Skim

Comedy was Friday. Friday was Comedy.

It was a stand-up gig. I spoke some, I hesitated some, I wore a delightful hat.

I thought it went really well, all in all. The second half of my set involved some props and almost no prepared material, so could have been a huge disaster. Luckily, things went smoothly, and there were all manner of fun surprises.

[On re-reading that, I don't know what I meant. What were the surprises? Laughs? I suppose they were fairly unexpected.]

I never know how much detail to go into when talking about my gigs. Should I provide an introduction and comprehensive overview of the night as a whole? Should I analyse the other acts on the bill? Should I give details of the venue? Should I give specific details of what material I did?

Do I want to preserve some mystery? Maybe I shouldn't give anything away in case I want to do it in the future. You readers may attend a future gig, and won't appreciate being spoiled.

My pal Alex took a short video of "laughgate" (as he referred to the evening - he loves the suffix "-gate"), but there weren't really any jokes in it. Maybe I'll post it here sometime, just to give you a flavour of my shirt and weight.

The gig, Laughter Track, is organised by a sketch duo called The Awkward Silence, and is always an utter delight. I don't know how they attract such discerning, generous, clever, attractive crowds, but they manage it all the time. It means I feel comfortable experimenting and I don't have to fall back on my classic routines ("a woman choosing between some shoes and her child"; "David Cameron being immoral"; "service station pig misunderstanding"; "racism", etc).

The whole night was tinged with sadness however, as I was unable to watch the England-San Marino match. I'll try to bounce back from that hardship.

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Oh no! Someone has squashed those three asterisks! They used to be so pert and prickly, like brave wire Christmas trees, and now they are as flat as dashes.

Who could have done such a thing? Who has the wherewithal, the strength and the outright cruelty to flatten three innocent asterisks?

It can only be the nefarious Dr Handnote, the arch-enemy of... footnotes. Or, well... I mean, because asterisks are sometimes used to indicate footnotes.

Yeah.

I just gave myself the thumbs up, reflected in a spoon, to convey my negative feelings about my idiot thumbs.

But we're only human, aren't we? Humans can't delete bits of writing that don't work. It would be great if we could, but we can't.

***

Oh look, they're back. They must have been crouching.



GUH!

I just slapped myself in the face.

Come on, Paul. Snap out of it!

There are things to do. I can't just sit here staring at the word "crouching" for the rest of the afternoon.

YOU'RE A PROFESSIONAL!

I need to finish this blog post and get on with my life. People have probably enjoyed this. You don't need to keep working on it.

There's no point in mounting a rescue when there is no-one in jeopardy. That would simply be an exercise in ambulance exhibitionism. If you really want to impress people, stick a gif in this post. People love gifs.

Just one gif. Then leave.

Gif and go.

Gif and go!

You're hilarious.

***

Hilarious.