I woke up in my own bed for the first time since late July and aside from a slight feeling of confusion and displacement it was like I had never been away. Scientists should investigate this. How can something seem to last forever and then within hours appear not to have existed at all. The explanation of infinity might be hidden within this phenomenon. Government funding required.
I was planning on taking the day off, but had so many little jobs to do that there was no time to relax. I had had letters through about my speeding ticket which seemed to be saying that because I hadn't replied in 14 days (because I wasn't here) I could no longer go on the speed awareness course, but hopefully they will be sympathetic to my plight. Because I think that's going to make a great Warming Up. And keep me 3 more points away from a driving ban. I had plans for getting my hair cut and going to the supermarket and the gym and the post office and the dry cleaners and paying my final SCOPE money into the bank, but somehow all the other stuff I had to get done ate up the whole day. Russell from Avalon turned up with the van and dropped off all the boxes of programmes that had not been used in Edinburgh. Which I have to add to the other 100 or so that I am trying to store in my house for the tour. If any burglar wants 30,000 copies of the Christ on a Bike programme and is strong and has a big van, then there are rich pickings here at my house.
But for once - thus far - I have no post-Edinburgh lurgy (possibly because my body knows that there is no time to be ill) and although a bit dreamy and discombobulated I was back in the London swing of things.
I enjoyed the furore around the revelation that a man who was good at driving but that none of us had ever heard of was "The Stig". Mainly because knowing who is is all very well (did anyone really care though - only if he had turned out to be Lord Lucan or Robbie Williams or something would it have been news), but now people know he will be replaced by someone else, so we still don't know who "The Stig" is. And we never wanted to know anyway. In his book Ben Collins is going to reveal that he was "The Stig", but now we know that he was "The Stig" we don't need to read his book. And he isn't "The Stig" any more anyway. Ah well.
In the evening we walked up to Notting Hill to go to the Itsu sushi bar, which I like very much. It's a fun and healthy (and quite expensive) place to eat, picking your choices off a conveyor belt. Twenty years ago I don't think British people would have countenanced such a thing and would have probably baulked at eating raw fish. But we have grown up and become more sophisticated as a nation and thankfully now there are places where we can buy stuff that isn't fried in batter (in London anyway). We ruined it a bit by buying loads of popcorn and chocolate and wine (though I only had the popcorn) and heading back home to watch "Funny People" on DVD - a second night with a busman's holiday DVD. It started out very promisingly and was quite an accurate representation of comedians and stand up, but then it massively lost its way in the second half, although I admired the fact that (SPOILER ALERT) having come through a life threatening illness, Adam Sandler is just as big a jerk as he was before. Yet I wonder if there will ever be a film about someone who gets successful and rich and doesn't get married and have kids who turns out to be happy with that life choice. And I also think that pretty much anyone, if they take stock of their lives, will end up regretting what they haven't done, the path they didn't take and the fact that things didn't go as well for them as they could. A 40 year old dad with a proper job might wish he had had the carefree life of riches and casual sex that Adam Sandler was now considering to be pointless.
Though this film does show how fame and success can be empty and vacuous and how pathetic and insecure many comedians are, maybe the alternative would be just as unhappy for them. Perhaps this is touched upon in the overlong second half of the film (though to be fair we watched the extended version, which might explain its lack of tightness). Bo Burnham is in it too. And remember that I am deemed to be more famous than him. So my career is going pretty well.... oh no, I've turned into a character from "Funny People".
As if I wasn't already a character in "Funny People".
I am so shallow.
Just in case I got to the point where I thought I had finished my show, all the dates for the Christ on a Bike tour can be found
here (look at how many there are and how long I will be away from home then... ah bliss) and you can read all the reviews and the press and the press release and if you want to - the original script
here.
