Monday 5th December 2016

Decided make Monday my day 'off', so after catching up on a little sleep I replied to about five million emails and then did the usual family rounds of taking mum shopping whilst keeping an eye on all correspondence. It's good being self-employed, sometimes.

Next year looks crazy and there already so many diary clashes. As usual I'm thinking I may have to push the comedy more or the band more, but it may be impossible to push both of them this hard all of the time as there simply isn't that many days.

Then simple enough drive over to a small village in Norfolk for the Christmas show. A performance on the top deck of a double-decker bus was never going to be easy considering my excessive height. Locals were eager, the first 25 minutes or so we me just getting used to them as an audience, testing the boundaries a little, doing the Christmas story routine - and mostly playing it safe. The second half, which is basically the main festive show and all new stuff was just frantic. I mean, it's a bus: you try doing this show, with it's four costume changes, a reindeer on an exercise bike and quite a lot of drumming on a bus...it was never going to be easy, especially with the constant interruptions by the bar lady who clearly wanted it to be her show. The result was a flustered, frantic mess but I still managed to force the story out, somehow, and the audience loved it...some of them even hailed it as 'genius' and other such kind words. Maybe they did love it, honestly, or maybe they could just see what I was at least trying to do here.

Either way, got home and drank beer. It was needed. Lots of shows have been cancelled for this tour which is annoying; tomorrow's show has been pulled because the venue has new owners and didn't know anything about it, Wednesday was mutually rearranged because it's miles away and it would fit better with my February tour and Friday is pulled because of illness to the landlord. Still, it's not a show I'm hugely enjoying at the moment so maybe it's not such a bad thing.