Days without alcohol - 40. As a lady who interviewed me on the radio tonight remarked, that is as long as our Lord managed in the desert. So by tomorrow I will have conclusively proved that I am better than Jesus. It now starts to feel like a proper achievement. It would be a shame not to make it to 50 now. I am trying to use the same psychology that I use on myself when I am on the exercise machines and set myself small goals, which I can then change when I get closer to them - I might aim for 25 minutes and then decide it would be a shame not to get to 400 calories and then push on to 6km or whatever. I love fooling my stupid brain. It has no idea about the long term plans I have for myself. Though I have to be careful, if I even write a hint about it here then it might read this and find out something is going on, so I'll move on to something else.
Probably a little bit too late I spent the afternoon and evening trying to go over the "Oh Fuck, I'm 40!" show for tomorrow's sold out performance at the Battersea Arts Centre (I am in a tiny room, so don't get too excited - though I didn't sell it out last year, so that's something - though I sold out the big room for two nights the year before, so none of this means anything!). It is a good three or so months since I last did the complete show and a lot of it has slipped my mind and it was a struggle to try and reconstruct it. And by 10pm I was only up to midway through the fight story and it's the last quarter of the show that I am shakiest on. I am sure it will all come together well enough, but I was regretting not making any kind of record, either a tape or a transcript of where I had it by the end of the last run at the Arts Theatre. But then I am a dick. I am certainly getting more achieved than I was doing before Christmas, but am still wasting lots of time despite my sobriety. I have got nowhere with the sitcom as yet. Ah well it will give me something to do during the tour. I managed to get a script together during last year's madness, so who knows? And at least I am still feeling wonderful and managing to get exercise done and struggling to eat the proscribed number of calories, which means that if I get evicted from my house for not paying my mortgage, at least I will be looking hot for the bailiffs.
I have stayed in every Friday night this year so far, but that record was broken when a car came at 10.10pm to take me down to BBC London (or whatever it calls itself these days), for an interview on a late night show hosted by
Tessa Dunlop. I was a bit grouchy beforehand, not entirely sure of the effectiveness of appearing on local radio, this late at night, so long before my actual unsold out London run, instead of being out partying my Friday night away. Even though had I not been there I would have been trying to reconstruct a routine about staring at a 17 year old girl's legs instead.
But I brightened up a little once we got going, though didn't really get to talk too much about the show, though I enjoyed watching the slightly scatty, but fun Dunlop talking to mental people on the phone. I always assume these things make no earthly difference to sales, but let's hope one to two lonely, lost souls heard me on there and remember to buy tickets to the show in three weeks time. If nothing else Tessa and her film reviewer Ian (the editor of Empire no less) played quite a good game where they tried to determine the age of the caller based on their name - and it turned out that there was some correlation, and that some names are definitely more prevalent in certain generations, though a 35 year old Rita was a surprise to Tessa, though not to Ian who got it bang on. It was fun, but I guess not the funnest Friday night had in the world tonight. And I didn't even win the Euro Lottery, which might have helped make up for the disappointment - well I got one of the main numbers and one of the two other numbers. Do I get £95 million? That would have come in handy.
Well hopefully I will have relearned my show and found all the props and stuff by tomorrow. If not there are going to be 45 slightly disappointed people. It's quite a responsibility.
