mostly david ephgrave

Today, was a day of sociability, and a nice break from the frustration of the past few weeks.  I met with my friend Rob in the morning, who's working as a DJ for a station in Milton Keynes, and who'll drop by Hitchin on the way when he can, for a coffee and a catch-up. He's one of those people I don't get to see as much as I'd like but, when I do, we pick up where we left off. We know each other through music, having met when working together on the Buddy Holly show I used to do, on my second year of doing it. Rob played Buddy before me, then went into 'The Mousetrap' in town the year I took over (I'm talking Agatha Christie; not pest control or Linford), meaning I missed him the first time around. When he returned, he took the rhythm guitar / emcee role (enjoying the break from the big glasses, I think), and our mutual interest in rock 'n' roll and sixties music - plus our shared sense of humour - meant we soon connected on the road; then Glyn...

Today has been a day of bits and pieces. It started with me popping to a friend’s flat to feed her cats: something I’m doing for the next week, in my occasional guise as a cat-sitter. I then power-walked to the office with a mic-stand in tow (which has been sitting in my flat since last Saturday’s aborted preview), before sprinting for a bus to the station to catch the train into London for a casting; my life's always this thrilling. The audition was my first one for the best part of a month: for some reason, they've just not been coming in. In some senses this is good, as it’s given me time to think about my show, but I’m always uneasy when there’s no immediate prospect of paid work (a reasonable thing to be uneasy about). I think the casting went well. I enjoyed it. I generally do; it’s an environment I feel comfortable in. It was as random as ever; in many ways, it was more random than most: I had to perform in just a towel and a baseball cap. It’s a times lik...

Sometimes, you'll write something down quickly without considering how it might be interpreted out of context. My favourite example of this was spotted a few years back, whilst flicking through Glyn’s diary. (He’d authorized my browsing by the way. I wasn’t being nosy.) We were in the midst of planning a rehearsal schedule, when he asked me to crosscheck some dates in his diary while he popped to the loo. As I leafed through the pages, my eyes were drawn to a fortnight in July that was blank except for one entry: ‘Cock Fun Day’. I felt the blind panic of a man who’d stumbled across something he wasn’t meant to see. The mental image those three words painted was horrendous. Setting aside time for yourself was all well and good, but this was ridiculous. What the Hell was Cock Fun Day? The mind boggled. Was it an annual event? Whatever it was, it warranted its own title, plus a clearing of the diary for a week either side of it. When I questioned him on the subject...

I was very sad to hear of the death of Sue Townsend. I loved her books as a kid. For me, Adrian Mole was more fact than fiction. We had all the same neuroses – and while I never fell for an aspiring politician called Pandora, I definitely empathised with Adrian's bad luck with the opposite sex. (I didn't measure my extremities as often as he did though; I promise.) It’s amazing that a middle-aged woman could capture the voice of a teenage boy so perfectly. Perhaps she was some kind of witch. Whatever her secret, Townsend managed to make Adrian both likeable and irritating in equal measure; with a story that was as tragic as it was comic. I felt as if I'd grown up alongside him. He was the friend that I'd never met. Yet I somehow had unrestricted access to his diary; weird, that. It’s strange to think that the force behind such a big part of my childhood has gone. At least we still have her wonderful books. I hope it ...