mostly david ephgrave

I spent £79 on a replacement charger for my MacBook today; expensive, much? It’s not every day you send nearly eighty quid on a lead with a plug on the end of it…and it’s never a good day when you do; there are so many things I would have rather used the money on. It’s like when someone buys you a functional, yet dull household appliance as a Christmas or birthday gift; you know it’s useful, but you’d rather they’d given you anything but. Not so long ago, my dad treated me to a dehumidifier, and while I was grateful for a marginally less steamy bathroom, it was hard to work up much excitement about it; it would have been cheaper just to push the window open a bit. Unfortunately, the new charger was a necessary evil, as one of the two I own decided to fray to the point of no longer being usable a few weeks back, and I’m sick of having to carry the other with me each time I walk to my office, instead of keeping one of them there. I also need to have ...

While I'd like to be at the Sun Hotel setting up for tonight's Mostly Comedy, instead I'm seated outside a coffee shop in Covent Garden, waiting for word from the Apple Store about my poorly laptop. The very fact I'm here is a calculated risk. It's all a question of timing; if I hear from them in the next half an hour or so, I should be able to get back to Hitchin without too much hassle. If it takes any longer, I may have to leave my computer behind...and God knows what we'll do at tonight's show. (Ooh, the drama .) It could have been worse. I'd originally had an appointment booked in Cambridge for first thing this morning that was early enough for me to book a room at a cheap B&B nearby, as this seemed the least stressful option. Then a slot came available in Covent Garden that seemed more convenient all round - leading to me cancelling both the Cambs appointment and hotel room (losing the money for the room; obviously); my life is nothing if no...

Today, I spent an inordinate amount of time trying to make the Mac-based slideshow software Keynote do something that PowerPoint does very easily.  (If the above sentence doesn't pique your interest, nothing will.) I switched to Keynote a few years back when I bought my MacBook; Glyn and I have been using it to run our slideshows ever since. For the most part, it's user-friendly, but - like with all computer technology - there's always some little bug or other that gets on your wick. I've lost count of the times a simple task took hours to complete, because some link in the chain wasn't working as it should; if I ever meet the person who devised Apple's infamous colour wheel, I'll punch them square in mush.  All I wanted was for an MP3 to trigger on one slide and then continue under the following slides as I flick through them. Then, when I realised you can only do this on Keynote if the audio file starts at the beginning of the presentation, I tried to ...

I’ve been at Doggett & Ephgrave HQ today, stitching together material for Saturday’swork-in-progress gig . The biggest challenge at the moment is to make it feel cohesive. Parts of it sit together nicely; others feel pretty cut-and-shut. If the material doesn’t flow, it could be irritating and tiring for the audience. They’ll be no natural resolution and no sense of an end in sight. I don’t want that. There’s a loose theme forming, centring on my relationship with my family, but not everything fits into it. I’m not too concerned if the links are a little haphazard on Saturday  – I’m using the gig to find out what works and what doesn’t – but it’s something I’ll need to smooth out before the Soho Theatre date in March. The audience for that will probably be a lot less patient, based on previous experience. That gig is a month away today. No pressure. To throw a spanner into proceedings, I started the day by disco...

Today's been another day of train journeys.  I'm currently on my way back from Milton Keynes; the sort of place that it's best to travel away from at speed. The weather outside my window is dreary. I'll be glad to get home.   We just passed through Leighton Buzzard . Sadly, there wasn't a single bird of prey in sight.   I had a casting in London at lunchtime, which went reasonably well. I then caught the tube to Euston, so I could take the first available train to the Land of Roundabouts to pick up my newly-repaired laptop.  When it died a couple of days ago, I was worried that I'd lost a lot of data. Most of my personal photographs weren't backed up; I didn't fancy having to recreate them all from scratch.     Thankfully, this hadn't happened, which was a relief. I'd like to profess my thanks to the God of Technology. Things nearly turned nasty a moment ago, when I trapped my little finger in the gap between the ...

Spinny, spin, spin, spin, went the colour wheel on the screen of my MacBook Pro. Spinny, spin, spin, spin. Would it ever stop? The answer to this question, unfortunately, was "no". After watching a myriad of shades rotate for a good - or bad - twenty minutes, I started to panic.  The time had come to put my money where my mouth was (not literally; unhygienic); to call out the big boys (again, not literally; homoerotic); to plump for that last resort taken by so many before me - and switch it off and on again.  From this point, things went from bad to worse. After an hour's-worth of furtive Googling on various internet-enabled devices, the horrible truth slowly began to dawn: a large chunk of the work stored on my computer could irretrievable forever .  (I'm being over-dramatic to keep you interested.) The most important file I might have lost is mine and Glyn's stand-up show. The show that we're currently hawking around. A good couple-of-year...