Snow Business

I’m mostly spending today walking around outside with less clothes on than everyone else. I have sneered at snow warnings and temperature predictions with distaste. Oh no, -10c outside is it? How terrifying for you all. Might snow a bit might it? Get little cold toesies will you? Not me. Yesterday in Helsinki the plane I flew back to the UK on took off in a snow blizzard in -23c. Get in. Take your poxy British winters, I am now an experienced Arctic snow dude. Through the last week travelling around the gorgeous sights of Estonia and Finland I have felt cold that nearly made me cry. It didn’t, purely because my tear ducts had frozen to become another weak area on my face. Wrapped in so many layers, I was like a human onion. Peeling off any of them would have made you cry. Underwear, topped with thermals, with tshirt and jeans on top, then thick socks, a zip up, a warmer zip up, my jacket, hat and scarf. I was the winter version of a weeble, padded to the extremes. Had I been hit by a car, I would have softly bounced off to land gently in the half a foot of snow. Only my face exposed, it meant I was often strolling around working out how to hold my head so that the insides of my nose wouldn’t freeze incase I sneezed and killed a child.

I was quite an experience being away this past week. I had gigged in Denmark before but Estonia and Finland were two new ventures and both equally amazing. Estonia is a country I never would have thought of going to if gigs hadn’t appeared, but now having been I would highly recommend to anyone. Only 1.2m people in the whole place, you get an incredible sense of space and calm strolling around picturesque medieval streets. Surrounded by huge 12th century churches and city walls, while all the houses are coloured a mix of pastel reds and yellows, it all feels a bit magical. Talinn was a beautiful city, but Tartu in its miniature size felt like someone had allowed me to run around a children’s book. Thick snow and cobbled streets is a lovely mixture. The whole place felt like Disneyland with much less crying children. Again though, the cold tear ducts could have been a factor.

I didn’t get to see a lot of Finland, being only in Helsinki for one night and the weather being so cold that walking around sightseeing was impossible. I still saw enough to say that I like the city though and to be honest I fell in love with it on the ferry there from Talinn, staring out at the frozen patches of sea looking like an icy cobblestoned path. I think I’m just a sucker for still getting excited about snow. Yesterday while having a mini-sightseeing trip myself and Louis (the organiser of all the gigs and from Australia so still amazed by snow) spent ages watching some men unstick a ship from its frozen waters with huge steam rods, and then we purposefully stomped in thick snow, avoiding the cleared paths. It didn’t matter that I was only wearing trainers as the powder just fell off. Its lucky I was only there for one day or there’s a high chance I’d have no feet by now.

Finnish and Estonian people both similarly crave the sunshine and being used it, aren’t huge fans of the cold white stuff, but it still doesn’t have the same ‘sigh’ factor when it snows as in the UK. It may be partly because they can deal with it, roads are cleared in seconds, planes still take off. I think when it snows here, as much as love how it looks and the joy of building snowmen etc, we know our week is ruined. As a self-employed person its generally shit, as I lose tons of work due to the inefficiency of British transport and road services. It may also be because there are too many of us here and so we can’t just enjoy the tranquil stillness of a snow covered place. Helsinki is a busy city but still has less than 600,000 people there. We have nearly 8 million people in London. Thats’ more than the entire population of Denmark and Estonia put together. Yet we’re all crammed into one city. No wonder its a hassle. Snow makes darting round these people even harder on icy streets. It makes trains even more crowded as there are less of them. It makes traffic jams so horrible tear ducts will unfreeze through frustration.

As my plane left Helsinki last night, the last few glittering snow flakes hovering in the front of the aircraft, I thought I might miss the snow. I thought I’d miss the extra 5 minutes it would take to get ready to head out, adding every single bit of clothing. I thought I’d miss how quickly the fresh icy air would heal a hangover. But right now, I’m praying it doesn’t snow tonight. I have to go to Poole and something tells me that cold weather will make that journey harder than traversing across several countries in the North. Bloody England. Its great to be back.

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‘A Note’

I’m in a perpetual state of fug today. You can go for days not having enough sleep and feeling tired and then one day, like today, have too much sleep and feel tired. Is this just how its meant to be from now on? Trying desperately to work out the exact right amount of sleep to have to ensure that I don’t wander around aimlessly for hours with a constantly confused look on my face wondering where I am or why I am. Today’s state has so far caused a small moment of neighbourly awkwardness as I was caught out trying to put ‘a note’ on a car blocking our driveway. I put ‘a note’ in inverted commas because it was one of those notes. The notes that without actually containing any rude words, seems to hide the venom in the spaces between words or in other hidden methods. Mine today had three exclamation marks at the end of the first sentence and no punctuation at the end of the second. I like to feel that this denotes my sheer rage at first, followed by my anger peaking so much I can’t even bring myself to end it correctly, deeming the recipient not worthy of correct grammar.

There seemed to be a good reason for ‘the note’. I loathe making ‘notes’. They embody everything petty about the world and leaving one means you’ve lost being able to cope with things but are too chicken to do something proper about them. I once left ‘a note’ for my flatmates in my second year of university on account of them having no idea what cleaning was and two months of washing up had begun to move in ways crockery shouldn’t. I think it was the point when I found maggots happily creating a homestead amongst some old cuppa soups that ‘the note’ was made and left duly on the stairs as you walked in whilst I left the house in protest. Sadly I returned later to find the washing up not done and ‘a note’ directed towards me from the flatmates telling what a cock I was for leaving ‘a note’. It took about three weeks for things to be resolved during which time the maggots took over the kitchen, set up their own community and I still ended up having to deal with them whilst retching continuously over a four hour stint. Somehow, I had totally lost in every way, proving to me, that ‘notes’ were a tad overrated.

However, in recent times they have appeared again. This is because myself and Nat use our driveway all the time, everyday, and yet people insist on parking right in front of it meaning I have learnt reversing manoeuvres that combine skills only expert snooker playing cab drivers have previously discovered. So, finally, after telling people again and again not to do it and yet still seeing them do it when there is more than enough adequate parking space nearby on our non-permitted road, ‘the notes’ have returned. Often starting with a ‘please’ to disarm them following with utilising exclamation marks where needed and occasionally following up with a guilt laden extra sentence explaining why they are irritating dicks of human beings. In the last three weeks about 4 notes have been placed and nothing has changed. So today, when myself and Nat walked out of our flat, up the hill, and we saw a flash silver car (this is the extent of my car knowledge. It was nice looking, it was silver), the pen and paper appeared.

I had scribbled half of my note when the car beneath my pad clicked and unlocked and I noticed a cheery looking woman staring at me in a bemused fashion as she returned to her car. Myself and Nat began to defensively explain why she shouldn’t be parked there, only for her to apologise profusely, and explain that she lived across the road but the branches on their tree were being cut so she had parked it across the road for 15 minutes. A perfectly reasonable excuse. One so reasonable that I found myself back tracking, complaining about other drivers while screwing up the note in my hand just out of her eyeline. One again ‘the note’ has failed. I honestly feel like today I have entirely validated the phrase ‘you snooze, you lose’. Big stupid loser. Sigh.

Car-ma

Today has already been a good day. I find that being a fickle human being I only need one or two things to make a day stand out and today I have seen a 5 year old boy called Hector chase the comic Matthew Highton around in circles trying to lick his arm. Regardless of what else today brings, that’s happened. Which makes a marked change from yesterday which I may well mark in my life’s diary as one of those days I’ll remember as being properly shit for some time. Oh it had good elements, yes indeedy and good company over the course of the day but the end result of a shit journey, shit gig and then a car prang was me feeling more miserable than Mr Sad on Blue Monday watching Dancer in the Dark.

The gig wasn’t fun – a microphone from a kid’s karaoke set, miserable front row of shower manufacturers, lights that were made to blind small mammals and the rudest staff ever. I mean who heckles a compere by sneaking in with back to the stage and giving someone a birthday cake mid-gag? Answer: only a prick – but the prang was the most miserable thing ever. I have had this car since Wednesday and already I have managed to fuck it up. In my life I’ve only ever had three scrapey car damage times and two of those weren’t my fault. I think this is pretty remarkable considering how many miles I drive, and is all testament to how awesome a driver I am. And I am. I often think of Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man as he repeats ‘I’m an excellent driver’ over and over again, and add to this the thought that I am definitely a better driver than him on account of him being a fictional character, so that makes me properly awesome. I have had some near misses (this is a term that constantly upsets me. Surely a ‘near miss’ is a hit?) and using my incredible reflexes like a cat or a ninja or a cat ninja, I have dodged out of the way and averted myself and passengers from harm’s way in the nick of time. What I’m saying is that you know that film Driver? Well I hated that film, its shit. I’m the best Driver. I’m Driver Novello. I’m Minnie Driver. Ok. Not the last one.

This week I became owner of a car for the first ever time. I have always been a named driver on other people’s cars and never had enough money myself to have my own vehicle. Yep, get out the tiny violins. Nor did my parents ever have enough to buy me a car like some rich kids I went to uni with. What with comedian’s insurance being stupid, it always seemed the best choice just to jump on other people’s bandwagons, or more realistically, reasonably sized cars and use them were they my own. This Wednesday, all that changed and for the first time in my life, as a 30 year old man, I finally own a small Ford Ka all to myself. I haven’t experienced the excitement that some do when getting their first car partly on the account of me being a 30 year old man and partly, I think, because I’ve done all the things you can do with cars before and my life is a constant road of, er, roads anyway, so it doesn’t feel all that special. But like with any car, I’ve wanted to take care of it, and unlike any car, I actually have started to remove the rubbish from this one as it forms rather than 4 weeks later when its started to become alive.

So last night when I got a prang it ruined my day and pretty much my week and year. How can this happen to me only 2 days into new car time? On Shaftsbury Avenue at about 2am after a very long night of driving, I drove around a white van to get into the adjacent lane and as I did I heard the horrible noise of doom. That terrible scraping of metal on metal that you only get from car prangs. It doesn’t exist from any other metal on metal sounds, even when the Transformers fight, there is something less pained about the noise. It’s the metal resonance way of saying ‘you fucked up big time. Say goodbye to any savings you ever had.’ Matt Green, my ever patient passenger, cohort, top comedian and chum, wound down the window as the van driver got out, looked at my car, looked at his van, shrugged and went away. I hadn’t yet got out of the car and so had a huge sense of relief thinking that everything was fine and that perhaps the noise was just some Transformers fighting dirty nearby. Just as I was about to carry on with my journey another man came up to me and said ‘his van is fine, but your car is fucked.’ I decided that as the van had now left, so would I and deal with it later. It turned out the van had a big bit of metal sticking out of it’s side, and while I had given easily enough space to get around it, I hadn’t given enough space to the big bit of metal, which dug onto the passenger side and made a huge tear of shame.

I don’t understand why you would have a big bit of metal sticking out of the side of your vehicle? Or how you could so easily shrug as though everything is ok and then not and then fuck off? I can only presume this man’s job is to make people’s lives worse and he’s done this before. The car still drives, it just looks crippled. I am going to have to swallow all pride and ignore it. Or try and drive so that someone crashes into the same side and I can claim it off their insurance. So if you drive a nice car, make sure you pay good attention to where I’m driving in the country and avoid me. Its time I passed on the bad karma methinks. No, I’m not going to make a car-ma joke. Matt Green did that on Twitter last night and I won’t rise to it. Nope. Not at all.

Umpteenly Clean

We have 5 tubes of toothpaste in our bathroom. Our flat is hugely lacking in decent food, we’re nearly out of shower gel, and its definitely lacking in cash. However, need some toothpaste? We have a veritable fuckton of the white stuff. I’m not sure how we’ve collated so much gnashed cleansing product – one L won in possibly the most boring competition ever, and one I had to buy on the road the other day after forgetting both toothpaste & my toothbrush (1 nil to Chris Evans, sigh) on the way to a gig – but the other three seem to have just grown out of the first two. The damp conditions of our bathroom have possibly caused them to spawn life and be able to breed. Sure its great in some ways. I am never going to worry about whether or not I can tend to my teeth on any one day. I will be able to to happily chomp into toffee apple after toffee apple or crunch way through large lumps of wood or concrete should I choose, knowing full well I could return home and use a tube of paste on each section of my mouth bones and still have a whole tube left for a rainy day. I don’t only brush my teeth on rainy days. That would lead for a very anti-social summertime.

So while there are those few good points, there are also several bad points. Like the fact that everyday I open on bathroom cupboard to see five whole tubes of toothpaste just sitting there being all pointless. No one every needs that much toothpaste. Sure, it sounds like I’m making a fuss over nothing, trying to string a mostly pointless blog out of a very tedious fact about our flat, but its something that just gets on my nerves much like when people stop a microwave before it finishes and don’t press the cancel button to change the timer back to zero. Oh that never hurts anyone, oh it doesn’t damage the world in anyway whatsoever, but it still irritates the hell out of me, and requires me pressing the ‘cancel’ button asap to stop the the possibility of 27 seconds of heat just waiting in microwave limbo. With the toothpaste, I that it’s just that toothpaste has no other use than cleaning teeth.

Some people believe it helps deal with spots but in my experience it merely makes your face stink of mint and look like you have a terrible skin drying disease leaving large white patches. Sure this detracts people’s glares from your spots but I can’t imagine your image gains anything from this. Does it have any other uses in the world? I bet it would fuck up slugs. It could probably blind a tiger, at least temporarily. I bet if you put enough of it in a car exhaust the car it wouldn’t work. Thing is, we don’t get slugs in our house, there certainly any tigers despite how often I wish they’d come for tea and I don’t want to put toothpaste in my car’s exhaust as I need to use it. Even worse is that last time I saw my dentist, she told me to take less care of my teeth, so I have to only brush once a day. So consequently five tubes of toothpaste just sit there slowly lessening in content. There will be one terrible day where they all run out and we’ll be so used to not buying toothpaste that none of us will know what to do, running around with constantly manky, stinky teeth and a sense of despair. Then we’ll be attacked by slugs and tigers and die. Probably.

Adventures For Boys

The car hire place this morning asked me the most dangerous question a car hire place could. The question that should never be asked to a small beardy man who likes fast cars and has a lack of self control. The sort of question that could, at any moment, cause me to be hugely bankrupt at any moment. The question was this: ‘Would you like a free upgrade?’ My mouth fell wide open and asked what the upgrade of a new VW Golf might be. It was an Audi A4 diesel automatic black beauty of death. I immediately said yes, and approached said vehicle with mouth wide open in excitement before realising that I had a key with no key bit on it and no idea how to start such a vehicle. I pressed several buttons before having to ask a nice man to help and I drove away realising that it goes an awful lot faster than I thought.

Here’s the thing: if the car rental people knew who I was and how my brain worked, then they would in no way ever let me have such a beast. Already I’ve confused the seat belt detector by putting my bag on the chair, causing angry beeps like a fired up R2D2, wiped one of the radio stations and nearly turned the passenger airbag off, so its only a matter of time before I fire myself out of the roof using the ejector seat and drive the car into a wall. I need a car that just drives and does very little else for the safety of those around me. This however will not stop me waring my shades and driving like a badass pimp daddy to the RAF base in Cranwell today where I’m gigging with Stu Goldsmith and Ben Van Der Velde.

We’re heading up early for a tour of the base before the gig and ultimately I will leap around like a small child as I get to look as fast planes. Fast planes, fast cars. All I need now is some sort of explosion and I’m living a boy’s dream. A dream that involves cars, planes and explosions that is. Not a crap one or a wet one. Those are different. I just hope the explosion isn’t me driving the car into a plane.

Breaking Down

You know what’s great for a long journey home when you’re extremely tired? A breakdown. That’s what. Not a mental one – though I doubt that’s that great for the situation either – but a car one. There’s nothing quite like being only 8 miles from home, desperate for your bed and some beauty snoozing, for the car suddenly, and unexpectedly to completely stop working as though it had just given up in life and decided that chugging around with four comedians and a guitar was finally the last straw. There is nothing more disheartening in the world – besides maybe the sound of a cat with its paw trapped in a door – than the noise of a car failing, whilst its moving. The sheer dismay that is felt as you know that a) you are nowhere near home and b) getting home will be far more of an effort than it should be, is enough to make even the most chirpy of souls sigh a sigh of sadness. After having ruined my bed day by getting out of it, an immediate error in the first place, then gigging to only about 20 students (who were albeit, lovely) in Loughborough, to then drive two hours back and have this happen just as the realms of Londonium were in sight, but far enough away to make walking a stupid stupid possibility for idiots, was the last thing I wanted to happen. There were some consolations to all this. Firstly I was with very nice people – Marc Burrows, Grainne Maguire and Kate Lucas (very good new musical act) – which meant that all sitting and waiting was made far more fun with various pun based games, and Grainne insisting on talking about ghosts despite us sitting on the side of a dark country lane in the middle of nowhere, with everyone’s phones dying and the possibility of us being trapped in the opening of a horror film being very high.

The other consolation, which I feel most proud of, was that it was nothing that I could have fixed. To be honest, there’s very little that I could have fixed. I have recently discovered that my minimal knowledge of changing tyres has been fundamentally ruined by all tyres I have recently been in contact with having been attached by an electric bolting device that means trying to remove them causes me to look weaker than usual. This means my car fixing limitations revolve around water, oil, air and batteries. All of those were checked last night, with Marc graciously pushing the car along as I tried not to flood the engine, and whilst there was the sad realisation we would be sitting going nowhere for some time, at least my man dignity hadn’t died. Well, much. It didn’t help that when the Dave the lovely RAC knight in shining armour arrived, he explained it was the cam belt and I asked what a ‘can belt’ it as least two times. I don’t strap cans to my car ever, there is a holder for that, so I was very confused by the whole thing.

I also tried to act as unbewildered as possible when he handed me a small sheet of instruction for how to drive when being towed away. He didn’t appreciate me trying to disguise this fear by saying ‘So I’m being towed right? Well then who will be Ratty and Mole?’ Never have I seen a look of such dissent before in my life. I have never been driving a towed car before and found it not dissimilar to one of those theme park rides where you have a steering wheel for your carriage but its use is entirely to make you think you’re having more fun and control than you are. I was informed that I’d have to steer the car with the movements of his van, but I’m sure he knew full well this was just to boost my male ego somewhat. I was hoping for some sort of comment on just how well I drive a towed car but no such thing happened. In retrospect, if you are regularly driving towed cars, you probably shouldn’t be that proud of yourself in any capacity.

This sort of thing never happens to me. In nearly 8 years of driving to gigs I’ve never had the vehicle I’m driving break down. Other have, and I have fond memories of myself and Howard Read sitting in Carl Donnelly’s car as we had to trudge up the M11 at less than 50 mph on a spare tyre, getting to the gig a full hour 45 late and then still having to go on and drive home. Essentially, I am wondering whether to give up on cars altogether and get a horse. You don’t hear of horses having a breakdown do you? Someone on Twitter last night pointed out that Black Beauty did, but I presume he didn’t just sit at the side of a road waiting for a man to come and tow him way. Even when horses are sad they’ll still walk. If that really doesn’t work then I’m going to get a lion and use him like Battlekat in He-Man. One way or another when people used to use animals to get places they didn’t have to have RAC men come and check their legs and tail if they weren’t working. Similarly you wouldn’t get people at traffic lights trying to brush their teeth, and if they wanted to sell you shit roses the horses would try and eat them till they left. Just saying. Maybe we need to go luddite on this shizzle.