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Thanks to my fantastic mother-in-law we had some respite from baby care and got to spend some of the morning in bed watching the final episode of Orange is the New Black. We have to grab our downtime whenever we can. I don’t know how you single parents do it. Or you parents with more than one child. You are heroes. Though to be fair you created the situation that you are heroes of, so you are kind of self-cleansing terrorists in reality. But well done for cleaning up your mess.
Two nights of mediocre sleep have got me back on course and I was surprised by how much energy I had today. It was the last day of the Lord of the Dance Settee tour and we had a long drive to Hebden Bridge and back but unusually I managed to get a lot done in the car. Hopefully this is a sign that we are getting over the hump and I can have a life that now incorporates work and exercise.
I got a little way into writing the Happy Now? tour programme. There are only a few days left if you want to donate to Scope and get your name in it and a signed limited edition programme (donate £15 or more here).As it’s doubling up as a 12 shows of Herring programme too we are doing 20 pages this time, so I have one more page available for an advert (if you’re quick). Reasonable rates for a quarter, half or full page - email me at herring1967@gmail.com if you want to take advantage of that. But you’ll need to get your copy to me pretty sharpish.
June has passed in a terrifyingly rapid blur, so I couldn’t believe it was time to write a new newsletter - you can see it here. Apologies for occasionally writing June when I meant July a couple of times, but the passage of time does not compute.
Read the newsletter here.We were on the road for a total of eleven hours today and I couldn’t work the whole time, but managed to get in a few games of Me1 vs Me2 Addams Family Pinball. It’s currently 10-3 to Me1 who always goes first. I don’t know if that is an advantage. Me2 certainly choked on a couple of games that he should have won. I don’t think I will podcast this idea, even though it’s almost the purest Richard Herring thing that could possibly exist, but it has made Addams Family Pinball even more appealing to me.
And I didn’t think that was possible.
It was perhaps a little tragic to be in a car on this beautiful day and as has been the case a lot on this tour our route home was interrupted and slowed by road works and closed thoroughfares. Giles certainly earned his money today. Makes up for the many days when his job is pimpsy (I am joking).
I carried on working in the dressing room before the show and almost forgot to google Hebden Bridge to find out the many remarkable facts about it. It has the highest number of lesbians per head (not sure that’s the right phrase) in the UK and High Life magazine voted it the fourth quirkiest town in the UK in 2005.
The gig itself was fine and I was surprised to have over 200 in (though this is part of a festival which usually helps a little). Everyone was a bit hot and I was on a high stage some way from the front row who were just blurry shapes in the distance. I felt a bit detached and blasted from the journey. But I think I added more subtlety to the show and even improved it in a couple of places. It’s not quite the last outing as, of course, I will do the whole thing (with full ending) at the Leicester Square Theatre on September 11th as part of
the 12 Shows of Herring.
I didn’t feel sad to be letting this one go, but nor was I bored with the material or delighted that it’s over. It’s been a relatively painless tour and I’ve been enjoying performing it. It’s time to move on now (and then move backwards to 2001 and work my way onwards again). This has been an interesting show to do and maybe an important one. It feels like it might be a bridge that takes me to the next stage of my career, whatever that might be, but it’s taken me through jitters and wondering if it was time to change direction completely, to a place where I am looking forward to the future and to carrying on carrying on. It’s made enough money to pay my Edinburgh debt and my tax bill and maybe a bit left over and my audience pretty much held solid in spite of the huge competition I faced. Thanks to all those of you who came to see it. The dance goes on.
