mostly david ephgrave

For the second time in a year, I've turned to JustGiving to help me through a financial plight; last time it was to contribute to the funding-hole left for Edinburgh when my dad's estate was frozen after he passed away; this time, it's to bolster Mostly Comedy through the coronavirus situation. Like so many industries, the COVID-19 pandemic has thrown live events into crisis. Suddenly, the future of venues & gigs looks worryingly unsustainable. Sadly, that's the case for Mostly Comedy too. Glyn and I run the club as self-employed performers on a low income. As it stands, Mostly makes just enough money to sustain each consecutive event and our running costs, but its survival relies on (1) the gigs going ahead, and (2) our taking little money from it. And when the money isn't there, we plug the gap. Until our shows can continue, the club has no money coming in (our ticket provider holds all funds until a week after each show). Meanwhile, our running c...

I've not had the best week in the sense that I've been chasing my tail, trying to get things done and yet never getting close to where I need to be. Nothing's good right now. I know I'm always complaining about doing too much admin, but at the moment, it seems endless; if I'm not trying to sort something to do with my dad's probate situation I'm trying to solve some problem or other to do with Edinburgh that wouldn't have been half as difficult if the money was there. Sadly, everything's framed by this lack of funds, which overwhelms everything else. Nothing about the process is enjoyable right now, other than learning how generous people can be. Today there was a lovely piece in The Comet , which I hope will encourage a few more last-minute donations, but even if I manage to pull the money together, I still need some semblance of a show I'm happy with. Usually, I spend the best part of a year putting these things together; this time, I...

This evening, I quickly knocked up/off - depending on which seems more appropriate - a press release for the extra Mostly Comedy we've squeezed in on 4th April with Tony Slattery, in the hope it's not too late to be featured in the Hitchin Comet this week. It's more likely than not that I've missed the deadline, but I thought it was still worth giving it a go. Until very recently, I'd never missed writing a press release for a gig, but I don't think I've put one together since October last year, for the simple reason that shows keep selling out, making it less necessary. Plus I'd got bored of doing them; there's only so many times you can rejig the same information across a decade before you want to pull your hair out. I've since realised my press release is far-from-perfect - I missed off one of the acts for starters - but here's hoping it helps give the show a push. Here's what I wrote: Press Release – 24 . 03 .1 9 mostly c...

It was while I was out for a birthday meal at Hermitage Road in Hitchin last night that I realised I’d also spent my seventeenth birthday in the same building, competing in the final of a Battle of the Bands competition – and that the gig had taken place exactly half my lifetime ago. It’s strange to think that something I remember so clearly, which happened on the cusp of adulthood, could be such a large fraction of my life ago. I know I’m hardly decrepit, but it was still a wake-up call. I would never have guessed that I'd be there seventeen years later, having dinner with my wife; partly because in 1998 it was a dank, dingy club, and not the sort of place you’d want to eat in. The phrase ‘wake-up call’ makes this realisation sound negative, when it was actually pleasing to note. When you’re seventeen, you don’t think that far in the future. You’ve no idea how things will turn out. I’d only just left school and started college, which was wh...