I am already exhausted. It's because I keep waking up really early, but my show is very late, especially as it is currently starting half an hour late. Tonight I made some cuts and if anything came in at just under an hour. The Men of Phise might get reinstated tonight.
I paid in last night's SCOPE money (an impressive but beatable £249.91, plus one American cent) and made my way to the swimming pool. It's hard to get anywhere in Edinburgh because there are so many friends walking around the streets so you get stopped for chats. I was conscious that I had to get back to the flat to let Collings in, so that JART could at last put on our special rings, turn on the lasers and become the power rangers that we secretly are in our spare time. But I met Tony Law and his family and had a lovely chat and knew I couldn't do both a swim and welcome Collings. Luckily Justin was in, so I could enjoy a proper, long swim.
Except I couldn't, because I was too tired. Despite my sterling work of the last couple of days (or maybe because of it) my swimming muscles ached and I felt weary straight away and I only managed 10 lengths before I had to give up and go and sit in the jacuzzi. Still having hot jets of water blowing up my nether regions perked me up a bit.
Finally also some men came round and fixed our boiler and later on I felt pretty manly and practical myself when I used some string to tie together the broken shutters and then completed the mend by leaning a step ladder draped in a sheet against them to keep them as closed as possible and then to block out the light that could still seep through. I might take my new invention on to Dragon's Den. It's only really useful to people with broken shutters, who can't be bothered to mend them properly and don't mind having a step-ladder dressed as a ghost of a step-ladder in the corner of their room. It might be a limited appeal. But I will charge £20,000 a unit for it, so Duncan Bannatyne should make back his half a million pound investment within the first forty years or so.
It reminds me, if anything of the art work of Yoko Ono, but also interestingly looks like it might belong in the video for Imagine.
Talking of John Lennon I experienced a satisfying and slightly unsettling coincidence today when my iPhone, which I was listening to music on in the shuffle setting, played Lennon's favourite Kinks song (or so I was informed) Wonder Boy twice in a row. I checked it to ensure I wasn't going mad and discovered that I had the track on two different Kinks albums and they had been randomly selected consecutively. Which as many people on Twitter pointed out is bound to happen statistically every now and again, but which is still pretty unlikely.
Show 2 was fun and shorter, though as I've said similarly late starting, which could be a problem if it continues as people are in danger of missing trains and buses or other shows. Luckily no one seemed too put out by it. Though technically things went better today I was a bit perturbed to notice a strange ringing occurring as I spoke. My first thought was that someone's mobile was going off (maybe one of those that plays a tinny music track) but it went on for ages. Then I thought that perhaps the mic was playing up. I stepped back a bit, worried it might be odd feedback. Then I conjectured that it might be just me. Perhaps I had suddenly developed tinnitus. It was about fifteen minutes in before I worked out that it was none of these things, nor was it the sound of an angel orchestra watching the show from above, it was actually one of the three chandeliers in my posho room reverberating or blowing in some breeze like a massive wind chime. I am sure it was a bit distracting for everyone, though I was glad I hadn't launched into a mad tirade accusing someone in the crowd of having their phone on. Even by drawing attention to it I think I would have made everyone super aware of the noise and hampered their enjoyment more. I don't think it will be a massive issue, but I must ask someone why it happened tonight and not the first night. It would be better to do the show without a chandelier singing at me. It is a difficult heckle to deal with. Something like an orchestra of people who play glasses with water on them with their fingers. Not easy to come back on.
I felt the crowd were a bit more subdued than last night and didn't laugh as readily, but the people I spoke to who had seen it thought it had gone down well. And I was relieved not to have added to the overrunning problems.
I celebrated my 25th night without a drink by having a cup of Berry tea and have found that the only problem with drinking herbal tea late at night is that it has none of the dehydrating qualities of alcohol so means I have to get up a couple of times in the night. But that might just be my age.
My voice was better, though I had another early night (and I had had my first afternoon/evening snooze at about 6 - usually it is second week before I feel the need for one of those) and didn't feel too dull to be avoiding the parties and the drinking and the socialising. If I was 20 years younger I would have been walking forlornly round the venues looking for someone to talk to, wishing more people had come to see my show, but now I prefer to go somewhere quiet, drink tea, sleep and recuperate for the next performance. It's been a very encouraging start and I am only praying (as a confused atheist) that numbers will stay this high (in fact I would be happy if the theatre is half full) when the preview nights are over.
There was a measured piece about the Aberdare controversy
in the Welsh press, but I was encouraged about how reasonable about the whole thing everyone concerned had been. The religious people basically thinking it was a shame that the show wasn't going to be on and me acknowledging that due to the timing it probably wasn't a bad idea to not do the gig. I liked the maturity of everyone involved and the true Christian spirit of the religious people especially. And well done to the journalist for not sensationalising it.
I hope that's an end on it.
