mostly david ephgrave

In true ‘this-could-only-happen-to-me’ style, I’ve just ordered a new projector screen to be delivered to Edinburgh, as some git who’s also doing a show at my venue must have knocked mine over where it’s stored in-between shows and broken it, without making any effort to let me know. (Well, any successful effort at least.) It was while setting up this morning that I discovered it had been disturbed, as the pole that supports the screen when it’s extended (and is usually both clipped and LX-taped to the back when it’s away) had become dislodged, and one of the ends of the base was dented. It wasn’t until I pulled the screen up from the base that I realised the extent of the damage as the screen would no longer retract and had lost all tension. Thankfully, it was usable for today’s show, though the jury was out as to whether it would last the rest of the run. What’s particularly annoying is it has managed to survive being shipped here and ba...

While I’m hoping my dad will come over to look at my broken boiler today, the downside to this is I feel the need to swing into action an ‘Operation Cleanup’. It’s not that I live in squalor. It’s just that, being a man of limited means – and limited DIY ability – I find myself surrounded by a string of things I haven’t fixed, or little household jobs I haven’t got around to doing just yet. While this leads to low level frustration from day to day, when nothing quite works how I want it, when someone else comes to visit, I start to see my flat from their perspective; worse still when this person is my dad, who takes the underlying definition of dad (i.e. Handyman Machine) to the extreme. He makes a mockery of my skill-set of basic juggling and pronouncing- Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch-capability. At the time of writing this (7:39am) the military manoeuvre has begun. It started with fixing my loose toilet seat, which I did before breakfast. Th...

Due to a frame-based malfunction, my sunglasses are currently being held together by electrical tape. This makes me feel like a light-sensitive Jack Duckworth. It was while walking home from setting up Thursday’s Mostly Comedy that I noticed something wasn't right. My glasses felt abnormal on my face. On closer inspection, I discovered that the frames had snapped at the bridge; as far as specs go, this was pretty calamitous. I got them out of my bag later on, to show Glyn the damage, to find that one of the lenses had fallen out completely. They'd morphed from a protective eye-shield to a comedy prop in a matter of minutes. They're not my main pair to be fair, though sadly, these are also out of service. A screw fell out during my honeymoon and I've yet to replace it. The snapped ones were bought from a market stall mere metres from the incident, so considering their price they've had a good innings. It's still disappointin...

Today I invited my dad over to have a look at my garage door. It’s worth clarifying that he had a reason to come and look at it; it wasn’t just a cost-free form of entertainment. We didn’t set up two deckchairs, crack open a couple of cans of lager and sit back to admire the handiwork. The purpose of my dad’s visit was to work out why it's not closing properly. Before any would-be burglars take an interest, there’s nothing inside that's worth stealing. Unless you’re thinking of staging a play set in the basket of a hot-air balloon (the set for mine and Glyn’s 2008 Edinburgh Festival show lives inside it). Despite containing nothing of value, I’d still sooner know it was locked. The only way to tell what was wrong was to look at it from the inside, which meant I had to briefly shut my dad in my garage. I felt like I was holding him hostage: slowly closing the door while he stood on the other side; frantically turning the handle of his ...

I think you know the game's nearly up for your current mobile phone when you have to wedge a plectrum into the bottom of it to make it work. I have a BlackBerry Curve (for those interested in technical detail). It's pretty indispensable; not just for obvious uses, such as texts, calls and email, but also to store ideas and photographs for mine and Glyn 's material. Look through most other people's mobile photo albums and you'll find pictures of friends, family and pets; go through mine and you'll find scores of badly-worded signs, odd window displays and amusing screen-grabs I've pulled from the internet. This is my rather depressing legacy. What I like most about my BlackBerry is that it has both a touch-screen and a qwerty keyboard - which, for me, offers the best of both worlds. I’ve never wanted to own an iPhone, or any other smartphone with just a touch-screen facility. I may be in a minority, but I’m happy for it. Sadly, this ...