Reading, Buckden, and the weekend where I nearly quit

As far as weeks go, that wasn't the nicest - my father's health once again was causing concerns and I've spent many hours in hospital, wheeling him around. It's been difficult, can't deny that, but he's on the mend - they know what they're doing even if this is taking much longer than planned, and he's an inspiring figure. Because of this I had to pull out of a gig, something I hate doing, but physically it wasn't impossible to get to London to play with Claudia considering visiting times back at the wards. It's a shame, Claudia writes great songs and surrounds herself with really good musicians, it's always a pleasure to be involved.

I did still manage to write the whole of my latest show, The Moments of Madness that Make Us - wrote it in one very intense day (eventually finished it at 3am on Wednesday) and didn't look at it again until today, but more on that in a sec. And I did get one gig in mid-week, Fred's House supporting the amazing Slow Club at the Portland. I'm a huge fan of Slow Club, their new album is genuinely my favourite thing at the moment, and they had Fyfe Dangerfield on bass...it's situations like this which actually blow my mind! Gig was great, but hot - it was a bad day for the air conditioning to be broken...

This weekend I've been performing the solo show at The Reading Fringe. On Friday I dashed over from the hospital, performed it to 6 people, but 6 people who were really enthused by it - I went home happy enough. On Saturday I hit problems; the M25 is a road everyone warned me about, so I allowed extra time to get there. How much extra time do you need? I was crawling for over an hour on it, realising I was in danger of missing my afternoon performance at the festival. Eventually I got into Reading with 5 minutes to spare, but still nowhere near my venue and with traffic being plain daft. I ended up dumping my car and attempted to walk to the venue, only to realise I wasn't where I thought I was, so ended up running back to my car (getting cramp and falling into a road on the way, narrowly missing a bus) and then my sat-nav played up a bit. Pulled into a layby and considered everything...am I taking on too much? Is it time to quit? Is this working? Shall I just try living a normal life for a change? I was feeling pretty low about things, especially after the week I'd had. Eventually got to my venue 40 minutes late but amazingly...I had an audience there, waiting for me. Could barely talk because I was so exhausted, but soon hit my sweaty stride. The show got reviewed and I got 4 stars (out of 5, of course) and a lovely write-up, so I must have done something right.

Then a mad dash across to get to Buckden. Considering my Reading show ran late, I was now running late for Buckfest - a festival I was scheduled to play with Fred's House. Somehow, got there - I was a couple minutes late, but they were waiting for me, and pretty much jumped straight on stage and we played for an hour. Nice gig.

Ended my day by drinking lots of beer with my friends Andy and Amy, we had a nice barbeque and the conversation was cracking throughout. I needed to let off steam; they let me do that, until about 3 in the morning, when the whiskey had evidently took it's toll. It was a long day but - against all odds, I somehow got away with it. Wouldn't like to do that one again in a hurry though.

Today was easier; my dad seemed in better spirits when I popped around to see him earlier (and take my mum shopping), and then I rehearsed the '...Disasters' show with Kim, and then off to my mate Mike's house where I gave a first airing of, 'The Moments of Madness that Make Us'. It's such an odd show, really intense at times, really weird, but with big jokes in there too - perhaps more than my regular show. And half of it is pre-recorded, and you really have to stick with the plot to get it...unlike my other offerings which are, shall we say, more on the simplistic side of things. I wanted to raise the intelligence of my writing, write a show that challenges people a bit. Lovely crowd tonight, I'm itching to do this show again already. So...my thoughts about quitting? Nah, let's be honest about this, I'm still very much enjoying this, all of it, really.