mostly david ephgrave

Writing a blog is a bit of an up-down procedure, or to put it differently, a frequent teeter around the edge of a rut. Right now, I’m not so much teetering as standing dead-centre, clawing at the edge with my weak fingers, desperate to pull myself out (like a spider who’d escape his bath prison if he could just get purchase on the enamel). Put simply, I’ve written little of worth for weeks, with no hope of a positive spike in my day-to-day life to give me something good to talk about. This is partly due to with a few family issues that are taking up more time than usual, and partly to do with the fact I frequently don’t start writing until bedtime, when I’m too tired to get down anything coherent; more often than no, I'll struggle to extract a few paragraphs from my subconscious to look them over the next day to find I’ve written a load of shit; I then do my best to edit them to little improvement This is what comes from writing so freq...

Much of today was spent driving back from Bath in the rain. To be fair, I wasn't the one doing the driving, on account of the fact that I can't. Instead, the responsibility fell on my wife, while Steve squeezed himself into the back of the car, with most of the show’s gear. If he fancies a change, he could have a promising career as a contortionist. Thanks to the weather, the journey felt like it would ne ver end. We managed to fill the time with a couple of travel games, which lightened the mood, but by the time we approached Hitchin, we were a little delirious. We laughed a lot, but I think we were all pleased to finally get home. Then followed a lot of clothes-washing and unpacking, before my wife and I went to pick up the cat from her sister’s and settled down for a qu iet, yet tired evening. I'm falling asleep as I write this which is never a good sign. The last thing I’d want to do is just peter ou ...

I'm absolutely shattered today. I don't know what's going on. I don't seem to be able to catch up. I even had to have a little power-nap in the afternoon, before meeting up with my friend Steve for a truncated ve rsion of one of our 'Old Man Pub Crawls'. I probably made for quite a sight, asleep on the sofa with the cat on my lap. Seldom will one creature snooze on another in the wild, so I don't know why it's acceptable in my house.  Thankfully, today hasn't been particularly busy, save the frantic tweeting of pictures to accompany this week's episode of In Your Inner Ear, which we recorded on Thursday. I started out with the intention of doing some housework, but that didn't happen. My power-nap helped me perk up a little bit, but I'm now back to my exhausted self. I'm struggle to stay awake as I write this, so I can't imagine it will make riveting reading.  ‎ I enjoyed listening to tonight's In Your Inner Ear...

I woke this morning (blues riff) to an email telling me my blog had been deleted, because I was phishing through it. It wasn’t the best way to start the day, particularly as I was busy sorting things for Mostly Comedy, and didn’t have the time to address the situation properly. You could argue it was ‘a fair cop’, as if I was up to something nefarious with my blog, I should expect a comeuppance...if it weren’t for the fact I had to look up 'phishing' to find out what it meant, learning that I clearly wasn’t doing a thing of the sort in the first place. I’ve never used the blog to steal someone's credit card details, as I have a far more effective way of doing it. It’s not been used to purloin a person’s identity, except for one time in 1995 with Sandra Bullock . It hasn’t gleaned a single password, as it’s hard to do this just through having someone read it. I’ve not perfected the technology, but I’m working on it. In tru...

I don't know what to write about today. There have been times when I’ve felt like this in the past, yet still forced something out (INSERT SCATOLOGICAL JOKE HERE). This can make me uptight and stressed. That may sound ridiculous to anyone on the outside looking in; after all, no-one’s forcing me to write daily, except myself. Yet for some ridiculous reason, I put greater mental emphasis on the handful of days I haven’t written something, than the hundreds of days - over two years' worth - I have. My problem is, as I intimated in yesterday’s blog, that I have unfeasibly high expectations of myself. As a result, I disappoint myself frequently. The need to churn stuff out irrespective of how it makes me feel at the time can squeeze the joy out of it – and what’s the point in that? That’s not to say that I don’t still love writing; the truth's very much the opposite. I’d also sooner keep going than stop and cease momentum – but I do...

A quick flick through some of my recent blog posts has given me a confidence boost when it comes to writing new stand-up material. A downside to writing a blog every day is you quickly forget the content. It’s like satiating the Beast: you see an idea through to its resolution and then it slips from your mind. Thankfully, you’re left with the written evidence – but it takes a lot of sifting to find the bits that would work in a live setting. I like the thought of employing someone to do this sifting for me; partly for a second opinion but mainly due to laziness. There’s a lot to get through. It would be like employing a cleaner, chucking your house-keys at them and saying, “ You deal with it”. (If I did this, I’d be more polite.) The good thing about this form of creative amnesia is that what you’ve written will often take you by surprise. You see it with fresh eyes. Believe it or not, the odd line I reread this morning made me lau...

Today is my two-year daily blog-erversary. Celebrate. Since the 17 th September 2013, I’ve written something for every day. Well, that’s not strictly true: every day bar four . I think I can let this discrepancy slide, as missing four out of seven hundred and thirty consecutive days is still an achievement. (I’ll probably post a few extra blogs before the year is through, to quell my OCD.) For someone with a propensity for giving in, I’m proud I’ve seen it through. It hasn’t been easy. Some days, as ridiculous as it may sound, it’s a weight around my neck. If I haven’t written by a certain time, I get very stressed. Occasionally - in fact frequently - I have nothing to say. I’ll stare at a blank page not knowing how to fill it. Then a picture, tweet or a fleeting thought comes to me, I’ll spin it out and another day is done. So, don’t expect every blog to be top quality. Other days, I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s been the catalyst fo...

What would you write a blog about, when you’ve already written 223 this year and 695 in total? Okay, I'm not Richard Herring yet - both in terms of my comedy career or blog output - but I’m not doing badly. I’m proud of myself for keeping it up. That said, some days it can be a bind: a brain searching, empty-headed, what-the-hell-am-I-going-to-write-about-today bind. (Like today, for instance.) It often fills me with dread. This probably sounds ridiculous. It’s a self-enforced deadline; no-one’s holding a gun to my head (or at least that’s what my blog-loving captor wants you to think). The world won’t end if I don’t write something, and if it does, it’s unlikely to be my fault; my laptop has no nuclear capability. I'm worried that if I miss one, I’ll miss two...then three, then four and then five. If I put it down, I may never pick it up – and it's proved so useful, for working up ideas and for keeping my mind busy. I wouldn’t have written ‘…and Ephgrave’...

I’ve lost my impetus for writing over the last few weeks. This is probably partially a comedown from finishing my Brighton run. I spent months building up to it, and now it’s passed, I’m finding it hard to work up the energy to pick up where I left off. I’m less enthused by my own ideas. The lack of deadline doesn’t help. When you have a reason to write, you step up your game. Without one, you have no need to do it. You sit staring at a blank computer screen, drinking tea and eating biscuits. You wind up fatter, slightly more hydrated and a lot less prolific. Writing a blog every day is a hell of a commitment. I’m proud of myself for keeping it up this long (a year and nine months), and now I’ve got this far, I don’t want to stop. Like everyone though, I need a little mental space. I’d hate it to become a weight around my neck. I still find it very useful. Mine and Glyn’s new radio show is a case in point. Each week, we pick a topic to run as a central theme for the sh...

The downside of writing a blog post every day is you'll sometimes think of a subject, only for a quick Google to reveal you’ve already written about it. Such was the case today. It didn’t help that I set to work quite late, after spending a couple of hours sifting through old posts looking for ideas for stand-up. The sift proved lucrative, but left me creatively spent. There’s only so much of my own writing I can take in one sitting. When it came to thinking of something new, I kept drawing blanks. That was until I remembered a conversation I’d had with my friend Steve earlier this week. We were talking about caricaturists – as you do – when I recounted the story of the time I posed for one as a kid. For some reason, I took it upon myself to pull a weird face to help the artist out; briefly forgetting which of us was supposed to be doing the caricaturing. In doing this, I scuppered myself, ending up with a picture looking nothing like me. I thought this would be good...

Some days you don’t want to try to be funny. The main reason I started a daily blog was to keep my brain ticking over and force myself to be more productive. Like most writers and performers, I have an in-built laziness; while I could spend my time being creative, I’d often sooner not. It’s much easier to just sit and be quiet (with an optional biscuit). So far the blog has definitely helped. I’ve always worked best with a deadline – and having self-enforced one every day has encouraged more proactivity. That’s not to say that it isn’t sometimes a pain in the arse. I’ve fired up my laptop on a fair few occasions without a clue of what I should write. I’ll flick through my ideas folder on my mobile (or in the couple of notepads I carry with me) – and sometimes draw a blank. Any time I get stuck, though, I remember that Richard Herring has kept a daily blog for the best part of eleven years – and suddenly the blank page in front of me d...