Days without alcohol 47 - a friend was amusingly waving wine in my face tonight, trying to tempt me to return to the dark side, but the smell made me feel a bit sick. Hopefully it was just because it was cheap wine and I haven't actually become allergic to the stuff. But I am so far in now it's going to have to take something extremely special (or possibly awfully depressing) to send me back. At least in the short term.
Andrew Collings was round my house again to record our second podcast. Foolishly I made him a coffee, which he doesn't usually drink, because it is the Collings equivalent of absinthe mixed with speed. By the end of the 50 minute recording he was swearing like a Johnny Rottens on the Bill Grundy show (ie only a little bit and slightly shame-facedly when picked up on it. Steve Jones was the one who was tossing words like "rotter" around a bit more brazenly). As with last time we had enormous difficulty working out how to get the thing to our technically minded accomplice who puts the whole thing up. Eventually we managed to log into a new .mac account (our first one having exceeded our upload/download limit within about half an hour of creation) and then when told we didn't have enough space to upload the podcast, Andrew decided enough was enough and paid to join the stupid thing. So after about two or three hours of faffing I could finally head off for my gig, knowing that the podcast would soon be up. Indeed, you can listen to it by
clicking here. We get a bit giddy in places, but hopefully it will be as much fun for you as it was for us.
Then I headed off to Totton for another fun gig to a small, initially quiet, but ultimately more expressive audience. I am trying to drive home from as many gigs as possible, but was made aware of how tired I was by numerous driving mistakes. This week has been a bit full on, having to get up early most days for interviews and getting home late from gigs.
I am always a bit spacey after a gig, but tonight's drive was very hard work. I had to drop some friends off at the train station and then, despite my sat nav, I took a couple of wrong turnings and was then taken down an annoying diversion. I was a little bit on auto-pilot and just not concentrating as much as I should have been. Luckily my autopilot is OK and late night driving is comparatively easy, and aware of my slight brain fug I was making every effort to over-compensate. But in moments of relaxation things got a bit dicey.
I stopped for petrol and for some reason couldn't work out which way I had to go to leave the forecourt and return to the motorway. I did a loop of the pumps and then saw a possible way out through the empty lanes where the big lorries refuel. Alas in my slightly spacey state what I didn't notice was that there was a high curb between where I was and where I was going. But I was on top of it before I knew what was happening and over the other side within another couple of seconds, my car's undercarriage dragging agonisingly and noisily on the concrete. My heart sank. What terrible damage had my distracted stupidity done to my car? I didn't get out to look, as fortunately everything was still working and being unable to cope with the thought that I might have done hundreds of pounds of damage or done something that would imminently incapacitate me, I decided to live in denial and not think about it. I can't afford a big repair bill and I certainly can't buy a new car at the moment, so I just had to hope that the scraping metal sound had only affected parts of the car that weren't essential for driving.
It was a very annoying and stupid mistake and though I got home fine (though it was a long hour and I was feeling very tired) I was hypersensitive to any noise or bump emanating from my engine. I wondered if my exhaust might be lying back at the petrol station or if I was leaking fuel and just coasting downhill.
Even when I got home I couldn't bear to lie down on the road and see if I could see anything. There's a lot of driving to do over the next few weeks and I am just going to have to hope that I have got away with this terrible driving manoeuvre. It's the first serious error I have made since the few bumps and scrapes I got into in the first year of having this car. Luckily I haven't had an accident at more than 5 miles an hour in all my driving life. But it's amazing what damage those ultra slow bumps can do.
If I am this tired at the start of the tour, what state am I going to be in by the end? At least I know that if a policeman tries to breathalyse me after such a n inexplicably stupid stunt, that I will be the most sober man he has ever made blow into his bag.
