well it’s been an eventful couple of weeks.

my posture’s terrible.

Drove from Llanrhidian to Frinton-on-sea yesterday. what an epic feat. talk about the paris dakhar rally. please do talk about it. as i ain’t got fuck all. doubel negative there. as my friend Gareth Williams used to say: double negatives don’t mean nothing.

a big shout out to Paul Hazell, comedy hypnotist, and owner of the Comedy Lounge. Hull. Bloody Hull.

The friday was better than the saturday. what is an audience? that is the question. A bunch of people. sometimes they get you sometimes they don’t.

anyway, the saturday was tougher, for some reason. i mean it’s not like they were difficult in any hostile way, just that they didn’t seem to get me. A few laughs here and there.

But Paul was very nice about it.

welllllll

I did a gig in in beckenham on saturday. there was a bleedin diversion on the m4, added 2 hours to the journey. and the sat nav chose to take me through London, an hour spent in getting 12 miles. The sat nav normally speaks but on this trip it stayed strangely silent. perhaps it felt guilty.

But i got to the gig: a lovely little church hall, with a terrific audience. St George’s. Best gig so far of the post lockdown era.

then yesterday – sunday – the day of the lord – i had one of the most unusual double ups i’ve ever done.

At 2pm a gig in an outdoor festival in llanrhidian, Gower / Gwyr.

That gig had to run to time. emergency procedures kick in otherwise. which are….non existant really. But i should have had a back up plan, if i was going to attempt a gig in gower, south wales, in the afternoon followed, 7 hours later, by a gig in Frinton-on-sea, on the east coast of england. Yes a back up plan would have been a good idea when, knowing there’s a junction closed on the M4 adding 2 hours to the journey, i decided to drive up through mid england instead.

It was touch and go until i got to the M25. but i made it to the gig with minutes to spare, and when i walked in at 9.05 i was in my element – yes i was wearing a kettle on my head. well it was fur lined and that’s the last time i’m putting the kettle on.

cup of tea?

I’ve never had a round of applause from a green room before. Joseph and Marulyn, or was it Jolene and Maggie? they were lovely.

the gig was ace as well, making the drive all the more worthwhile. Fatigue didn’t set in, maybe because one gets enlivened by the crowd. There a connection at the end of it…

and a funny little theatre set on stage. I entered from the the back of the stage through a pair of white doors.

and Clive, the booker, he was so appreciative of the effort that he let me stay over in his flat over looking the north sea…well it’s north technically…even though it’s east.

so eer i got up this morning with a hangover – a lager cider whisky combination didn’t do me any favours the night before.

But i thought 14 hours driving, there and back, in one go, would be too much. and in the dark…and with diversions! and perversions.

so…thanks Clive. Lovely man – or is he??? I don’t know. but he’s artistic, with a great appreciation of comedy.

the question is – am i a character act?

as clive said, i do non stop puns. the problem is some audiences don’t cotton on to that concept.

so, is the concept an artifice? a character put on?

maybe it is a character. in which case, if the audience don’t ‘get’ the character…..should i break out of it?

the object: is it to be funny?

or is it

to entertain?

well i can’t be funny unless the audience finds me funny.

so yeah i had a pleasant walk about in frinton, and a quick dip in the sea. felt like montalbano for a moment. until i caught sight of my stomach in the mirror.

what i was doing with a mirror in the sea i don’t know….oh yes i do..i was trying to recreate the Narcissus legend…but the surface of the sea wasn’t reflecting me well enough – for me to fall in love with it – so i had to borrow a mirror.

ma drych yr uffarn arna i…

before setting out again on my long trip home.

actually the festival gig was good fun as well. but it was work.

Ah Hereford, land of orchards and and….eeer.

anyway it was good to be doing a gig, the venue was a trendy bar which made really nice local lager – and gave some for free to the acts. Eleri came along – the down side was i lost my mobile phone. This happened in a garage somewhere east of Brecon; her car flashed up a light saying the tyres needed air! so i must have left it on top of the air machine. Oh well that’s inflation!

Due to Covid the gig itself actually happened outdoors in the courtyard – i’m not saying the audience were spaced out (but thinking about it maybe they were as i’d spiked their drinks with acid).

As i walked on stage i looked down and realised ll my written notes had been erased from the palm of my hand…damn those hand sanitizers! (that’s a joke – if i write notes on my hand they’ll always be on the back not the palm, due to sweaty pores – the sweat pores out).

When i went on stage the compere kneed me in the balls…not really.

this is real though: i got an excellent set up for my prescription glasses gag – which is a visual joke : sunglasses covered in prescription pills. The lone welsh man in the audience happened to be wearing sunglasses. A witty dual ensued, with him offering me glasses, then me declining, saying no thanks, i got my own!

– got a good clap for that one….

…which made up for the shakiness of the rest of the set! Yes i was a bit all over the place. But still getting back into the swing of things

last thursday i did my first live gig in an actual venue since march 2020..

it was in a kids play venue (by day) called Little Giggles…which is what i got. No, it was good to be back, but at the same time not really that big a deal. IT was in Yate near Bristol, and i managed to get a train all the way and back.,

wasn’t really nervous, but i couldn’t recall much of my material. still, stand up comedy is like riding a bike. But , as Kevin McCarthy (who was also on the bill) said to me, ‘Last time i rode a bike i fell off’. but hey that’s funny.

Nick Page gave me a lift back to Yate train station, which was nice of him even though it meant i had an hour to wait on a cold platform. got some reading done. Talked to him more tonight than i ever have done before.

It was not an ideal gig in terms of space, sound and lighting, but overall it was a good gig to have after such a long gap away . the audience – about 35 – were nice enough .were they spaced out? yes, but that was something they’d been drinking.

The stage was the most weird thing: a series of cubes with multi coloured lights within each one, a bit like the stage under Travolta when he does his famous dance in Saturday Night Fever…i wasn’t so much stayin alive as tryin not to die !

or recycling centre. it’s a groovy place to go…

so we’re down there about a week ago. and i’m sitting in the passenger seat of the car, literally minding my own business. indeed, i am metaphorically minding my own business as well, which is saying something. my g’friend is driving – this is her gig, after all she’s the one who booked the tip, and has the email on her smart phone to prove it. (yes you got to book the fuckin thing these days – what a drag).

anyway, as we approach the entrance i see the man, with a high viz jacket. it’s normal for them to have someone there on the cornerm checking the number plates as the cars enter.

but i notice this bloke is a bit more forward than usual – he’s making a point of talking to the car dwellers, gets them to open their window so he can lean in and chat. i think ‘ this guy is going slightly overboard ‘ but it’s really just a subtle difference with what i’ve seen there in the past.

But then bear in mind there is a contagious virus going around or, as the patronising woman in the Royal Mail counter said to me the other week: ‘we’re in the middle of a pandemic…?!’

Anyway, we get to the head of the queue. my passenger side window is wound all the way down, but i make a point of putting my head down and remain quiet. I let eleri do all the talking…

As this high viz vest man lurches forward and sticks his head into our car – as i sensed he would – it immediately, or as soon as he opens his mouth, becomes apparent ”e’s not from around ‘ere’..he’s a bleedin cockney ain ‘e”…well, i say cockney, perhaps his accent is from a hundred miles away from London, but his accent in Llansamlet cuts like Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweep – which i know is a sweeping statement.

So he blabs to eleri about some admin crap – which he could easily have done from outside the vehicle – like has happened every time in the past….but THEN!!!!

I hear the words “cheer up mate, things can’t be that bad” ..or was it “it might never happen”…either way i fucking knew it ! Something told me he was one of them, one of those strange types who can’t leave someone else who is doing absolutely nothing wrong…alone. My gut told me this was going to happen; It went through my mind as i’d observed him from the queue a few moments before, greedily stuffing his mug into other unsuspecting saloons. -indeed none of that posturing was necessary as all he has to do was glance at his portable computer and tick the box with registration of the car going past and into the tip – easy!

But maybe it was the odd fact that he wasn’t sticking to the simple method that made my wary. I thought ‘ i know i’ll deliberately clam up, like a cocoon, and just sit here with my head down and say nothing. Just to see what happens.

And he went for it….but i didn’t give him any satisfaction. after his callous words i remained stoic, still with my head down, still glancing away, and to the right. So i caught eleri’s eye as she smiled at his vociferous critique of my dead pan persona.

I’ve encountered this before, where someone basically tells me to cheer up. i hate it. what right have they to tell anybody that ?? how do they know what i feel? what do they know about my day, where i’ve just come from, what’s just happened to me, whether i’m a depressed, bi-polar skitzophrenic AIDS sufferer or not? But more importantly, what have i done to them to deserve a comment like that? nothing that’s what…still, it makes you think.

I mean, i’m guessing there’s people out there who can’t stand quiet in a group, or silence in an individual. Maybe it reminds them of something painful. or maybe it a challenge to something inside them. But imagine that quality multiplied, imagine the mob taking that on ….fuckin hell it’d be like the Nazis, where all non happy looking individuals, all people with sad countenances, all of the quiet ones, get rounded up and used as the scape goats – and skateboards – of society, the doormats of the power in charge. Let the de-humanisation begin.

of course, from his POV it’s quite possible he wasn’t posturing, and that it wasn’t a conscious act. But social behaviour is a mixed up bag at the best of times, it’s a mixed up shook up Lola kaleidoscope. But let’s put it in a more realistic perspective: he’s doing his job; i didn’t do anything to obstruct him in his job. so why does he see the need to get some reaction from me? did he stick his head in my girlfriend’s car expecting a chat? did it give him a tremendous rush? Did he really need some feedback from the passenger as well as the driver ? Why though? it was nothing to do with anything.

Yet i knew he was going to do it – sometimes i can read people. But only people i don’t know it seems.

I like going to the tip.