another cheesestring and regretting it at the same time. The walk was also punctuated by the feeling of sheer disappointment in ourselves that we were not yet home and yet 4 paces in front of us was a couple who had been to bed, got upm got dressed and were now off on a day trip up Arthur's Seat. In the 'do something meaningful with your life' stakes, we were not winning.

We reached the flat and made epic bacon sandwiches and settled down to watch Jumanji - the traffic outside was baring and I was ready for a nice sleep. On a sofa. Fully clothed. Under a towel. Perfect.

I then dreamt it was my birthday and it was so vivid that I can't shake the feeling that it genuinely was my birthday recently and that I'm actually going to have two birthdays this year.


All of these antics meant that yesterday was a pretty weird, sleep deprived day. The highlights of yesterday were -

1. 1 bird managing to poo on 3 people at once; me included! Hilarious but gross. It was like he pooed through a high octane sieve and just managed some kind of collossally amazing spatter effect. Funny!

2. My flatmate producing the second best quote I've heard from her this fringe - (you might recall Meatie 1 from a previous story delivering the immortal "I had to put shit loads of beef stock in to get it to taste like this" to the consumers of her 'vegetarian' cottage pie). Yesterday's was similarly badly thought out and equally as amusing, though with slightly less impact, as we got ready to go out into the rain our other, slightly miniature, flatmate puts on her anorak and I comment that she looks sweet in it. Meatie 1 quickly asks without missing a beat if any of us have seen "that film about the killer midget in the red rain coat?". Tiny flatmate is slightly put out at being likened to a homicidal dwarf and I am laughing quietly to myself and wondering if there's a way Meatie 1 and I can hang around together more often so these gems keep coming.

3. Seeing 5 shows in one day yesterday, despite intense exhaustion. These shows were -
"Laura" (Spun Glass Theatre) at the Hive - amazing, it's crazy that it's a free show.
"Loretta Maine - I'm Not Drunk I Just Need To Talk To You"- hysterically funny.
"3 Men and a Hoover" - one of the most insane hours I've ever had in an audience.
" Max and Ivan" - Good clean comedy sketches at C Venues.
"Phedre" - If you want to know about this show, phone me. That's all I can say here.


Today - I have been to see a doctor about my hip. The doctor's genuine prognosis so far has been -

"Yes, your hip definitely shouldn't do that. That is not normal. Does it hurt? It does hurt. Right. And your other hip doesn't do that? No. Of course it doesn't. Right. Ok, well I don't know what's wrong with it so will you take pain killers for me? Ok. Thanks. Yeah, I don't know at all what's wrong so I'm going to phone someone who does now and phone you later ok?"

Phone call later -

"Hi, well, I've spoken to orthopaedics and they seem to think as long as you're feeling ok within yourself you're ok to not do anything about it."

"Erm, I'm not feeling great within myself in all honesty - it sort of hurts to walk and there's a big thing popping in and out of my hip."

"Yes. That's why I've prescribed pain killers."

"Right but..."

"Are you fevery and sick?"

"No..."

"Well then you're fine."

"But, my hip is..."

"Listen, your hip joint is incredibly strong. It's a very secure joint and I just cannot imagine that it's coming out of its socket."

"So what is the big thing you can see and feel flicking out of my hip when I walk?"

"I don't know."

"But it's not my hip?"

"I don't know."

"Right..."

"You can go to hospital if you want? But I think paracetamol will work."

"Magic paracetamol?"

"Er, sure. Maybe try a shaman next time for medical efficiency."


Ok - so I made the last line up but the rest of that conversation is very true and I am therefore quite angry, annoyed and weepy right now so bollocks to the lot of it. I absolutely fucking hate medical issues and being made to feel like you're wasting people's time is not the right way to make sure the general public get things treated before it is too late. FFS.

Monday, August 23, 2010

2 pebbles and a piece of knotted string

When I was little and I didn't understand how the body worked I was easily influenced by the Numskulls. The Numskulls were in a fantastic cartoon in the Beano, and they were tiny little people who lived in the body and made everything work.

I honestly believed that the stomach had a big wooden table on it, and all the food you swallowed would fall down onto the big wooden table and get chopped up by the little men standing all around it. When the food was in small enough pieces the little men would shunt it off the sides and into little tubes which were designated for different types. This meant that if the vegetable pipe was full up and I couldn't eat all my nasty brocolli, I was still perfectly able to have chocolatey pudding because it went in a different pipe. Resourceful, non?

I was a very runty child, I distinctly remember there being a phase in my life where I weighed 2 stone 13 for a very very long time. Mum and I used to weigh me weekly to see if there had been any change but there wasn't. Well, there must have been at some point because I now weigh distinctly more than that. Colossally more than that. But at the time it seemed to stretch on forever not quite being able to weigh 3 stone. My Dad used to say that my limbs looked like bits of string with knots tied in them.

We were quite an outdoorsy brood of children, my siblings and I, big fans of tree climbing and playing imaginary games. I think it was a consequence of a) living in the countryside, b) having parents that didn't believe we needed a games console. I am very grateful for this. Apart from the fact that now I cannot even play worms without getting my ass kicked, let alone Halo, I think it did good things for who I turned out to be.

My older sister and I spent a long time playing outdoors. We had a favourite tree in the corner of our garden and we used to use it as an aeroplane. The game of aeroplane was an interesting one as sibling rivalry dictated the parts we had, and me being runty always made the outcome inevitable! I was always the Captain - on the surface this sounds pretty cool! My sister was the repairman - a good deal you would think? Well, no, not exactly. The role of Captain meant me sitting in a particular fork of the tree and not moving because I was driving. The role of handyman was more about clambering all around the branches fixing the different dilemmas that inevitable occurred during my clearly shoddy reign at the helm. Had our little game been a TV series I'm fairly sure it would have focused on the ineptitude of the rag doll at the wheel and the masterful heroism of the agile handyman.

The one time I was allowed to be the handyman I fell out of the aircraft and narrowly missed some canine excrement beneath. That was the first and last time I was allowed near the tool kit of twigs and leaves. It remained under invisible lock and key after that and I was returned to my seat. The trouble with being Captain was that you couldn't get too carried away. A particularly exhausting and perilous trip through an asteroid belt that required lots of extensive manoeuvres could quite easily result in you snapping off most of the controls near your seat - meaning it was a full season before you could even use the indicators again.

I was quite a gullible child. We used to have a climbing frame in my back garden and my big sister once successfully convinced me that if I jumped off it holding a carrier bag it would act as a parachute - it did not. However, always eager to believe in the good in people, I agreed to try again based on her suggestion that I hadn't held the bag right. It was a miracle I didn't break anything - but given that I only weighed 2 stone 13 I probably wasn't heavy enough to make gravity take notice.

It wasn't just me that was easily taken in by my sister's wily ways - she once also punched me in the face, making my nose bleed, and then told my parents I'd run into her fist. They believed her. I didn't know whether to be pleased they thought I could run with that alarming accuracy into the face of danger, or fist if you prefer, or annoyed that they thought me capable of such incredible stupidity. But at the time I was more focused on whether swallowing the vast quantities of blood was dangerous or going to help me bulk up a bit.

I never really played with dolls as a kid - we had a few to experiment being maternal with but I gave mine to our dog after a few months and he used to carry her round by her hair. She seemed to like it and so I just let them be. I was never really one for taking care of an inanimate object when you could be off having an adventure in the fields or going river jumping.

River jumping involved finding a spot in the river that ran through our front garden and up into the corn fields, and hoping it was deep enough to take you without a broken bone, before plunging in off the bridge and getting lots of street cred from your friends for it. I was always a bit small to be allowed to play but it didn't stop me being there to cheer on the others who were brave/stupid enough to have a go. This was all good until one day a girl broke her arm and we were totally banned from doing it any more. Stupid girl.

Essentially I am a terrible specimen. I live entirely in a world of fantasy in my own head and have never showed any particular physical prowess. Once, when Dad and I were playing tennis, he served the ball to me and it came straight at my face. Rather than move I just watched it smack me straight in the nose and cause another torrent of red life juice to come streaming down my chin. Not the best sort of reaction to danger but then potentially my body just wanted to test my exact limitations based on the fact that I weighed less than my Dad's leg and had successfully survived two parachute attempts. Either way we didn't really play tennis again and although he has had the good grace to let me join his cricket team, I often field in the deep. Very deep.

Lord knows when it was that I turned to 'funny' to give me something to focus on. It's a damn good job we live in a world where it's ok to have no real skill other than to think about things differently to other people and occasionally make them laugh. If it wasn't for this I think I would re-read all of the above and just give up now based on the fact that physically I am a walking disaster. Right now I'm hoping that when I stand up my hip will have settled down back into it's pouch like a contented Joey and I won't have to spend the day trying to figure out a comfortable walking pattern that doesn't cause the sort of grinding noises I imagine are only found elsewhere in the MacDonalds bone and meat grinding plant.

Here's to a healthy team of Numskulls.

Sunday, August 22, 2010

Beware, Beware the Forest of Sin

I went to see Operation Greenfield by The Little Bulb Theatre Company again last night. Once again I sat and wept all the way through the last 30 minutes. It is without a doubt the most beautiful piece of theatre I've ever seen. Both times I've seen it now, I've sat in the audience and been so monumentally happy with what I was watching, where I was and what I was doing that I've just cried.

It's definitely worth mentioning that I'm a complete girl when it comes to emotion. When they say there are two reactions; fight or flight, they didn't factor in my body which just says "How do you feel about crying instead?" and then it inevitably happens. For some reason the body I was blessed/lumped with just assumes that puffy eyes and water seeping out of my eyes in a Victoria Falls style manner will help any situation. Sigh. But it was amazing. And everyone in the whole world should run out and see it as soon as possible so they can have the notoriety they deserve.

I had the weird experience yesterday of not being able to remember the tune of a song that, the day before, I had completely stuck in my head but couldn't work out what the song was. This was more frustrating than trying to piece together the plot of Inception. Totally bizarre situation to be phoning people and asking them to hum you the song that you were bothering them with the day before...they were not happy to reminded of either my or the tune's existence.

My head is a bit all over the place to be honest. The thing is I have the competition tomorrow for stand-up comedy and while I'm totally aware that these competitions can mean nothing at all - it would be really nice to do well. I have a history of really screwing up competitions. I think the most annoying one was the last one I did where I had to go first and the judge came up to me afterwards and said he thought I should have won but he didn't vote for me because I was first. What? Made very little sense to this bear but ah well.

If I was convinced enough that one day I'll have my career without having to suck up to the people who make careers happen I would commit merry comedy suicide on the stage. Just walk out into that lonely spotlight and blow raspberries to the tune of 99 Red Balloons until they boo me off or applaud me as the heroine of rubbish comedy that I long to be. It was very nice to see Josie Long perform the other day she is an absolute reminder that if you work hard enough you won't necessarily have to stick to the accepted methods of doing stand-up comedy. She's an absolute inspiration. And lovely. With much musclier legs than I would have imagined having seen her in a dress on Friday. But that is beside the point.

One day I will be an accepted comedy god - at the point where the radiation has melted our brains to such mush that we find whimsy with very little structure or meaning hysterical. Then I'll be paraded round the streets in a purple dress and hat with tail feathers and I'll be allowed to eat only raspberries and toast if I see fit. No one will make me go to work and the Underground will be renamed the Lexxington. I'm almost completely certain there will be more days off work and school for those of us that need them and all television will have to be of a certain grade to get on the telly box. Nothing with the c-bomb in it will reach our ears and children will be children for years and years instead of believing they should morph into sexed up midgets at the age of eleven.

It will become compulsory to visit a foreign country at least every other year - by hovercraft, of course to save the planet the hovercrafts will run on marmite - and there will be no excuse for xenophobia. Safari parks will also become a staple feature in everybody's weeks, they absolutely MUST be visited so you can relax and enjoy animals and feel good about the world. Humans are not everything.

It's also going to be pretty important about this time that a tunnel is built between Somerset and London so I can go and visit my family a lot because I get mighty homesick and it would be nice to not have to use the A303. It's very pesky to live in a tourist destination when you want to get there in under 6 hours and you don't want to have to slow down to 10 miles an hour to go past Stonehenge. IT'S CRAP! Just look at a picture of it and I guarantee it will be exactly the same as slowing down as you drive past and pointing it out to your disinterested children who are also aware IT'S CRAP! They should definitely have 'tourist' and 'local' traffic lanes for these occasions so that I can zoom on past in my little car (Roly - because Dad thinks he looks more like a roller skate than a car) and pity the children in the back of the car that are learning to loath Salisbury.

I think I'd also have to find a way to make hair dry instantly - perhaps installing some sort of Sims style 'get ready' where you just jump in a circle and you're all done instantaneously. I don't like the post-shower drying phase at all but I do really like a good shower. It's just tough.

I mean, obviously these are just basic changes for now and I'll sort out economy and infrastructure later. But sod those because my ideas are much more interesting and important. Firstly though I need to conquer the comedy world - and this starts for me, tomorrow, I need to go through this heat or I think it'll be a very not nice ending to a lovely Festival. Courage to the sticking place and all that...

Yesterday I managed to coerce my hip to take a holiday from it's usual position in the socket it has known and loved for many may years. This is awkward now because it didn't really have anywhere it wanted to go particularly and so has chosen to hang around like a yob under a lampost just outside its designated parking space. It's pretty awkward and painful if I'm honest and it is making me walk like a total spanner today so if you see me please don't laugh or push me over. Sigh and sigh some more.

Saturday, August 21, 2010

Ron Howard and the Sand Castle

Massive epic huge failure on my part...devastated by myself.

How did I let Thursday and Friday drift by without jotting a single word down on interpaper about what I was up to? I was doing so well with my egocentric intentions to indulge myself in the blogosphere daily. But I did fail.

Twas because I was out having fun. Oh yeah! That's right - take that in the face loyal reader. I selfishly decided it was more important to me to go out and do some stuff than to sit here and pretend I've done stuff so that you can read it and pretend you wanted to. Ha.

If there's anyone out there who can shed some light on the situation as to why the hell people blog and get me some perspective back I'll happily go with it. But for now I've gone Jacob's (crackers) and so I am sitting with a towel on my head, having just eaten a pop tart, insanely tired and trying to remember what I've been up to that meant I didn't come to my little cosy hole of chatty stuff and make use of the online pensieve.

I MCd a lovely little gig at The White Horse on Thursday lunchtime, Mirth of Forth twas called. It's a delightful little room to play and really lets you play with new stuff and enjoy getting to know a good sized crowd. I wa very happy but then it all went a bit wrong after that...

I was kidnapped for a short while which was difficult. Although my captors said it was ok to blog, the wireless was a little bit up and down in my cell and if I was going to type I needed to sit right up against the window which I didn't really want to do because the bed was comfier. So, my fault really. They let me go when someone put up the ransom for me which was half a cucumber (split lengthways not sliced in the middle) and an empty bucket. It was all very strange but sometimes life is and that is a lesson you should have learnt at puberty if you'd been listening.

When I'd been released I made the most of my freedom by drinking my body weight in alcohol on Thursday night! Helluva night that was. I believe I left Brooke's bar sometime after 4:30am and then wandered home getting very angry with everything that wasn't my bed. There are some nights where you think you've gotten away with being very drunk until you get to the next day and people just keep giving you very knowing looks and telling you you look tired. That was my yesterday. Sheesh though, if you'd been kidnapped and then ransomed for less than a fiver you'd have had an excuse to get drunk too. A good cucumber is rarely more than £2 even in Waitrose so I think I can be forgiven.

This all meant that Friday morning was a bit of a hungover mess. Brief contact with the ex was ill advised and caused a sandstorm of mental headfuckery which has yet to abate. It's incredible that in the same week as getting kidnapped I have also had to deal with the complete unexpected from that corner of the wibbly wobbly world. Will I ever learn? I'll certainly learn not to get kidnapped again that's for darned sure. My wrists still hurt from the handcuffs and I don't think I'll ever eat a salad again without retching. As for buckets, well...

Friday pushed on, I flyered. That was painful. I hate flyering more than anything - although I do really enjoy the friends you make on the mile. My favourite at the moment is 'curly haired guy'. Lord knows what his show is but I do enjoy his flyering technique. Although he has a tendency to plagiarise the calls we've invented for Flyering for Quiz In My Pants. These have so far included -

"Free fliers!"
"Free fliers - all four corners included in the price."
"Free fliers - it's bendy but not too bendy."
"Get your free origami kit here"
"Free unfolded paper aeroplane just for you"
"Craft kits, free, incredibly basic, craft kits..."

Then I went off and did QIMP. Our usual walk from the mile to the venue was not as spritely because I was too hungover to sing, but we did pass the teapot shop and the dead pig shop. The tea pot shop has lots of tea pots of all different colours and shapes and sizes. The dead pig shop just has the one dead pig but it's giant and gross and sits in the window and if you pass it later in the day so much of it has been eaten that it's bones poke out. I don't enjoy passing that shop but I always look in the window for some reason. G-R-O-S-S.

Quiz In My Pants was great fun - Sam Pacelli of Noise Next Door fame is our first guest so far to actually WEAR the pants properly. Hell. They are currently in for decontamination from Improv tomfoolery and we'll have to see if today's guests survive!

After all that merriment I had dinner. Uber boring, you don't need to know the details. But it was pasta and it was tasty.

Then I went to The Invisible Dot Club gig By The Sea. It was weird and cool and ever so slightly funky. We all had to get coaches and they took us to Portobello beach and then we walked to the townhall and watched an amazing line up. I guess far and away the best bit was Daniel Kitson Mcing...utterly phenomenal talent and too incredible for words. The whole gig had a really cool vibe and you felt a little bit accepted into a cool gang just for being there. Except for the morons at the back who didn't understand Stewart Lee. The great SL responded to this by refusing to say anything for several minutes...nothing at all. I've never felt such tension as when he went quiet and the whole room just wondered whether he would do as he threatened and not speak for the rest of his set. Thankfully for those of us that understand the concept of jokes that aren't necessarily knock knock jokes, he carried on and stormed the gig.

After that I raced back to C venues to do improvaganza and sadly went out in the first round AGAIN. I have never made it past the first round. Potentially I should just give up but it's too much mighty fun to consider that! Watching The Showstoppers girls kick absolute arse on the singing rounds was one of the best improv moments I've ever watched and rounded off an exhausting but thoroughly satisfying day.

Thank you Edinburgh fringe for everything except the kidnap. Utter horrors they were and they made me watch The Holiday over and over again until I promised to attempt to believe in love. But I don't think I ever shall. I told them to bugger off and that my favourite quote is "Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence" which is one of the most appropriate phrases I've come across in my 23 years. I got a kick in the solar plexus for that and they told me to stop being such a girl and get on with having romance back in my life. I performed a flying scissor kick and said that even if I was going to consider it, Jack Black would not be the one to teach me anything. For my troubles I was made to eat sand for hours.

Today my day is busy busy again. But good busy busy. Very good. Lots to achieve and accomplish and a police line up later to identify my captors. It should be easy. They were all velociraptors.

Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Blog Ness Monster

Some evil people got me very drunk last night and made me stay at a party until about 5am. This morning they've mopped up all the moisture in my brain so that it aches a bit and my eyes feel slightly too gritty to move them very frequently.

I got into a terribly silly argument last night with one of my flatmates over the connection between the funnybones skeleton books and the song 'Dry bones'. The argument started with us simply trying to remember the lines to the skeleton books -

In a dark dark house down a dark dark street...

An excellent book designed to teach children how to read the word dark and not a lot else. Although it was interesting to read - I think mainly because it was so dark. Definitely the renegade of the children's bookshelf. If there was going to be a children's book on drugs it would be the skeleton book and all the other books would be shying away and trying to keep their spines clean.

But then my flatmate started singing the dry bones song and insisting that it was all the same thing.

Ridiculous says I! The Dry bones song is a completely separate entity and is not in the books. How could the song possibly portray the well known tune in a book. Ridiculous.

But the argument spread like wild fire. soon the entire party was taking sides, most of them my side because I was right. But it was like West-Side story with skeletons. Of course there were a few casualties of war who had no idea what we were talking about who just sat bemused in the middle. They had a sort of blank stare in their eyes and just started muttering lines about skeletons that they couldn't possibly have understood. It was all very harrowing if I'm honest.

Then I ended up under a bed. There was a curious bed at this party of evil argumentative people. The curious bed was in the corner of the dining room and it's anyone's guess as to why it was there but it was super comfortable on the top of it. Looking back I realise this does not explain my presence 'neath the bed but at the time it seemed like the most logical of places to want to put myself.

I have a habit of getting into small places when drunk. It's sort of turned into a game over the years for people to see what the smallest place they can put me is. We've done tumble dryers, cupboards, under beds, even under the stage in the Cow Cafe at the Underbelly the other night. In fairness, this was because we'd lost the ping pong ball we were using to play 'On The Wonk Table Ping Pong'. OTWTPP is an incredible variation on standard ping pong which involves moving the tables after each failed attempt at a rally to make it harder. This does seem silly on the surface of it because if you're failing then why make it harder? But it totally made sense that night because we were so excited about havign invented a whole new game.

I'm 99% certain it will one day end up in the Olympics and anyone will be able to play it merrily. they actually won't be very merry - they'll have faces screwed up in concentration because they're so serious about trying to win. And I'll have loads of money and statues of me for being one of the inventors and the only one small enough to get under the stage and rescue the ball so that the invention could continue.

Today I'm not totally convinced I can bring myself to drink at all. Not even water. In fact, if it rains I might just die. I also don't want to put myself in any small places today. Unless someone offers me the chance to ride in a baby's pram - because that would be pretty cool. But other than that I am anticipating a relatively peaceful day of nothingnes...it is unlikely to happen.

Tuesday, August 17, 2010

Think of Peter Brook

I have had this window open for a few hours now. I mean computer window not my bedroom window. I'm not contemplating jumping or anything mightily ridiculous. But I have come to the conclusion I have nothing of any interest or merit to say this morning. At all. I honestly don't think I've ever been so stumped for an opinion on something, anything to write about.

I'm now slightly worried that when I step out of the front door people will say hello and I'll just stand there staring back at them with a blank expression on my face - completely devoid of anything interesting that the world could possibly need adding.

Maybe this is it? Maybe I have simply used up all my words. There is nothing else I have in my head that could come out that could possibly contribute positively to the human race and so I've been struck dumb. This is very different to dumb struck despite the assumed similarities.

This is a massive kick in the teeth for my aims to be a professional stand-up comedian as it means I'm either going to have to start plagiarising or get a new career. Neither of these is something I particularly want to do although I'd be happier retraining as a tummy button physician than I would spouting words I didn't write and lapping up the credit for them. I would genuinely hate to be a tummy button physician too. It would make me feel sick constantly as I'm quite freaked out by tummy buttons and I try and avoid them as much as possible.

For these reason I won't be blogging today - I'm really sorry to disappoint you. I realise your life does revolve around my anally retentive antics and I hate to leave a bald patch in your day without anything to read. I could blog about the mediocre thoughts that have crossed my mind this morning but as it was mainly about eating 2 slices of peanut butter on toast and then immediately wishing I hadn't and staring at myself in the mirror wondering if I could physically see how much weight I've gained this morning, I think I'll leave it. They're not terribly interesting thoughts and tend to leave me with the desire to go and smash up jars of peanut butter to wreak my revenge.

I don't even like peanut butter very much. It's ok when mixed with marmite but other than that it's sickly sweet nonsense really. The crunchy stuff is far superior to the smooth if you had to choose - but no one should ever be made to make that choice in my opinion. We should all just lead peanut butter free lives and be done with it. Screw you peanut butter you have ruined my intention to blog every day until Christmas and now, because of you, I not only have to think of outfits I can hide a corset and body sock under, I also have no blog today. Whoever thought peanut butter could have such an effect on someone's life? I mean obviously it'd have a massive effect if you were allergic to nuts and ate some but other than that you'd think it'd be a relatively easy thing to avoid and just go about your day without.

Ho hum.

So, really what I want to say is sorry there is no blog today. I wish there was one, and I will try hard to write on tonight if I discover some words in the stairway of the flat or something. Quiz In My Pants might suffer irrevocably without me saying anything. I will apologise in advance to whoever gets lumped on my team - if I can find the words.

Poo.

Monday, August 16, 2010

Mo Raterrace

Technically today is my day off but I don't want to not blog and ruin my commitment to the world of weird I'm carefully crafting here.

I've just had the most beautiful day today - we decided to get away from the city and go to the beach. So we planned going to the beach. I threw a small spanner in the works by revealing at this point that I don't like buses. I don't really know why I don't like buses because I don't have a problem with other equally rubbish modes of public transport. The only thing I can pinpoint it down to is that buses tend to get wetter than other things like the tube. And buses have horrible memories of being on them with all my school kit when they get full of condensation in the winter. Horrible.

So, we couldn't get the bus to the beach, we had to walk. We walked. It's a bloody long way to the beach. But it was made totally worth it by lots of fun things that happened along the way that are so horribly in-jokey I won't try and retell them here as you'd just be staring blankly at your computer screen wondering what the hell I was walking about. And even I wouldn't know. And neither would Santa.

Beach was beautiful, I adore the sea. I'm really looking forward to getting down to Brighton again post-Fringe and seeing the sea there. Truly one of my favourite places to be. One of my good friends that lives in Brighton once told me that he couldn't live anywhere other than the seaside because no matter who busy the city was you could always just look out to sea and see the endless expanse of serenity. I really like the idea and I find the sea immensely calming.

Today the sky was almost exactly the same colour as the sea and it all blended together into a milky blue perfection. Truly lovely. Then we stopped for a coffee and a cake and I made an Amy Pond wedding day creation out of a teaspoon and lots of different types of napkin. Absolute perfection.

We then went into an amusement arcade that had stolen many souls over the years so we didn't stop long in case it took ours. But we did stop long enough to take a picture of a bear that looked exactly like Tiernan. I was more amused than he was. But he did look like the bear. What a silly bear.

Then we walked all the way back again and somehow decided on the way that the best place to eat the marmite sandwiched Tiernan had brought was the top of Arthur's seat. And so up we went. Te climb up was bloody hard work and resulted in some quite big silences - the sort of silences where you sort of smile at each other a lot to check if any blood vessels have burst in each other's eyes but you don't want to talk much because it will result in some seriously unattractive panting. Unless you like panting. In which case you'd have been further up the hill following the huskies that were ahead of us.

The top was perfection. Truly an amazing place and despite the blood pouring from the souls of my feet I felt great and like I had really achieved something that day.

It's back to the grind tomorrow. I say grind - I mean back to doing the thing I love more than anything in the world and the chance to push myself a little further along the comedy ladder. Representing my career - not just a jokey ladder that breaks half way through. We are planning to turn Quiz In My Pants into a monthly event back in London and so I am meeting tomorrow to arrange press releases and to sort out the intricacies of how to get this off the ground. Exciting stuff.

I bloody love you world.

Oh it's such a perfect day, I'm glad I spent it with you.

Sunday, August 15, 2010

Oblogatory

My blog has become a bit of a fixation for me over the last few weeks - if I didn't have this small online therapy I think a lot of stuff would start to fall out of my mouth in weird places. Not spades or cartons of orange juice or anything, I mean words etc. I think if I tried to carry spades and cartons of orange juice in my mouth they would fall out but it wouldn't be much of a surprise to me as I'd have had to put them in there first of all in order for them to now fit and fall back out.

I feel it's important for you to know that between the last paragraph and the next one I tried to finish my tea but forgot I'd left the tea bag in and had the unpleasant sensation of a warm soggy bag falling to my face. This must be where the expression teabagging comes from? And if so, I fully applaud all the dedication it must take from the teabagger to boil his testes in iodine to get the desired effect. Full marks.

Recently I've not been able to blog totally sensibly and this is because life turned a bit bat shit mental for reasons that weren't really appropriate to blog about. Once the court proceedings are over I'll be able to talk about it in full detail but until they've found the bicycle bell and identified the muddy footprint on the back of my dress it's just not ok. I just hit the Edinburgh wall. I'd been warned about the wall and it should have been ok - but I didn't realise it would come at me from all angles all at once.

I've talked a lot about my expired car crash of a previous relationship and I don't particularly want to go into it in any more detail but it's been coming back to haunt me lately. And not in a Caspar the Friendly Ghost kind of way but more like an advert for wearing your seatbelts kind of a way. I think its the homesickness - I'm a terror for being homesick. I thought by the age of 23 I'd be alright with being away from home for long periods of time but yesterday my sister and I actually arranged a fake picnic in Bradford (somewhere we assumed might be halfway between Somerset and Edinburgh) right down to the detail of who would bring what pringles. Interesting? In so much as it turns out we both have exactly the same expectations on picnic food, yes. Otherwise, not particularly!

I promised myself today I would actually blog about some real stuff and all that to see whether the nonsense blogs are just good naturedly suffered by you dear reader in order to get to the comedy gold, never exaggerated, egocentric review of my life to date. I suspect it isn't - I suspect you've already stopped reading. In which case the rest of today's blog can just be a list of insults aimed at you.

You suck.

Not as much as your blog.

Foiled! Heckled by my own imagination. And fingers. They are important too because they do the typing. But not my baby fingers. Unless it's the shift key.

See? This is what happens when you ask me to be serious for a moment. Not that you did ask. But maybe you should expressly tell me not to so that this sort of thing doesn't become a regular occurrence?

So - what has happened to me in the last few days? Well, and in no particular order here goes -

We had a flat night in last night. Not one where we all squashed each other, wore well ironed clothes and ate pizza whilst making paper chains. But one where everyone who lives in our flat stays in. It was a lovely night wit candles and cooking and indie films. Delightful. Two of our flatmates are vegetarian so the other two cooked a vegetarian cottage pie/shepherds pie...what do you call it when it's quorn? Er, maybe an arable pie? It's difficult to tell. The results of the four of them eating this meal around the table while I lay on the sofa went as follows -

They were all happily chowing down when Veggie 1 comments,
"What an excellent flavour this "(insert decision on name of pie) pie" has. I usually really struggle to make Quorn taste of anything."

Which really does beg the question - why the hell would you eat Quorn then?

But then Meatie 1 replies with,

"Yeah, I used a shit load of beef stock to get it like this."

At which point the sort of silence falls over the room that could suffocate babies and old people simultaneously. It was the sort of silence that would happen if your Grandad announced a stiffy during Antiques Roadshow.

Veggie 1 politely retched but managed to keep it in her mouth. It was interesting site - I placed a silent bet in my head as to whether her eyes or dinner would be the first thing to come flying out of her head.

Veggie 2 sort of shrugged and decided she liked the dinner enough to ignore the faces staring back at her.

Meatie 2 had his back to me but from the tops of his ears I could see he was either practising the sort of blushing that only professional Santas need around December, or he was actually dying inside and his blood was rushing to his face like Titanic passengers hunting for a lifeboat. Either way - it did nothing to lift the monumental hush that had descended over our street. It was the sort of silence that people must have noticed nearby as I'm fairly certain it actually must have absorbed noise other people had started to make. Any conversations happening in the flat below probably resulted in the residents wondering if they were suddenly in a silent movie as their words rushed up through our floorboards to try and kill the awkward moment.

Meatie 1 was at this point desperately trying to convince herself and everyone else that there probably wasn't any meat in beef oxo cubes anyway. It was probably just brown sauce, vinegar and dirt carefully smushed together to make a brown cube of intense flavour.

I did contemplate leaving my position on the sofa and going to check at this point so that we could either pump Veggie 1s stomach or let her carry on eating without having to sterilise the broccolli before each mouthful.

At this point Meaties 1 and 2 disappeared to the kitchen and came back carrying the innocuous red box. Turns out beef oxo cubes do contain beef. Shocker. I've never seen cottage/shepherd's/arable pie look embarrassed but it somehow managed it.


Other things that have happened to me include a guest for QIMP turning up in two wigs, a poncho and a fake moustache and insisting on being called Matthew Kelly for the duration. A small child who cried at the start of my gig at Mirth Control this morning but then hugged me by the end. Oh, and I ate so many carrots yesterday that my poop is entirely orange today.

There. hopefully I've filled my realism quota. Opinions? Nope. Good.

Saturday, August 14, 2010

All in All

Once upon a time there was a wall, and the comedians tried to climb over it - but there was too much wall stretching into the clouds. The comedians tried to go round it, but it was too long to walk round and their feet got tired and they hadn't gotten any further. The comedians thought about just sitting on the floor and giving up but there was too much to be gained by carrying on. The comedians also thought about just grafitiing silly words and pictures all over the wall and making themselves laugh and this was fun for a while but then someone spoiled it by drinking the paint. There's always one.

The wall caused a lot of anger. Who had put it there? What was the point? Was it ever going to achieve anything by being there? The wall stood in the way of the stars (real ones, not shitty meanningless ones dished out by sad sacks who love typewriters), it stood in the way of the real stars. Which always represent dreams in terrible stories like this one with morals and an alternative meaning. The stars are the happy place where comedians go to think about how much they like standing blinded on a stage talking into the dark and waiting for strangers to approve of them. Comedians are queer folk.

The comedians simply didn't know, all they knew was that this wall had to be gotten through.

At first they tried drinking through the wall - dissolving the cement with beer, drop by drop. This was an effective method but it produced a lot of headaches the next morning when our band of hardy comedians realised they were not as far up the wall as they'd thought in the fog of the previous night's actions. Occasionally there would be misguided drunken leaps off the wall in an attempt to create flying - but this only succeeded in squashing a few unlucky comedians asleep at the bottom of the wall.

They also tried powering through the wall with more performances than you can shake a stick at. Not that necessarily any anyone would shake a stick during a comedy show as that would make a rather queer audience or a ramshackle shamanistic ritual. But they forced in as many opportunities to laugh as possible and hoped that the joy of what they were doing would help them through. This also failed as with every retelling of the words they'd been crafting for a year, the comedians became more critical of themselves and found it harder and harder to see why they were brilliant.

Eventually the comedians gave up and sat staring at each other wondering whether to go and find a stage at all or just sit and count their fingers to check they were still in reality. But then one comedian got to his feet.

He rose slowly, with all the power and might of a knight from days of old. He had a plan. The plan was that all the comedians would build a human pyramid and help each other over the wall - by working together they would build a tower so mighty that they would be able to climb over it and save each other from mental destruction.

It was a mighty plan.

"It's a fucking stupid plan" said a voice from the corner, "How are the people at the bottom going to get over? Muppets. There'll just be the one guy at the top of the pyramid climbing over and everyone in a ridiculous tower on the other side. Teamwork Schmeamwork, let's use dynamite."


And so they did. They blew up the wall in a massive bangtastic bang of explosives. A few people died but they weren't very funny anyway so it didn't totally matter and all the important people got through.

Turns out there wasn't really a moral at the end of this story. Just a big old explosion. A bit like Robot Wars. And Robot Wars is a good thing. And so are explosions. And so is marmite. And also comedy.

I believe I have just exploded my wall through the power of story...let's go week two...you've got a blooming long way to go to top week one for utterly weird stuff and nonsense...

Friday, August 13, 2010

I Married Elmo in a Blue Pick Up Van

I went sailing yesterday. In a blue velvet dress with a man named Equestrian. He is a tall fellow and talks constantly about food and other things that he can put in his mouth. Had I been listening I would be able to repeat some of these here in the typed form for you to have a gander at and marvel at his capacity to burble. As it is I wasn't listening because I was terribly busy. Being terribly busy is very different to being just busy, terribly busy means you are busy with something terrible.

And I was.

I was fighting a yellow armed tyrannosaurus squid with the smallest eyes of any of the limbed marsupials. He was supremely mad at me because I recently borrowed his Pink Floyd album and I haven't finished listening to it yet so I haven't returned it. I did try and explain to him that if he just waited patiently I'd get it to him but he was listening. He's a pissy little git because he loves music and listening to his walkman but he lives under water so he breaks a lot of walkmans and gets a lot of electric shocks.

Equestrian turned round just in time to see the yellow armed tyrannosaurus squid with the smallest eyes of any of the limbed marsupials send a sharpened version of Blonde on Blonde whizzing past my neck. I ducked and sheltered behind the sail of our boat but the yellow armed...his name is Alan, but Alan could see me because although he has very tiny eyes, they are very powerful. Equestrian the boatman screamed like a scared little girl who has just had her my little pony stolen and melted down into a polly pocket.

"Don't panic Equestrian!" I shouted with as much bravery as I could muster. The salty sea spray was splashing into my mouth and face but I just wiped it from my eyes and carried on ducking various CDs. It was ironic that Alan was choosing to fight me using the very medium that he was sorely missing and angry about no longer having. But irony is lost on an Alan that doesn't have Obscured By Clouds ratched up in his soggy walkman.

Equestrian thought the best course of action would be to get professional help so he got on the blower to two of the best Jeremy's we knew - Vine and Kyle. Unfortunately we didn't have a step to squat on so Kyle was out and when Vine heard that we were unlikely to ask narrow minded people to broadcast their opinions to a captive, bored, middle of the afternoon audience, he also bailed.

But suddenly I had an epiphany! Why not invite Alan to be the final team member for our burgeoning Eggheads quiz team? We were still one short and the filming was only a week away. If we were successful we would have enough notoriety and money to buy him a brand new CD and let me keep the salt-water damaged old one. I asked, he agreed.

We paddled back to shore and Equestrian and I high fived with delight at how lucky we'd been and the prospect of kickign the asses of Squirrely, She who sucks a lemon, Guy who tries not to look like he enjoys being there, and Man so clever he is bored by everything.

The day of the contest dawned like any other day. We smooshed Alan into his specially designed tank and got on the number 816 bus to the studio. When we arrived there was absolute pandemonium. Squirrely woman had gone beserk and massacred the other egg heads. She was screaming like a banshee and standing over their mutilated bodies shouting "I JUST WANT TO GO BACK TO MAKING COOKIES. I HATE YOU ALL. DOWN WITH CAPITALISM."

We were all incredibly shocked she'd always seemed so calm in the past and now here she was expressing such anguish and pain that we almost wanted to give her a cuddle and ask her to knit us something. That was it! I looked at Alan and I'm pretty sure he looked at me but it was hard to tell because his eyes are so small. We both knew what we had to do. We reached into Equestrian's handbag and pulled out the scarf he had been making for the last 8 years. He turned round and saw what we were about to do as though in slow motion. Hi eyes filled with tears as he thought about the sacrifice he would have to make in order to calm down squirrelly woman, and he nodded his assent.

Alan and I sidled up to Squirelly woman, we presented the scarf and burbled something about the possibility of a camomile tea. She looked at us with blood shot eyes and seemed to thank us from somewhere within. We nodded quietly and shhd her, she knew she needn't say anymore.

Six hours later she was tucked up in a rocking chair knitting away with delicate china scattered all around her from the tea cups she kept hurling at the 24 hour nurse we had employed to watch over her.

It was a strange day and no one exactly knows why things happened the way they did. But what we learnt was that no good can come from entering a tedious game show with smug people. And that you should always buy your own copy of the Floyd's work and not borrow because it only leads to difficulties later.


This blog was brought to you by the letters W, T, F and is dedicated to Acorn Head.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

I failed miserably

I was an awful 'normal'. I have a far too over-inflated sense of self to ever let myself sink to that level. Never fear all of you - I am still wearing lipstick that is poorly applied and far too red and reading a book that I nod and agree with on every other page.

In the true spirit of being a 'creative' I am now sitting in a flat that smells of sage that has been boiled up to cure sore throats. I'm not going to drink any. I've decided I'd just rather have a raspy throat and a gammy voice and not how to chow down on this grimbles saucepan of yuck that is currently stewing on the hob. I'm fairly certain I'd choose death over most cures for things - cures are always just a little bit too funky and out there until they've turned it into a hospital cure that sterilised and covered in technology.

I got involved in the floral equivalent of a chain letter yesterday - but one that had less threats of eternal bad luck if it wasn't passed on. I was flyering merrily (dourly) away down near our venue (What? Oh! The Dragonfly at 4:20pm since you ask...) when some waiters started up a conversation. I say conversation, what I mean is they inquired if they could come to the quiz, and the snorted for half an hour about this actually meaning "can I get in your pants?" HILARITY! But once they'd calmed down we made friends and they decided they actually wouldn't mind coming to the show.

But THEN, then...yes, then...they gave me a flower garland to wear in my hair. They placed it on my head with a fragility that suggested this really meant something. But I looked like a massive twat in it so I took it off as soon as I got to the venue (What? Oh! No, we've already done this) and had it in my bag. The day then progressed as per normal with far too much alcohol and far too little sensical (opposite on nonsensical) conversation.

But THEN, then...yes, at about 1.15am as my housemates and I were walking home...I say walking, I mean one was chowing down on some falafel and the other two were chasing each other down the highstreet with various shoes flying everywhere...a man offered me a ride in his little cycle buggy rickshaw thing. I definitely didn't want a ride but I did stop for a little chat with him as he was friendly and bored and probably a bit cold. By this point I had my flower garland back on my head, and he said he quite liked it. So, in the spirit of the fringe, and giving things away that make you look like a hippy knobhead, I said he could have it. He declined initially but I insisted (as any good present giver does) and he agreed to take it.

But THEN, then...yes, because things usually happy in a continuous motion when time is involved, he said he was going to give it away to someone else. Someone with long hair. Someone who would also pass it on so that our little flower garland could travel the world making people happy. I imagine it won't go overly far but I'm happy to be involved in something quite so meaningless and twee that, with a little bit of thought and effort, could be interpreted as something beautiful and lacking in today's modern society.

I am a little bit worried that when I see the original waiters today they will not be so understanding - I'm slightly concerned they might just see it as 'the miserable cow gave away our present to her'. Which is true, it was floral, I am not, I did not want it therefore. But it was about more than that at the time and that's the important thing. If anybody asks. It actually wan't important at all in any way.

So, what I'm actually doing right now is sitting on the floor waiting for some film people to come by and turn me into the next Lindsay Lohan. Lindsay and I have a lot in common - erm, we're both slightly nuts on a good day and have terrible hair if left to our own devices. We differ where I obey the law and don't flash my lady garden at unsuspecting people. Well, not very often anyway.

These people are from Cambridge University and are making a documentary on the lives of people at the fringe. What they are about to discover is that the lives of people at the fringe are necessarily very boring in the mornings. If they were making a documentary on the lives of fringe people after 11pm it would be fairly interesting and anecdotal. But really all we do in the morning is go and bother people with wet flyers and worry that we are not dramatic enough to catch the attention of the fickle masses on the mile.

Unless that's just what it's like when you're a lowly free fringe performer that no one knows about? Maybe when you're super famous and important and have people to flyer for you it's all about sitting in an entirely leather room snorting cocaine and laughing at your own jokes. It's ok to laugh at your own jokes when you're famous because the chances are you haven't written them yourself. When I'm super famous and hilarious I'm going to get my Edinburgh accommodation at the zoo. Just get right in there with the creatures and then my documentary would be wild!

The crew would turn up and I'd be squatting amongst the penguins, I'd turn (probably over my left shoulder) and just call out;

"Be with you in a minute guys, I'm just hanging with Rocko - he's this big one on the left."

Then the film crew would know they were onto some absolute gold and I would just smile to myself and think "Ah, I'm so cool."

Then Rocko and I would come over, in our own time, and offer them tea and sardines. Rocko would get a bit sniffy about the sardines because he's always pretty hungry in the mornings and he loathes giving them away, but I'm like 'Come on Rocko, we need these guys to paint us in a good light' and he'd agree eventually.

So, we're all sat around and the lead film guy says to me 'So, Laura, is it ok if I call you Laura?' For a second I'm confused as to what else he would call me, so I decide to test it out. "Don't push your luck, punk, of course you can't" He scrabbles around for an alternative to my given name and Rocko pipes up - "What about James?" and we all agree I can be called James for the purposes of the conversation.

They ask me all kinds of questions like "Why do you live in a zoo when you come to Edinburgh?" And I say "Because people can be fickle, but animals are true. As long as you feed them." And to prove my point I give Rocko a fish and he tries to mate with my arm.

The documentary is so rock and roll that it never gets aired, because the camera man gets eaten when we go and visit Spider and Steve the tigers. But for those of us that were there we know it happened, and we know it was good.

But today's filming is probably not going to be terribly interesting. But if you ever want the second one to happen we're going to have to start finding reasons for people to love me and someone to tell everyone about it...

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

When seven is no longer enough...

Seven is the most incredible number. Seven is the answer to everything - seven is the beginning and the end of the world.

Unfortunately I have only been in Edinburgh for 6 days so this is completely irrelevant. Now, I know what you're thinking - where the hell is this blog going? Why are you wasting precious web trees (for the web paper pages) on seven burblings?

Well, I have no idea. I'm just writing it - interpretation is your problem.
The trouble is see, I think I've been at the Fringe too long already - it's teaching me some pretty weird stuff about the way of the world if I'm honest. I am so saturated with lovies and comedic output that my starter motor has failed. I am completely out of comic imagination. It's gone. I am sitting on my bed like a 'normal'. A normal is a person that we 'creatives' have to look down on. 'Normals' are the audience who come to sup at the fountain of our creativity. They are certainly not as developed as us but they try hard. You can tell this by their constant ticket buying and attempts to analyse the miraculous concepts we have deigned to play with on stage in either our black skin tight leotards (actors/dancers/mimes) or 'I'm your best mate' jeans and t shirt (comedians/poets/street performers). I am starting to turn into one of these 'normals' due to vast expression of creative thought. It is draining away and soon I will be chowing down on mediocre theatre with no idea that just because I am enjoying it doesn't make it good theatre. Or unable to vocalise properly how the fact that Jason Manford makes lots of people laugh means he is necessarily a sell out. SUFFER. Sigh. I will be like a person who just wakes up in the morning and brushes their teeth and goes to work without once wondering what would happen if they brushed their teeth with cranberry juice for a month (I think I would start to look very vampiric and cool. I probably wouldn't).

I don't want to turn in to a 'normal'. They wear beige but in a not ironic way. It's ok to wear beige if you're an ahhhteest (artist) because it's a statement. Unless you are wearing an ugly beige cardigan as a comment on the way no one is paying any attention to Pakistan right now but your one woman show on the plight of a single family really makes people think, you are just not wearing it right. When 'normals' do it it's because they don't have the brain power to think about wearing cerise. If they do wear cerise it's from Marks and Spencer and not even in a post-modernist M&S sort of way.

By tomorrow I will be so normal I'll probably stop talking in the third person. I probably won't even think about Brecht or Lenny Bruce. I will just sit there hoping someone with fluffy hair and kirby grips is going to come along and 'really make me think and examine' something dance-based. The trouble with 'normals' is that they need us 'creatives' to help them think. Without us, they would just sit there all day staring at a wall and wondering what Davina Macall was up to. They might even text in to GMTV and answer a monotonously easy question. Just to kill the boredom. Now, we 'creatives' can't get to everyone at once but we're trying - one script at a time.

By tomorrow I might even eat white bread. I won't think abotu wheat germ. I will no longer even look for fair trade on bottles of stuff. I'll just drink anythign because I like it, just like a 'normal' would. Weird. I'm not sure how long I'll be able to handle it quite honestly. 'Normals' are queer folk, what with their jobs for money because they like stuff and haven't fallen for consumer guilt. How dare they make the most of the advancements of the world when they could flog themselves stupid every day in front of 4 people in a theartah and "know" more about what real life's about.

Bizarre.

Well, it's time to step outside and see how all this goes. Keep you posted folks. By tomorrow I'll probably have such an appropriate view of my self worth I'll stop keeping a blog. Because I'll realise it is not what 'normals' do. Because they understand that people don't actually give a shit. What weird creatures to assume you shouldn't publish your thoughts on the internet every day...I shudder.

Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Snot Marshall Jones

I'm utterly terrified as hell this morning. If my life was a film the opening moments would have been the camera pulling a close up on my wide terrified eyes as I lay there under the duvet (on the mattress in the front room of the 2 bedroom flat 7 people slept in last night). There would be wind chimes jingling (or chiming) softly in the background, maybe the curtains would press gently out on a gentle breeze before sucking back in to the window and letting in a sliver of grey morning light.

Then an alarm would go off, shrill and electronic sounding. It would get put on snooze. Then it would go off again.

Then all my friends would get up and cheerily wish Jamie a happy birthday. Pretty much at this point the atmosphere would jump to happy, as people gather toast and tea and give presents to Jamie and generally revel in the loveliness of her deciding to come up and see us for her birthday.

But when the camera pans round to the left you see a shrivelled girl (or is it a woman? No one really knows), she is shivering in the corner with the look of a haunted child slave on her face. She is dreading the moment when everyone is showered and clean and dressed...she is dreading stepping out of the front door and going to their first event of the day...

They are off to feed some swans.

I have a HUGE phobia of birds, I'm literally terrified of them. In the list of three things that scare me (wind, birds and tummy buttons), birds definitely come first. Birds are utterly terrifying because there is no escaping a bird attack - they can fly, swim and walk...where can you possibly go to get rid of them? Unless, you're a miner. But I'm a little clasutrophobic so I'd rather not have to live in a pit for the rest of forever.

Swans are especially scary because they can break your leg just by blinking at you through the power of their wings. All they need to do is show those beady little eyes at you and concentrate and all your limbs just snap off. BOOM POW BOOM (not a black eyed peas song - that's mini me exploding.)

Swans are the spawn of the devil - actual fact. That's why the devil is known as the devil. In 1242 he mated with a carrier pigeon who was supposed to be taking a message of peace from God to Einstein, who thought they had finally worked out a way to solve the world's problems. The carrier pigeon fell heavily pregnant with the devil's seed and gave birth to the world's first swan. And this swan was a heinous bitch. She flew the length and breadth of the world murdering, raping and pillaging. The idea of the 'vikings' is actually an entirely make believe race, made up to cover the fact that swans had managed to wreak so much havoc over the human race.

This is a necessarily short blog because I have to go and put my armour on and eat something to settle the butterflies...if I survive this heinous ordeal you'll hear about it tomorrow...

Monday, August 9, 2010

Slam!

Yesterday it seems, was the day when everyone just wanted to make it very clear they are much better than I am. It was not a pleasant thing to happen to one so small and competitive.

First off I got picked on by a 12 year old on the Mile who was flyering for Secret Garden...she came over to ask if I wanted to see Secret Garden and I very politely but firmyl said 'Hell no, I despise child performers and you are a little pesky.' but she was having none of it! So I told her our show was at the same time as hers so unfortunately we couldn't attend even if I did enjoy watching old shows rehashed with cute faces in place of tonality, I couldn't physically be in two places at once.

She then accepted the inevitable and may have worked out that a scowling midget wasn't the best person to have in the front row anyway, and asked what show we were doing. Our show isn't really suitable for children but so I thought I'd dismiss it nice and easy. I just said 'It's called Quiz In My Pants, here is the flyer, it's all very silly...'

She looked at the flyer, looked at me and said 'Yeah, I can see that...no offence.'

NO OFFENCE?

"Yeah, I can see that you're show looks silly...no offence."

From a 12 year old wearing Hannah Montana spectacles, standing on a bollard singing tunes from the most boring musical on the planet. No offence...scrot bag. I am going to exact my revenge by telling everyone about this so-called 'Secret' Garden and then there will be no show because it will essentially be a public garden. Or a park. And no one wants to go and see a show about sick kids in a park. But someone will probably devise it and bring it to the fringe next year with the aim of really exposing the inner angst of all those involved. Hell I'm fed up with shows about inner angst. This is definitely why I love comedy - the world's a great place. Even with slamming Hannah Montana 12-year olds. It's all good. Bottle up your feelings people - we don't want to hear about them in the pub and we don't want to hear about them on the stage. We just don't care enough. Well, I don't care enough. Maybe feel free to write all the angst plays you want, but I won't be there? That's fair. Lovely.

So that was great about yesterday. Show went much better yesterday - steady improvement is always grand! Lovely guest spot from Tiernan Douieb who has helped us out massively on our opening weekend. Unfortunately our second guest was unable to come along at the last minute so we enlisted the help of audience member Christina who had some of the best banter I've ever witnessed. What a woman. I think it adds a certain risk element to the whole show if the audience have guest potential...brilliant.


This morning I went to get my hair cut. I have had an Edinburgh Fringe cut in - giggle he he, I like to take things literally! Unfortunately I got asked for ID ordering the coffee I'm currently supping so I fear I may have just undone 17 years of facial maturing in one fell swoop. Error. My official Scottish haircut feels very nice and I think I'm looking less like a haystack than I have done for the last year. I forget how much I actually like going to the hair dressers - hence only having been once in the last year. But it's basically a place where they massage your head, give you tea and talk to you like they care about your life delightful. My hairdresser today was very lovely and even asked if I wanted to leave some QIMP flyers in the reception for her clients...she may regret that tomorrow when they all come in mildly confused and wearing pants in the wrong places...


Last night was a little piece of carnage nicely sewed into an upside down purple cow...I entirely blame Keith Farnan and Tiernan Douieb for hosting a quiz with alcohol for sale at the Underbelly. It was a little downhill from there, especially after we came second and won a beach bat and ball set... swigging from a bottle of wine and playing 'On the wonk table tennis' is not something classy young ladies do and I hope you can all learn a lesson from me. I'm offially taking one for the team on this one. Was a beautiful sight to see the leading actress from the five star show 'Laura' (at the Hive if you're interested - it's incredible) batting a DVD of Anthony (the gnomey one) from Big Brother doing a work out down the cobbled street at approximately 3 am. He flew like a bluebird on a kite and it may well be the most pleasure anyone has ever got from his DVD.

Beyond that the world got a little hazy and I would feel ashamed of this but it was Sunday. And er, I get forgiven I think. Is that how religion works? No idea.

Gots to run away now and start working on the new and exciting rounds for todays Quizzing...if you're in Edinburgh we're on at 4:20pm everyday at the Dragonfly. Delicious. See you there.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Mind On The Run

Ah, sleep was awesome. Thanks for that Mr Sandman. I don't really understand the Mr Sandman thing? Is it an American thing? Surely sand is one of the least sleep inducing entities on the planet, I rarely fall asleep in sand. On the few occasions I have fallen asleep on a beach or in a sand pit (latter probably even less frequent than former) it has most certainly been in spite of the sand rather than because of it. So what the hell are you thinking naming yourself sandman?

Potentially I've missed something there and if there is a logical reason feel free to tweet me and let me know that I'm a dumbass. What a blilly sog this is turning out to be. I should delete the whole thing and start again but I shan't because I have woken up feeling entirely mischievous. Well, I don't feel entirely mischievous - some of me feels like skin and some wet hair (shower before you ask). But that is beside the point. I've now managed to complete 2 paragraphs of utter nonsense. Nonsense, nonsense, nonsense.

I don't know if you've seen Inception? I mainly don't know because I don't know who you are, and because potentially no one will ever read it. But I thought Inception was great, it dealt with loads of stuff connected to dreaming that was a really common thing to think about. Like the waking up feeling like you're falling and the way you never know how you got where you are in a dream.

But one thing they didn't deal with is waking up with a song in your head and no idea how it got there. I have the line 'Band on the run' repeating over and over again in my brain. The thing is, I don't even know what this song is...I'm fairly confident it's a real song? Is it? Part of me wants to say Paul McCartney? I just don't know...so how and why has it got into my brain? And what was my dream? Why am I left with just this remnant of it? This shitty 4 word remnant of something that was probably amazing!

Maybe I was in a band? I like to think I'd be the drummer in a band. I wouldn't, definitely wouldn't because my hand eye coordination is appalling. I can barely even walk over an uneven surface so I don't think tapping hands and feet in time would be my forte. Maybe I'd be the singer, but I know I wouldn't because I lose my voice at the drop of a hat. Especially if you drop a heavy hat on my voice box. Oh dear. I certainly showed no real prowess at guitar learning when I had one - I tended to give up after my fingers started to hurt and then ignore the thing for a while. I think my painstakingly slow renditions of Under The Boardwalk may have been a contributing factor in the eventual breakdown of my relationship. There's only so many times someone can claim it's cute that you still have to count all your fingers to work out which one goes where.

So maybe I wasn't in a band in this dream. But I might have been on the run. The thing about a dream is that I could have been any kind of band. Hair band, elastic band, band aid...maybe I formed a coallition of different bands and we all had to go on the run dodging traffic and Band Murderers who were after us because of our collective uses in everyday life? That would be an amazing dream! Band of Bandy Brothers I would name it. And we would all have little bandy legs and band together to save the day from the baddies. Baddies verses bandies...we would certainly not be bandits. No no no. We would be glorious upstanding members of the small bandy community. And if anyone got hurt we could bandage them up.

Er, probably enough with the band stuff now yeah? Yeah. Good idea.

But this is what's already crossed my mind this morning. Which bodes for a not very coherent day. But a fun one! I'm probably bets avoided at all costs today for I feel a riot coming on...get on the bandwagon...

Exhaustion Junction

I've hit a wall...an actual wall. And I've been arrested on charges of assault and battery. Despite the fact that I run off the mains. Ouch. Christ, that even hurt me. I'm sorry.

I really wanted to not blog about Edinburgh today - on the assumption that for every fan of comedians and blogs that isn't here it must be really awful to have 3 long weeks of blogs ahead of you that will make limited sense. But, as it was the first day of Quiz In My Pants (my show) today, I feel we ought to do it justice...

It went well. But it's going to get better. I can feel it in my bones. We had some fantastic guests in the form of the excellent Jar Foreman and the competent Tiernan Douieb. That's 100% comedic competence and 99% life fail incidently. Jay brought a very lovely sense of quizzical banter to the show, with an eccentric poem in the middle that bodes very well for his solo show. Tiernan is a master stand-up with a really cheeky input into a performance, I'd thoroughly recommend catching his show at The Caves throughout Edinburgh. We've hit the jackpot on guests for our little Quiz corner and it was awesome to have a big old audience in to appreciate it.

Flyering was a little weird, I must say. I managed to punch a man full in the face by accident. His response was just to chastise me for alienating my target audience, which I felt was very aimiable considering I could have done him some real damage. I should be much more careful. The difficulty is that I have massive hands and very long arms. My arms are actually the same length as my legs, a little like a monkey. And I have the biggest hands in comparison to the rest of my body. So I should be very careful and treat them like dangerous weapons, but there I was on the Mile flailing like a drunken stick insect on stilletos and punching random family men. My sincerest apologies go out to him.

The trouble with having a show called Quiz In My Pants is that it encourages a lot of people to ask about my pants. Sort of along the lines of 'Ooh er, do we get to see your pants?' and 'I'd like to quiz in your pants'...which is both witty and charming. Can't for the life of me think why I didn't immediately drop the aforementioned pants and just admit defeat. Flirting is a weird medium. Banter I can deal with - flirting, nu uh, Never. I'm just not a very sexy person so the second someone gets suggestive about my pants I instantly feel it's only appropriate to tell them my pants are probably bigger than theirs and have some sort of farm animal cartoon on them. Le sigh.

But after my flyering disaster the show went very well. So brilliant. Long may it continue with tweakage and happy days to come... Lovely.

I had every intention of curling up early doors tonight with a documentary and some sleepy time. What with the invention of 'nappage is slappage' in Lapland, I'm rather sleep deprived at the moment and really need some shut eye in the night. But then the Fringe wind picks up and sort of seeps into your blood and you feel compelled to go and have 'just one drink'...

The atmosphere at the festival is electric, is hard to describe how the entire city is functioning on excitement and an eagerness to experience something new. It's like it's in the bulldings and the streets and the people have no idea why their bodies are as charged as they are...or maybe it's just me. But either way, my early night has now turned into still being awake at a moderate 2am, blogging random shite about how Disney happy I am. At the risk of going all gushy muchy and admitting that there's more in my spacious head than jokes and the desire to be centre of attention, the festival really hammers home how much this is everything I ever want to do. The buzz of being involved in something so huge and happiness inspiring is amazing. Long may the arts continue. But not the shit pretentious ones where people with white face paint give you flyers for a modern version of something that needed moderninsing because no one wanted to see the original. Fuck those people are annoying. I've tried to be really good with 'Flier karma' so far because it's a soul destroying job when people are arseholes about it (see my blog on www.popweasel.com) but there's only so many times a zombie girl in a corset can try and make you believe Clockwork Orange is going to be particularly groundbreaking because they've done it with physical theatah and a banana instead. Go away. Write a new play.

That's the difficulty with doing stand-up. It's turned me into a bit of a snob about the difficulties it comes with. People assume it's just talking, how hard can that be? But they don't really appreciate that it's a very difficult thing to do. You can't just pick up an old Eddie Izzard show and do it in a post modern way like a theatre company could do, and you can't do the same set for 20 years like a band can. There's constantly the pressure for new material and new ideas. Which is great - and why we're drawn to it I suppose. But it does make me want to punch people on the mile. And that is all the logic I have for this weird mini rant.

Er, I suppose I should sleep. And tomorrow will be an Edinburgh free blog for those of you who are just like 'IT'S JUST AUGUST YOU SELF OBSESSED COMEDY TYPES WHO THINK 'EDINBURGH' IS ACTUALLY THE NAME OF A MONTH'.

Night all xxx

Friday, August 6, 2010

Scottish Chicago

So, did you know that Edinburgh is known as the Windy City? No, neither did I. But it is. I was fairly confident that chicago had already bagged this gassy accolade but apparently Edinburgh is up there too because it doesn't fit 'the stereotype of Scottish weather'. Er, guys? I'm afraid it does. Windy is very much a part of the steroetype because the wind blows in the cold, and the rain, and the anoraks.

My feelings towards this whole windy thing are mixed at best. Good - I like to wear my anorak and not get judged by snobby London muppets. Bad - I'm pretty much terrified of wind. There's a short list of things I'm scared of which mainly consists of tummy buttons, birds and wind.

The problem with wind is that there's not getting away from it - it's the ninja of the weather world. You can't even tell it politely to go away, because essentially that's all it's doing. It's a massive conundrum. For a person who's small by design, wind can be a tricksy entity that often causes you to sway a little bit or take a surprise two steps to the left when you come out of the shelter of buildings.

It's a bully, is what it is. My favourite 'story' (parable? meh) is the one where the great ass munching wind and the sun have the battle to make the person take off her coat. And the wind gets egg all over his face. Take the egg you snot goblin wind. Although, putting egg in the wind's face is just taking lots of egg (in my imagination it's scrambled but you can choose) and throwing it in the air willy nilly so you'll probably have equal amounts of it on your own face too. Metaphorical egg on his face. But the point is, (what the fuck could the point possibly be? This is a ridiculous paragraph), the point is, the wind failed. IT FAILED. It was defeated because it is powerless to get us naked. No naked wind time. Because that would be stupid. So unless we all want to have nudity banned from our lives we should probably sign a petition asking Boris Johnson to add wind stabbing to the Olympics in 2012. It might not even be such a bad idea, because we could all take out a bit of stress with a carving knife and a breeze. Although you would have to take great care to make sure there were no people in your wind at the time of the stabbing or there'd be some pretty weird court cases. I doubt you could get off by claiming you were 'aiming for the wind and his jugular got in the way.' But I'd be happy to help you try.

Massively digressed. But I think it was important so never mind.

I have a zillion things to do today and have got part way through my list. Tea numero uno has been drunketh (I didn't get my company of tea tiddled, I supped her til she was gone. Tea is a girl, coffee a boy. Fact.). My shower has happened - nd was INCREDIBLE! In our delicious little flat in the heart (if by heart you mean appendix) of Edinburgh, we have the Shower of Dreams. This is a shower so powerful that your hair has to come up with reasons to plead with the water that it deserves to stay on your head. Any miniscule piece of tension I had left in my shoulders has been aqua pummelled into oblivion and I am now burdenless. Except that, half way through the hot water ran out...but I now have an accurate idea of what being Victoria Falls in winter might be like so swings and roundabouts. Blog is nearing completion (although I fear it will have insecurity issues compared to the poetry marathon of yesterday), and now I have the following to complete -

* Go and find out why the smoke alarm beeps constantly. I have a headache.
* Go and have a coffee with ane either very hungover or still drunk fellow. (this is pre-arranged, I'm just not sure of his current state - I'm not going to go and find someone who fits either description on the street and ask them to share a Mocha.)
* Go blackboard, pen and shower gel shopping.
* Scope our Quiz In My Pants venue (The Dragonfly) in prep for our first show at 4:20pm tomorrow. (Plugged the shit out of that. Butt plug.)
* Generally feel a bit worried and nervous about whether we've chosen the best rounds to test out tomorrow for Experimental Show 1.

The difficult thing with a show like ours is that we cannae (oh yeah that's right I'm blending in with the locals) really test how each round is going to work effectively until we've got the guests, who are busy folk and cannot all come round for biscuits and a run through. But we're confident we have sufficient madness to make them all look fairly stupid or funny while the audience have a good time and think about how much they want to see more of the Edinburgh comedy scene.

The 8 or 9 hour car journey yesterday had a profoundly catatonic effect on my brain which I'm hoping will have disappeared by tomorrow at the latest. It was massively helped along by the viewing of 'Chaos Control' by The Noise Next Door who are very, vairy funny chaps that you should all go and see if you're in Edinburgh. Both of you readers. Do it now. I then got merrily tipsy with some locals who I met whilst minding my own business drinking and planning what shows to see today. If you're out there Rod and Nick, you are the weirdest pair of people I've met in a long time. I salute you. But as a consequence of your distracting I now have no idea what shows I'm going to see today and am getting further and further behind in my list. C'est difficile.

Let's go windy city, I'm zipping up the mac and out on the cobbles for what is essentially, Proper Day the First of my Edinburgh existence...

Thursday, August 5, 2010

'Twas the night before Edinburgh...

‘Twas the night before Edinburgh and all through the house,
A creature was bouncing; as small as a mouse.
The stockings were hung from her ears like a loon,
In prep for a month in the old Scottish toon.
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
Not sure whose they are but please don't tell the feds...
I've had lots of coffee, a snack and a shower,
Ready to sleep for a whole entire hour!
When at 4am the alarm goes with a clatter,
And I smash up the fucker for being such a twat-ter.
Away to the train I fly in a chase,
Then troop back to the house having forgotten my case...
The dew on the tracks and a bright summer flower,
Still frankly look shit at this ungodly hour.
When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a trolley of sandwiches, red wine and beer.
Swaying on the rails, bringing up the sick,
A smell from the toilet and a "silent coach" prick.
"Now, Dasher! now, Dancer! now, Prancer and Vixen!
On, Comet! on Cupid! on, Donder and Blitzen!
To the top of the porch! to the top of the wall!
Now dash away! dash away! dash away all!"
A mentalist yelling stuff. Brilliant, what fun.
We're exiting sobriety til the end of the run.
And up to the border of Scotland we flew
With a train full of jokes and a crazy man too.
Away in the distance I saw in the sky,
A smile in the clouds and a face saying hi
Could this be Bennett, with an omen of delight?
Or Copstick just waiting to label us old steaming shite?
It's a city of dreams from the new town to old,
We don't even mind that it rains and is cold.
A bundle of shows it has packed in its bars,
And the best of comedians from crap ones to stars.
The lights how they twinkle - the people so merry!
The memories of past years, like when I popped my...balloon.
The castle up high, standing out proud.
And the Mile, best avoided, if you don't like a crowd.
The mess from the tramworks, so far from complete,
Unless they just wanted to fuck up Prince's Street?
But the journey goes on, in despite of my whinge,
For I'm off to star in the Edinburgh Fringe!
A chance for fame, and reviews full of stars,
A chance to watch grown men weeping in bars.
With improv and stand up and theatre, to boot,
Whilst down south the athletes are collecting their loot...
We've punch lines and pints, all made to order
The tension is mounting as we head for the border.
Jiggling my fingers and wingling my toes,
Up through the clouds my heart and dreams rose,
It's time for the Gilded, for shows and more laughter,
We'll deal with the hangovers and poverty after,
But I just must say, as I smile with delight,
Happy Edinburgh to all, and to all a good night!