My First Joke

Both the hot drinks machines in the office are out of order today...you can have no real grasp on how much this is disrupting the flow of my usual day. I chain drink tea...I don't mean I get a cup and then send 15 round to piss off people I know...I just drink it cup after cup after cup until my heart sounds much like that of a hummingbird.

With the drinks machines out of action I not only can't have my tea but my delicate balance of time management is also totally out of whack. Usually within any hour I will drink 3-4 cups of tea. This obviously takes about 10 minutes out of hour. It also causes me to pee once an hour. This takes about 4 minutes out of the hour. So at least 1/4 of my time is spent imbibing or outbibing my tea. I have no idea what to do with this extra time.

Thinking about it, potentially this is a cruel trick by the management team to get a little more out of their smallest employee. But, logically speaking if they wanted a work horse they possibly shouldn't have hired someone who did a 4 year drama degree and lists winning King Gong on her CV. It's not rocket science is it? But then neither is my job.

So far, my lack of tea has resulted in a small headache and has potentially impacted on the creation of one of my first ever "jokes". I wrote a joke today. I rarely write jokes...I find them very difficult to do on purpose and to be honest it's a wonder people keep giving me a microphone. Are you ready for my joke? Here it goes...*clears throat* -

You can tell a dyslexic's really happy because they hide and go to Devon.

It's quite difficult to put into words how pleased I am with myself for the creation of this joke. If I could turn my happiness into a dance it would probably be the Rhumba with overtones of the macarena. If it could be a song it would be a Bette Midler live recording of Wind Beneath My Wings. If it was a man, it'd be reminiscent of a young Clarke Gable and would be making me a cheese toastie and a cup of tea whilst ordering roses to surprise me. If my happiness were an animal it'd be a teacup pig riding a llama.

In short...I am pleased with myself. Perhaps caffeine's been the thing holding me back all along? Maybe if I got off the bagged up leaves of brown joy I'd be spewing out wordplay witticisms left, right and centre? I think it's unlikely...I think I'd end up on some other stimulant just to try and keep my eyes open. But a girl can dream right?

In other news, I went to the ever awesome Fat Tuesday at The Compass last night. It's run by Tiernan Douieb who's a cracking comedian (never struggles with punnery. Dick) and has somehow created the loveliest gig in the word which happens quietly and brilliantly every other Tuesday in Angel. If you're a comedy buff you've just got to go and see what I'm talking about. Last night I saw John Robins and Johnny Sweet and they made me cackle my ass off.

And then Andrew Maxwell hit the stage. He might as well have plugged me into the mains - the electricity of his performance was incredible. The timing, the topicality, the jokes, the opinions. His performance has a delicacy that looks effortless and yet you feel like you could easily sit down and have a chat with him after the show. Consider me blown away.

In the shameless plug section of the blog, I'll be on the radio tonight trying to be serious and shit and interview people so have a listen to London Festival Fringe if you like and we can all laugh at me together tomorrow. Cool.

Me out. I'm off to go and suck a dry tea bag and see if it has the same effect...I somehow doubt it.