An odd weekend

I've got four shows to write, so really shouldn't be distracting myself with this but, well, that was an odd weekend - and purely on a professional level, too.

With my first week as a full-time arty dude being just a bit slower than planned (although I did write the festive novella, which has now been proofread and is virtually ready to go), I was looking forward to this weekend of shows. In fact, I was anxiously gearing myself up for them. The first one on Friday in Bury had sold out, which was amazing. I arrived fashionably two hours early and thought about things far too much. They were a nice crowd, but they weren't a laugh-out-loud kind of crowd, they just sat and smiled throughout the whole thing. I'm grateful, but there was that niggling doubt in my head that they were just being polite. I don't know, for some reason during the show it felt like I lost my way a bit, nobody would have noticed but the alarm bells rang a bit in my head. This was the 57th time I performed this show; it ended with a warm applause, and then another warm applause when I came back on to pack away, so I must have done okay but I know, deep down, that was by far my best performance. No excuses; nice venue that I know well, a show I know well, just sometimes it's difficult to be completely on it.

On Saturday, fired up because I was below-par the previous night, I drove to London to perform at the Lewisham Fringe. I decided to drive because driving in London is always difficult and I just felt the need to stretch myself a bit. The drive itself, both ways, was a doddle. A slow doddle, but still counts. The show? Well, it just didn't happen. I'd been plugging it like crazy, but not one single person turned up. You can't make people turn up to your shows; I'm not sure what else I could have done. London is a tricky beast for shows, remind me to stay away from it for a while, that was just awkward and horrible.

Got back to Cambridge by 5.30pm and decided to drive down to Bristol, it's only 3 hours away and this is a small country - when 606 football phone-in stuff is on the radio any car journey just flies by. Really great to drink beer with Matt, and to see Anna for her 30th. She made us all go to a club, which, despite my polite protests, was remarkably enjoyable.

On Sunday morning I drove back to Cambridge and moved house. Yep, that's how I roll. My reasons for leaving the last place were mostly financial (and being freelance it's good to keep my overheads as low as possible), but this new place is seriously great and I feel very at home already. If anything, it's too nice and I may get too comfy to do stuff, we'll see...