The Sound of Silence.


Today was the second show in a row I’ve had to cancel due to being unable to hear, which is very frustrating; not least as - what with the audience arriving late on Tuesday - I haven’t actually had a show this week.

At least this time I made the decision before leaving for the venue and setting up, but it will still late-in-the-day enough for me to have less than an hour to get the message to the venue, my technician, my flyerers and a friend who was coming to watch, plus it was also the performance my mum had specifically come up to Scotland to see. I know I had no choice, but it’s still not the most auspicious way to end my run, plus it'll make it harder to settle the remainder of my venue hire-fee from ticket sales too.

No sooner had I cancelled the show than I set to work at trying to book an appointment with a hearing specialist, but unfortunately the earliest I could be seen was tomorrow afternoon, which leaves it up in the air as to whether tomorrow's show will go ahead too. At time of writing my hearing’s a little better than it was, but it’s still not great, and there’s a world of difference between just sitting around in the flat and being onstage; with any luck it'll clear enough of its own accord by the morning for me to be able to go ahead with the show and cancel my appointment too, but we shall see.

I did stumble across one small bit of good news last night before bed, when I clocked another of my jokes had been included in a funniest one-liners list, this time in the Edinburgh Evening News. What was nice was it was a different line to the one that got into the i News countdown, plus they used my joke as the hook to drag people to the article on Facebook; I always knew I’d end up as clickbait. It’s also not bad going to be listed alongside the likes of Gyles Brandreth and Lucy Porter, though I won’t retire on the proceeds just yet as THERE WON’T BE ANY; call me the Pun King (which I think was a Beatles song).


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