Doork.


I’ve been feeling sorry for myself ever since I banged my head on one of my kitchen cupboards on Saturday evening.

It happened while I was in the midst of an act of kindness: making a cup of tea for my wife. On opening the cupboard, a bag of loose-leaf tea fell out onto the floor. I bent down to retrieve it, and stood up suddenly, forgetting I’d left the door open. I smacked into the underside of it with force, leading to a fair amount of swearing and a tiny bit of blood. It wasn’t my finest tea-making moment.

Kitchengate is a metaphor for my life: I do too much at once. The last few days have been a case in point, where practically every waking moment has been taken up with trying to secure the best possible line-ups for Mostly Comedy in the New Year (I exaggerate a little, though the truth isn’t far off). When June’s show sold out at speed on Saturday morning, rather than see this as a chance to relax, I started to worry about all the line-ups we hadn’t filled yet, or haven’t been put up on sale, so I instantly got on the case. My mind’s been so taken up with it, I’ve not been looking where I’m going, hence the painful misjudgement as to the whereabouts of my kitchen units. If I focused on one thing at a time, rather than multitasking, I may not have ended up with a 2cm-thick piece of balsa wood becoming one with my brain. From now on, I won’t make tea without a hard-hat on.

Popular posts from this blog

Shakerpuppetmaker.

Image
Have Parker from Thunderbirds and Noel Gallagher ever been seen in the same room? The resemblance is uncanny. So much so, I think something’s afoot. If my suspicions are correct, I've stumbled across a secret that will blow the music and puppet industry wide apart. In the mid-60s / mid-90s at least. It doesn’t take long to see the signposts. There’s the similarity between the name of Oasis’ first single, Supersonic, and Supermarianation, Gerry Anderson’s puppetry technique. The Gallagher brothers would often wear Parkas . Live Forever was clearly a reference to Captain Scarlet and Standing on the Shoulder of Giants to the size difference between Noel and his bandmates. The more you think about it, the more brazen it gets. It’s fishier than Area 51, Paul is Dead and JFK's assassination put together. The only glitch to the theory is scale . According to Wikipedia, Anderson’s marionettes were 1’10” and Gallagher is 5’8”. How does he maintain an illusion of avera...
Read more

Stevenage: A (Tiny) River Runs Through it.

If ever a river was mis-sold, it’s the Roaring Meg in Stevenage. I just walked past it on my way to the retail park that has taken its name. They’re similarly uninspiring. The river is less of a roar and more of a dribble; cystitis sufferers produce greater flow. The retail park is soulless. What was once a thriving enterprise is nearly devoid of atmosphere, save an underlying essence of emptiness and despair. With a Toys R Us. When it was first built I was excited. Back then, the thought of a bowling alley, an ice rink, a Harvester and a Blockbuster Video within a small surface area was enticing. I celebrated many birthdays on site. There was an indoor cricket pitch there for a while where I once had a joint party with a friend. Why someone with an almost pathological fear of sport would agree to such a venture is beyond me, but I did it. Now, there’s very little at the Roaring Meg of note. The river would be a metaphor for the shopping ce...
Read more

Hoo-ray and up She Rises.

So much has happened since my last post in March that this blog risks sounding like an itinerary. The main news is that Hitchin Mostly Comedy will return in the summer at a new venue, the Queen Mother Theatre . The road to this decision was convoluted, though enough fell into place en route to leave me optimistic about this new start. The catalyst was a survey I ran via our mailing list a few months back, in which I asked, "If the club returned in the current climate, with tickets still around £15 (and with similar line-ups), would you still attend?"; the response to which, in simple terms, was a resounding yes. Nearly 250 mailing list subscribers responded in a single week, with around a hundred also taking the option to leave some feedback. And only two people were abusive, which counts as a win when you consider they posted their comments online anonymously. Imagine how many more insults we would have received if the comedy club was a woman. Particularly if she was Diane ...
Read more