HeadSpill

June and July have been pretty eventful. Most notably the nightmare that was logging in my PC to check my bank balance and finding £350 had disappeared out of it care of some gambling website and I’d become the victim of card fraud. Having pedalled it into town to go to the bank and get it sorted, one stressful ranty conversation later I came out to find my bike had been nicked. Joy. I decided to cheer myself up by picking up a copy of the fringe festival brochure to see my name in print only to find the show, but without my name in fromt of it, which on further examination was my fault. I went a bit mental and put some stickers I’d found on my face in an attempt to show the world my bellicosity.

In brighter news I went camping twice in the space of four days set foot in Maidenhead, Bracknell, Windsor, Newquay, Truro, St Austell, Cardiff, Coniston and Sunderland. First with wor lass, then on ‘Man & Nature 4′, the 4th Annual North West Comedians comedy camp, 2 fine days worth of drinking, bitching and riding motor boats on lake coniston while fishing and drinking and bitching. I put my tent up in the p****ng rain, the high wind tipped it over but after a couple of bottles of ‘Cornish Rattler’ bought fresh from a Cyder farm the previous day, I was half nakedly hammering the pegs back in with my bare hands and thinking nothing of it. Class.

Wor lass went away to the USA on sunday, so I’m is a bit sad. As evidence of just how accustomed I’ve become to living together, last night in her absence I drew a face on a balloon. Oh dear. (not that she looks like a balloon or anything). With loads of room and time to myself now though I can focus on banging my Edinburgh show into shape ready for August, and I’ll do another video blog for that shortly.

On Sunday I was a guest on the new Andy Crane Radio show. He’s a lovely bloke, and I felt a warm glow of security sitting in his presence thinking back to watching childrens telly, and singing along at home to the opening credits of ‘Around the World with Will Fog’. I was 14. My nice bubble of security was quickly punctured when he then asked me about home life, my lovely girlfriend and if I was going to get married or not.
It’s not a touchy subject or anything, but I had a proper flap, and the whole thing became a bit surreal in my head for several moments.

I missed my mum’s birthday this weekend. I feel bad about that.

After a run of particularly unsatisfactory gigs over the last month my mojo was well and truly restored last week when the headliner failed to turn up and I ended up mc’ing and closing the gig in Skipton town hall. Big room, and lovely crowd.

The yang this lovely slice on yin came the next morning when a tooth that had cracked eariler in the week drove me nuts with pain and I shot off down the road to the dentist to have an emergency extraction on a decay ridden right molar.

The show comes along slowly, still needs work.

Sometime last year I think I fell out of love with comedy. There were no signs, I didn’t see it coming. Everything in my personal life was great. better than great. Comedy was work, good work, but work all the same. I moved in with my girlfriend, and that was, and still is utterly splendid on many levels. In hindsight it’s a simple trap I suppose, sex vs the adrenaline rush of comedy. Why go to a gig for that fleeting but massive adulation of a job well done, or on occasion feint praise and a three hour drive, when there’s a steady flow of love at home, like having a lounge bar in the front room. I got sloppy, was making notes, but not really writing and over the relatively short space of 6 months my set became unpolished and flabby.

When I was single I was singularly motivated, I went to gigs and worked, and when I wasn’t gigging I went to gigs anyway as it was better than sitting at home.
Living with someone else changes that. It sounds obvious, but you don’t quite know how and what shape you’re life will take until you’re in that position yourself. You can’t just do stuff when you want like before, you just get in each others way, or don’t each other at all.

I read that back and it sound’s terrible, but it’s not. When you live with someone in ‘togetherness’ your stuff and her stuff start off sitting next to each other on bookcases, but eventually overlap, and when there’s no room left, you have to assert that that space on the shelf is for your Beat Takashi films, and not her Monkee’s DVD’s.

In the five months since moving in there’s a facet of me that wasn’t there before, well rounded isn’t the word, a difficult birth of compromise and assertion, tolerance and aggression.

There’s a difference between what you want and what you need.

When I was single I had a point to prove, a good point, but a point nontheless, comedy was my passion, and performing my outlet.

Finding your bestest partner, and someone who loves you regardless, I forgot the point I was trying to prove, and the dawning horror that I might not have actually had a point to prove at all, I just liked making the funny on stage.

I never planned to get hooked up and settled, it just kind of happened. I once said quite loftily ‘a successful relationship is by it’s nature compromise’ and still think that rings true. However a good relationship is also life experience and experience is good.

I’ve started writing loads again, I’ve started writing a about something very close to me, which might be quite painful in places, but it isn’t born out of proving a point, just wanting to live life better and more than I currently do. Not that anything was bad before, by my actions and experience I’m just a little more defined.

I have just recovered from my worst eczema flare up in years. I’ve always had eczema, and the suffering of it lasted through most of my childhood, into my teens and through to my mid 20’s. It’s of the ‘atopic’ variety as well, not just the little itchy bit you get on your elbow every now and then, but the full blown all over cornflake bodysuit that when it flares up turns you into a big red grumpy monster that swells up and squirts blood and innocent passers by. Well maybe not that bad, but that’s how it felt to me as a kid, and my perception of myself varied wildly from one day to the next, affecting my confidence in much the same way. The world was a nice place one day, and could go f**k itself the next.

I hadn’t had a flare up in so long I’d forgotten how bad it could be, and this time it was compounded by a bout of ‘otitis externa’, an acute ear infection which feels like having a house brick nailed to the side your head. The flare up kicked in a couple of days into the ear infection, and not suspecting the infection as related, I ran the gamut of probable causes to track down the source of swelling and rampant itching. Diet and environment, every item of food and clothing scrutinised, everything that went in me, on me or through me was questioned, even my girlfriend. Yes, even my girlfriend, my flat, my washing machine, the ph neutrality of the  water in my area of Manchester, as once I’d eliminated my diet and washing powder as the usual suspects, the possiblities of cause suddenly became broader and vaguer.

As the days passed the condition worsened to the point where the entre back of my head and shoulders were a red raw mess. Quick eczema test. lick the back of your hand, now blow on it. Imagine the areas of the body I’ve just mentioned being that sensitive all the time. Now fill your mouth with sherbert (No don’t do that ). So many things had changed in my life in such a short space of time that in looking for the cause I started to consider possible pschological triggers, having experienced first hand how things like stress can have a big effect over your physical well being. And so I found myself lying on the floor in lounge at three in the morning having washed my weeping, stinging head for the second time that night, thinking big dark thoughts. Was living together not working? Was there somthing wrong with the new flat? Was the change from living alone to living together too acute? Was I agreeing to things I didn’t want? I didn’t think so, but in light of no other causes, it was hard not to speculate on the negatives.

‘Go to the doctors’. Yes. Been there. Done that. It’s all too easy to sit winge about ailmments, then wine about the NHS and never get off your arse and do anything about getting seen by your GP because it’ll ages. I went to my local walk-in centre when my ears became unbearable, I waited an hour and the only thing that couldn’t be seen were my eardrums, due to too much swelling. Nurse Danny noticed my eczema too when I brought it up, but still no mention of the two being connected. We played eczema medication pokemon, I won. I have them all.

Eczema is a condition, not a disease so there isn’t a cure as such, and it doesn’t really lend itself to the kind of sexy marketing campaigns to raise awareness and donations that more popular ills like HIV aids or cancer do. Hence there’s not a lot public familiarity with it, depite it being quite common.  Also Eczema isn’t fatal, but there have been a number of cases where the associated depression has lead to suicide, but thats a minority. I got depressed as a kid, but never that bad.

It was only when I came back two days later and he could have a proper look, sans swell, that he saw what he  thought was ‘Otitis Externa’ a particular type of infection that could well have aggrevated the  surrounding skin to the point of dermageddon, I got refered to a doctor, he gave me pills, and over the next couple of days I recovered and got some sleep. Now I am better. Hurray!.