The Charterhouse of Parma, by Stendhal. Penguin classic trans by Shaw.

some excellent quotes from it :

punning is incompatible with murder. (page 426)

reflections of that sort, in moments of passion, appear as much the mark of a vulgar mind as a pun would seem in Paris in similar circumstances. (page 435)

politics, in a literary work, are like a pistol-shot in the middle of a concert.

the immoral delight which the italians take in revenge derives from the strength of imagination in that people. the natives of other countries do not properly forgive – they forget.

the kind of wit which consists in delaying, with an exquisite sense of delight, the word the hearer longs for

to the middle class exaggeration is often mistaken for beauty

Had a hire car for over a week. it worked out really inexpensive, £16 a day. but it’s very important not to get any marks on it, the bodywork, but not just the body; the hub caps, the windows etc. well i did get a bit concerned as i skuffed the wheel trim against a kerb, only slightly mind. what’s the best solution? disguise the evil marks, splash home made mud all over it. It hasn’t been raining. but i can say i been somewhere where it has…

The weather has been very good for the last couple of weeks. spring has definitely started. the sun is bright. the buds are green. Have been on my rowing machine in the garden. but also been smoking roll ups…bad. Went up to see billy in Bircotes, did a gig in barton on humber, billy came with me and we called at Huw’s , my cousin. binged on cake, which i haven’t eaten in weeks. Not only had amand, huw’s missus made drizzle cake, but 15 mins away, there was very nice cake in teh green room of the Barton gig, the Ropery, the Rope hall…the gig went great.

then drove back to swansea for a Yes Cymru gig on the Saturday, that was great, but i have mentioned already. Took teh car back on tuesday – they never said nothing. But the man who works there is a really nice guy, might come to my Mumbles gig in a week. Oh i also had a slight accident in the car : what happened was – shut up Jethro – i drove up to see anita on my old road, Heol Las…she’s an old childhood friend, still living in the same house. But when i drove down the road a bit i did something silly. i want up a dirt track to try get more mud on the car. as i reversed back out the left front wheel went over the edge and was suspended, not touching ground. The car was stuck, the front was compressed onto teh grassy slope. i was pissed off, and anxious, i called eleri to ask her to find the emergency number for Enterprise. But kept trying the reverse and forward gear, the car just would not budge. so then i thought, shit there’s got to be a way of getting out of here. luckily i was not blocking the road. so i got out and ran back up to anita’s house. she cam down to give me some moral support, and fairplay she offered to push the front of the car as i revved the throttle. nothing doing. So then i thought well as the wheel is a foot off the tarmac of the road all i need to do is fill that gap with…an object. Wood ? Stone? Anita let me grab a couple of rocks from her front wall. I wedged them under the tyre. nothing happened except the stones were flicked away by the spinning wheel. but if at first you don’t succeed….

Eventually, after having rammed the boulders in as tight as possible, i got the car moving, But although i could feel her reversing down the slope my next worry was that the front of the car, the bit under the front grill, would be damaged. after all these modern cars are so fragile, and the pressure of the ground on it had been significant. munificant. magnificent.

But lo and behold there was no damage. so i carried the rocks back, and was filled with a great relief.

seems to me that the sense of humour is given to the audience by a comedian.

no wait that’s wrong….

THIS NEVER HAPPENED

that’s what i say

by that i mean…hypothetically speaking…it’s there already, but the comedian stokes it, primes it if you will.

They can on the other hand, if they so desire, leave it in a special package by the door, to be picked up on entry, that is official entry time: fifteen minutes before curtain up at the earliest, curtain up time at the latest.

Because that humour don’t keep! You can’t leave it standing, waiting around by a door. Ifen you don’t pick it up at the start then you’ll miss it. come in late and you are sitting there cold for the next ten minutes..

i can bring it down to 5

What ? and break the five minute comedic recognition barrier ?

I see we are facing a proper shit head cunt

you mean count

M?

a proper shit head count

NODS..

well there i was, givin it some of that (DOES HAND GESTURE)

you mean you were talkin?

No i was practising my puppetry. or dare i say muppetry.

so i drove 5 hours yesterday from north east england down to swansea wales, did a gig for Yes Cymru in the Railway club, wind street…a big room, half empty. but i really enjoyed it, did almost 2 hours, first half down on the floor , second half up in the big stage.

Thing is, it was very loose. it was like a full flexing of a lot of my material. some people come in late, one woman and her 2 friends come in half way through the second half. now, i’d already had a name call at the start of the night, got everyone’s first names. so i ask late comer in the audience, a lady, her name. she answers, and then adds ‘o’n i wedi mynd i’r ysgol gyda ti’/I went to school with you. To which my immediate response is ‘well i might get a shag after all!’. i mean that was my spoken response. You have to bare in mind this is a comedy performance, it’s a comedian performance night, and i’m doing a lot of interacting with diffrent members of the audience along the way to here, my response getting laughs from the crowd, and i thought in that moment – or rather i didn’t think at all -it was a funny thing to say. But it wasn’t my usual pun, it was a sexual joke. I might get a shag after all….which i then subverted into carpets….but the damaged had been done. as you’ll discover next time in the next exciting installment of ‘she was convicted but only within an ounce of manslaughter’.

would you say it’s obvious that what i’ve done was offensive? or could be offensive the words i spoke i thought anyone enjoying the comedy would be able to take. in other words it was harmless. maybe i misread some element in the crowd ? but that wasn’t really a factor, as it wasn’t really a proper crowd, not in the unified homogenised group sense. or maybe they were, but it looked more like like bunch of individuals rather than audience. weird. it was somewhere half way between a comedy club and a workingmens’ club. not that any of that was a factor. nobody responded in a bad way. it’s just that, at the end of the night, i found out…

Toby finds his way/Lesley and Harry buy a propeller/the visit to Stanford

anyway, i finish my performance and get a good applause from the audience – that’s important to mention, as i am so insecure. one bloke comes up to me and says’ aren’t you gonna talk to your old school chum?’ well it hadn’t occurred to me to do that as i didn’t know that ‘old school friend’ meant ‘friend’ in the usual sense. and, top of that, she’d said she’d been a year below me at school. so of course i didn’t know her from adam (Or eve). But chivalry is the better part of valour, just take the u away. i went up to her before my leaving. yes my leaving, no late drinks for me, no listening to the busking instruments and folk songs. But billy said something very pertinent to me the other day: history, that is the history found in books, is written by the winners. but the folk songs are written by the losers. and i believe it. is i was half jesting when i apologised, in welsh, for insulting her. That is i did it as a matter of form, so yes i did want to do it, but then i wish i hadn’t. Turns out she was, seriously, i mean actually, offended, and said to me (in welsh) ‘yeah well there was no need for language like that’, o’dd dim eisie iaith fel ‘na’. I don’t get it. i mean it kind of shocked me, it hurt me – does that make a narcisiisit? i mean she’s the one who’s expressing some – what ? I don’t know if that person was hurt, but it’s possible. sensitivity, but then, why do people come in to a comedy performance half way through, and leave their sense of humour at the door?? Huh ?! i mean i’m sensitive too, and it’s there in my stage work.

work?!

I didn’t argue with her, – though i was very tempted to – just pointed out to he that it, i mean by it the previous hour, had a comedy show in it, and that’s why bad language made itself known. It was good language just made up of expletives. In other words my response to her was a JOKE! it wasn’t serious! Welsh language comedy is like twenty years behind – i mean okay i accept there’s no need for bad language for comedy to be funny, but the interacting, the chatting with audience members, this all adds an extra edge to it – because it leads to spontaneous truth. and it leads something unexpected, even if that’s the audience in the room saying or doing something unexpected. If you’re in the audience in a live comedy show you have to be aware of the context. The two way dynamic between the audience and the act – that is the context.

I got really dejected after her critical remark, i felt ashamed inside, a pain in the stomach. That all happened after i’d come offstage, like i said. oh and by the way , just to make it clear, i was doing an english language gig, but the possibility to do some jokes in welsh was there, so i did. i tried to make myself feel as light about it as i could. On the way home from the gig i tried to put her comments in perspective. and then in a little glass bottle. Perhaps it’s just an occupational hazard. after all the show did go great. and you can’t please everybody

saying we went to school together is kind of like saying ‘ You haven’t changed at all!’ – and that is something i have been told by a couple of people who i went to school with. BUT it’s not true. It’s a stupid observation, Of course i have changed!!!! of course i’ve fuckin changed. i’m not that anymore

Wales, Cymru, fuckin hell….wish i could perform somewhere else sometimes, where no fucker is going to volunteer the unasked for information that they went to school with me.

as far as i ‘m concerned a comedy stage is my safe space, and anyone offended by my joke response to their naive remark aught to remember that.

i went to the dentists. my teeth don’t look great, in fact they are quite grotty. MY new dentist turns out to also be a neighbour on my street. She recommended brushing twice a teeth. but i got gum disease. i hate dentists. or the fact that one has to go if there’s any chance of preserving a proper smile. my mother never went to the dentist, she said she was too scared. my mother would not smile when having hre photo taken so that she could hide her bad teeth.

the last time ever i saw your face….the last time