When I am a grown up...

This is the sort of amazing September morning that makes me really excited, totally and truly excited about being a proper grown up with children of my own. This is a terrifying yet beautiful feeling because the thought of having children scares the bejebus out of me. I'm fairly sure I'll have them and part of me can't wait, but the permanence of them puts me off. I'm the sort of fickle person that wouldn't even get a tattoo because I might not like it the next day - let alone sprog up on a whim and have something totally dependent on me for the rest of my life. Last time I was house hunting it caused mass panic attacks at the thought of signing a longish contract.

But there's something about a morning like this one at the beginning of September which has me wanting to pack a satchel and put my blue eyed girl and boy on their hover boards and start the walk/hover to school. I think they'll probably like marmite (I certainly do) and little Ruby and Locke will hopefully also really enjoy going to stationery shopping. There's absolutely nothing better than the trip to WHSmiths before you go back to school and then comparing the pencil cases you've all chosen.

I imgine they'll both be quite feisty little gits but hopefully not so much that people think they're incorrigible while I think they're darlings. If possible one of them will have a penchant for asking very complex questions in crowded places so I can roll my eyes and mutter 'kids' while everyone else marvels at their genius. That'll probably be Locke - he'll be the thinker. Ruby will likely eat a lot of mud.

Having this discussion with my flatmate earlier, she seemed to think that hover boards were a bit too advanced for my kids. Not in the sense that only my kids would be too stupid - just that they probably won't have been invented by then but I disagree. Imagine how advanced the world is going to be in 14 years or so when I'm walking them to school. Will there even still be schools or do they just suck on a USB stick in the morning and then have all the knowledge they could need to outwit their mother?

I imagine Locke will be quite sporty, bless him, he gets it from his father - the listing in the brochure said the donor liked rugby. I'm joking...he won't be sporty at all. No. More jokes. I'll definitely have a look for a real dad for them - but I'm just not making any promises. Locke will do all the after school activities and Ruby and I will eat sweeties and watch him play and then get very excited when he does well but always keep our distance a bit so he can be cool in front of his friends. It's going to be quite difficult for him because his name does rhyme with cock. He's therefore going to need a lot of good haircuts and a house that kids want to come and play in. ah the trials of youth.

On their first days at school they're going to have satchels. I distinctly remember my first satchel. It was brown and had trains, boats and cars on it. I don't actually remember ever using it but I certainly remember having had it at some point so I must have been lucky. Locke and Ruby can also have satchels and lunch boxes. Interesting lunch boxes with nice pictures on that they can pretend are TVs if they want to. None of this clear tupperware rubbish.

September's got a beautiful feel to it - every year I dread the end of summer and forget how much I love the autumn. It's intensely beautiful and I love it before the drudgery of post-Christmas winter kicks in. Coming back to work after the long Edinburgh break was very reminiscent of going to school again for the new term. Except that I don't have a new satchel and I've not been given a new sketch book and told to add margins. I've been put on a train to Swindon to see a man I don't think is there. Being an adult is weird. Roll on the days of Ruby and Locke so I can go back to daytime TV and daydreaming and writing...

Terrorvision

Well, haven't I been rubbish? I have abandoned you my loyal flock. Yes, that's right, I have written this blog so far with only sheep in mind. If you are humans and reading this then bugger off. I mean it. Yes I do. Oh, so you think ignoring me is funny? Well, see if you can cope with this then.

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Still there? Seriously weird.

Don't know if it's weirder that I bothered to type all those or that you have read them all. Either way we all need to be sectioned. Except the poor sheep that got caught up in it all. Bless them. Out there in the fields with their little iPads. Terribly obedient things blog addicted sheep. You simply have to love them. Otherwise they kill you.

So, I'm back from Edinburgh - I honestly couldn't blog in the last few days either through incredible pain from the stupid hip in the wrong place, or through incredible hungoverness or through extreme busyness (different to business) with gigging. What an amazing time it was.

Now that I'm back (and have been for all of about 14 hours) it feels like it might not even have been real. The train journey home was intensely snoozeriffic. I discovered that in First Class you get offered tea and biscuits free but that it is apparently not cool to request both kinds of free biscuits. Apparently you are meant to show some self restraint and reign in your incredulousness that this is how some people live their lives. Also, the seats were massive. I sat and watched West Wing most of the way home and tried to ignore the rumbling hangover that was ruling my body. It wasn't easy and I had to try and sleep a lot of it out. Never ever drinking red wine in that quantity again. Ever.

I have decided to have a dry month until my birthday and try to improve the state of my liver and general health. Hopefully my ability to make good life decisions will return again with my newfound sobriety.

Bit of a crap blog today. Unless you're a sheep in which case it's hilarious. But mostly an apology for an enforced absence and a promise that I'm back in the game.

Everything has been happening...

I've had a spectacularly 'Fringe' couple of days which due to only sleeping in groups of hours that add up to less than 5, have blurred into one long mish mash of things that I'm not totally sure are actually happening or are a mere hallucination.

So, here is my attempt to cover them all off for you. Ok.

Funny Women competition - it went well. Didn't it? I mean, it went well...? I think it went well. No, it went well. Well, I think it went well. But I have no idea. Was a strong heat I think. I was very pleased with my performance in general and thought it was one of the best 5s I've ever performed - but after a bill of 13 female comedians I got to the end and definitely wondered whether I would remember me by the end of it? I'm not sure there's anything particularly stand out-ish about me that might make people take interest. But hey ho. We shall see. See we shall. On Monday apparently - which will either be a really nice pick me up to the end of the Fringe, or a very dismal feeling on the train home as the phone call shatters my illusions of grandeur and good things to come.

The night after Funny Women...well. Let's have a think about what happened shall we? It started off perfectly reasonably with a bottle of red wine at the Three Sisters and some fun with friends. We then went to the Library bar...and suddenly it was 5am. It was 5am and another bottle of Rose and several pints of cider later...have you ever mixed two different wines with cider? Have you ever mixed them inside a hyperactive midget with a hip that's not working properly? You haven't? Well, it creates a little brunette monster that will stop at nothing to get her hands on a pie.

Any pie would have done. I just very, very badly wanted a pie.

We were turfed out of Library Bar at about 5am and myself and fellow comedian Nicola Bolsover decided the best thing to do would be to go back to her house and watch Jumanji - the connoisseurs choice. But I was a relentless pie fiend by now. I could literally smell it in the air. Partly because Nicola lives above a pie shop and they had turned the ovens on already. But they weren't open. So I made us travel on.

It was approximately 5:30 and I was pretty convinced that somewhere would be open and seeling pies to angry things with blunt fringes and a desire for meat and gravy. In my defense there was a rugged group of locals who completely agreed with me that the air smelt of pastry delights and that if we headed further down the road there was a pie shop open and we would be able to eat there. They then set off at an incredible pace and due to the minor dispute between my hip and its socket right now, we were not able to keep up.

At this point I found a very nice hessian Bag For Life with a naturally handsome peacock on the side. Deciding this was my prize for being such a convincing sack of alcohol, I wore it around my neck in the manner of a peckish horse. I felt a million dollars.

So there we were on the street, lost and alone (not lost, totally in sight of Nicola's flat, and not alone because we were together), having no idea where this pie shop was actually going to be.

This is when we met 'The Three 26 year Olds'. Now, these guys (as I remember it - and please remember to replace "as I remember it" with "severely sketchy retelling of details") were very proud of the fact that they were all 26. This made them happy. This made Nicola laugh. And it made one of the 26 year olds want to kiss people on the cheek a lot. Nicola needed to sit down because she was laughing so hard she couldn't see and I valiantly gave her my new Bag For Life with the Handsome Peacock to sit on so that her bum wouldn't get wet. The Three 26 year Olds were not terribly interesting as I remember it but they did want a flier for our show and we gladly obliged.

But the rumble in my tumble could not be ignored for long and my desperation for pie was outweighing my impatience with Nicola's incapacity on the floor. All but one of the Three 26 Year Olds left at this point leaving the 26 year old cheek kisser to stay and bother Nicola. Stay an bother Nicola? Where was I you ask? I had spotted a group of people up the road, they looked rowdy and drunk. I therefore assumed they were locals and would have a better knowledge of the local terrain than myself so I raced over (hobbled like Quasimodo with a butt plug) and asked them if they knew where I could get a pie...

They were not locals. They were French. French people with a camera who each wanted an individual phot taken with the brave pie hunter they had met at 6am on a Tuesday morning in the arse end of Edinburgh. I obliged for a short while but they were cramping my style and I still had to get Nicola off the floor and get us both to a pie shop before I died of hunger or disappointment. As I broke away from the clammering Frenchies to go back to my fallen friend, one of the Frenchies came forward and through the cidery fog in my ears I detected a note of Gaellic accent...he was a local!!!

He informed me that the mythical pie shop that the original locals had told me about did indeed exist! And if I just headed straight down the road we would get there and all would be well. I snaked a very special path back to Nicola, bid opur goodbyes to Kissy Cheek 26 Year Old and gathered up my handsome peacock. We were on our way.

We walked, and we walked, and we walked and we walked...and the only thing spurring me on was the thought of finally getting my precious pie! I was ablaze with the thought of my pie...it was all I wanted, it was all I could think about...it was all-consuming...

But then we saw a Tesco. And bought bacon. And Cheesestrings. And I ate 4 cheese strings in a row and felt very sick. The only thing worse than a bottle of red, a bottle of rose and several pints of cider, is a bottle of red, a bottle of rose, several pints of cider and 4 cheesestrings.

The Tesco people were neither amused nor thrilled that their first customers of the day had been so messy looking and loud but we now had bacon and bread and the loyal Jumanji disc waiting back at the flat. I was immensely pleased to have something to put in my handsome peacock bag - which was still around my neck.

The walk back took a very long time, there were some puffins in a window that both confused and amused us and there was the difficulty of trying to walk whilst unwrapping another cheesestring and regretting it at the same time. The walk was also punctuated by the feeling of sheer disappointment in ourselves that we were not yet home and yet 4 paces in front of us was a couple who had been to bed, got upm got dressed and were now off on a day trip up Arthur's Seat. In the 'do something meaningful with your life' stakes, we were not winning.

We reached the flat and made epic bacon sandwiches and settled down to watch Jumanji - the traffic outside was baring and I was ready for a nice sleep. On a sofa. Fully clothed. Under a towel. Perfect.

I then dreamt it was my birthday and it was so vivid that I can't shake the feeling that it genuinely was my birthday recently and that I'm actually going to have two birthdays this year.


All of these antics meant that yesterday was a pretty weird, sleep deprived day. The highlights of yesterday were -

1. 1 bird managing to poo on 3 people at once; me included! Hilarious but gross. It was like he pooed through a high octane sieve and just managed some kind of collossally amazing spatter effect. Funny!

2. My flatmate producing the second best quote I've heard from her this fringe - (you might recall Meatie 1 from a previous story delivering the immortal "I had to put shit loads of beef stock in to get it to taste like this" to the consumers of her 'vegetarian' cottage pie). Yesterday's was similarly badly thought out and equally as amusing, though with slightly less impact, as we got ready to go out into the rain our other, slightly miniature, flatmate puts on her anorak and I comment that she looks sweet in it. Meatie 1 quickly asks without missing a beat if any of us have seen "that film about the killer midget in the red rain coat?". Tiny flatmate is slightly put out at being likened to a homicidal dwarf and I am laughing quietly to myself and wondering if there's a way Meatie 1 and I can hang around together more often so these gems keep coming.

3. Seeing 5 shows in one day yesterday, despite intense exhaustion. These shows were -
"Laura" (Spun Glass Theatre) at the Hive - amazing, it's crazy that it's a free show.
"Loretta Maine - I'm Not Drunk I Just Need To Talk To You"- hysterically funny.
"3 Men and a Hoover" - one of the most insane hours I've ever had in an audience.
" Max and Ivan" - Good clean comedy sketches at C Venues.
"Phedre" - If you want to know about this show, phone me. That's all I can say here.


Today - I have been to see a doctor about my hip. The doctor's genuine prognosis so far has been -

"Yes, your hip definitely shouldn't do that. That is not normal. Does it hurt? It does hurt. Right. And your other hip doesn't do that? No. Of course it doesn't. Right. Ok, well I don't know what's wrong with it so will you take pain killers for me? Ok. Thanks. Yeah, I don't know at all what's wrong so I'm going to phone someone who does now and phone you later ok?"

Phone call later -

"Hi, well, I've spoken to orthopaedics and they seem to think as long as you're feeling ok within yourself you're ok to not do anything about it."

"Erm, I'm not feeling great within myself in all honesty - it sort of hurts to walk and there's a big thing popping in and out of my hip."

"Yes. That's why I've prescribed pain killers."

"Right but..."

"Are you fevery and sick?"

"No..."

"Well then you're fine."

"But, my hip is..."

"Listen, your hip joint is incredibly strong. It's a very secure joint and I just cannot imagine that it's coming out of its socket."

"So what is the big thing you can see and feel flicking out of my hip when I walk?"

"I don't know."

"But it's not my hip?"

"I don't know."

"Right..."

"You can go to hospital if you want? But I think paracetamol will work."

"Magic paracetamol?"

"Er, sure. Maybe try a shaman next time for medical efficiency."


Ok - so I made the last line up but the rest of that conversation is very true and I am therefore quite angry, annoyed and weepy right now so bollocks to the lot of it. I absolutely fucking hate medical issues and being made to feel like you're wasting people's time is not the right way to make sure the general public get things treated before it is too late. FFS.

2 pebbles and a piece of knotted string

When I was little and I didn't understand how the body worked I was easily influenced by the Numskulls. The Numskulls were in a fantastic cartoon in the Beano, and they were tiny little people who lived in the body and made everything work.

I honestly believed that the stomach had a big wooden table on it, and all the food you swallowed would fall down onto the big wooden table and get chopped up by the little men standing all around it. When the food was in small enough pieces the little men would shunt it off the sides and into little tubes which were designated for different types. This meant that if the vegetable pipe was full up and I couldn't eat all my nasty brocolli, I was still perfectly able to have chocolatey pudding because it went in a different pipe. Resourceful, non?

I was a very runty child, I distinctly remember there being a phase in my life where I weighed 2 stone 13 for a very very long time. Mum and I used to weigh me weekly to see if there had been any change but there wasn't. Well, there must have been at some point because I now weigh distinctly more than that. Colossally more than that. But at the time it seemed to stretch on forever not quite being able to weigh 3 stone. My Dad used to say that my limbs looked like bits of string with knots tied in them.

We were quite an outdoorsy brood of children, my siblings and I, big fans of tree climbing and playing imaginary games. I think it was a consequence of a) living in the countryside, b) having parents that didn't believe we needed a games console. I am very grateful for this. Apart from the fact that now I cannot even play worms without getting my ass kicked, let alone Halo, I think it did good things for who I turned out to be.

My older sister and I spent a long time playing outdoors. We had a favourite tree in the corner of our garden and we used to use it as an aeroplane. The game of aeroplane was an interesting one as sibling rivalry dictated the parts we had, and me being runty always made the outcome inevitable! I was always the Captain - on the surface this sounds pretty cool! My sister was the repairman - a good deal you would think? Well, no, not exactly. The role of Captain meant me sitting in a particular fork of the tree and not moving because I was driving. The role of handyman was more about clambering all around the branches fixing the different dilemmas that inevitable occurred during my clearly shoddy reign at the helm. Had our little game been a TV series I'm fairly sure it would have focused on the ineptitude of the rag doll at the wheel and the masterful heroism of the agile handyman.

The one time I was allowed to be the handyman I fell out of the aircraft and narrowly missed some canine excrement beneath. That was the first and last time I was allowed near the tool kit of twigs and leaves. It remained under invisible lock and key after that and I was returned to my seat. The trouble with being Captain was that you couldn't get too carried away. A particularly exhausting and perilous trip through an asteroid belt that required lots of extensive manoeuvres could quite easily result in you snapping off most of the controls near your seat - meaning it was a full season before you could even use the indicators again.

I was quite a gullible child. We used to have a climbing frame in my back garden and my big sister once successfully convinced me that if I jumped off it holding a carrier bag it would act as a parachute - it did not. However, always eager to believe in the good in people, I agreed to try again based on her suggestion that I hadn't held the bag right. It was a miracle I didn't break anything - but given that I only weighed 2 stone 13 I probably wasn't heavy enough to make gravity take notice.

It wasn't just me that was easily taken in by my sister's wily ways - she once also punched me in the face, making my nose bleed, and then told my parents I'd run into her fist. They believed her. I didn't know whether to be pleased they thought I could run with that alarming accuracy into the face of danger, or fist if you prefer, or annoyed that they thought me capable of such incredible stupidity. But at the time I was more focused on whether swallowing the vast quantities of blood was dangerous or going to help me bulk up a bit.

I never really played with dolls as a kid - we had a few to experiment being maternal with but I gave mine to our dog after a few months and he used to carry her round by her hair. She seemed to like it and so I just let them be. I was never really one for taking care of an inanimate object when you could be off having an adventure in the fields or going river jumping.

River jumping involved finding a spot in the river that ran through our front garden and up into the corn fields, and hoping it was deep enough to take you without a broken bone, before plunging in off the bridge and getting lots of street cred from your friends for it. I was always a bit small to be allowed to play but it didn't stop me being there to cheer on the others who were brave/stupid enough to have a go. This was all good until one day a girl broke her arm and we were totally banned from doing it any more. Stupid girl.

Essentially I am a terrible specimen. I live entirely in a world of fantasy in my own head and have never showed any particular physical prowess. Once, when Dad and I were playing tennis, he served the ball to me and it came straight at my face. Rather than move I just watched it smack me straight in the nose and cause another torrent of red life juice to come streaming down my chin. Not the best sort of reaction to danger but then potentially my body just wanted to test my exact limitations based on the fact that I weighed less than my Dad's leg and had successfully survived two parachute attempts. Either way we didn't really play tennis again and although he has had the good grace to let me join his cricket team, I often field in the deep. Very deep.

Lord knows when it was that I turned to 'funny' to give me something to focus on. It's a damn good job we live in a world where it's ok to have no real skill other than to think about things differently to other people and occasionally make them laugh. If it wasn't for this I think I would re-read all of the above and just give up now based on the fact that physically I am a walking disaster. Right now I'm hoping that when I stand up my hip will have settled down back into it's pouch like a contented Joey and I won't have to spend the day trying to figure out a comfortable walking pattern that doesn't cause the sort of grinding noises I imagine are only found elsewhere in the MacDonalds bone and meat grinding plant.

Here's to a healthy team of Numskulls.

Beware, Beware the Forest of Sin

I went to see Operation Greenfield by The Little Bulb Theatre Company again last night. Once again I sat and wept all the way through the last 30 minutes. It is without a doubt the most beautiful piece of theatre I've ever seen. Both times I've seen it now, I've sat in the audience and been so monumentally happy with what I was watching, where I was and what I was doing that I've just cried.

It's definitely worth mentioning that I'm a complete girl when it comes to emotion. When they say there are two reactions; fight or flight, they didn't factor in my body which just says "How do you feel about crying instead?" and then it inevitably happens. For some reason the body I was blessed/lumped with just assumes that puffy eyes and water seeping out of my eyes in a Victoria Falls style manner will help any situation. Sigh. But it was amazing. And everyone in the whole world should run out and see it as soon as possible so they can have the notoriety they deserve.

I had the weird experience yesterday of not being able to remember the tune of a song that, the day before, I had completely stuck in my head but couldn't work out what the song was. This was more frustrating than trying to piece together the plot of Inception. Totally bizarre situation to be phoning people and asking them to hum you the song that you were bothering them with the day before...they were not happy to reminded of either my or the tune's existence.

My head is a bit all over the place to be honest. The thing is I have the competition tomorrow for stand-up comedy and while I'm totally aware that these competitions can mean nothing at all - it would be really nice to do well. I have a history of really screwing up competitions. I think the most annoying one was the last one I did where I had to go first and the judge came up to me afterwards and said he thought I should have won but he didn't vote for me because I was first. What? Made very little sense to this bear but ah well.

If I was convinced enough that one day I'll have my career without having to suck up to the people who make careers happen I would commit merry comedy suicide on the stage. Just walk out into that lonely spotlight and blow raspberries to the tune of 99 Red Balloons until they boo me off or applaud me as the heroine of rubbish comedy that I long to be. It was very nice to see Josie Long perform the other day she is an absolute reminder that if you work hard enough you won't necessarily have to stick to the accepted methods of doing stand-up comedy. She's an absolute inspiration. And lovely. With much musclier legs than I would have imagined having seen her in a dress on Friday. But that is beside the point.

One day I will be an accepted comedy god - at the point where the radiation has melted our brains to such mush that we find whimsy with very little structure or meaning hysterical. Then I'll be paraded round the streets in a purple dress and hat with tail feathers and I'll be allowed to eat only raspberries and toast if I see fit. No one will make me go to work and the Underground will be renamed the Lexxington. I'm almost completely certain there will be more days off work and school for those of us that need them and all television will have to be of a certain grade to get on the telly box. Nothing with the c-bomb in it will reach our ears and children will be children for years and years instead of believing they should morph into sexed up midgets at the age of eleven.

It will become compulsory to visit a foreign country at least every other year - by hovercraft, of course to save the planet the hovercrafts will run on marmite - and there will be no excuse for xenophobia. Safari parks will also become a staple feature in everybody's weeks, they absolutely MUST be visited so you can relax and enjoy animals and feel good about the world. Humans are not everything.

It's also going to be pretty important about this time that a tunnel is built between Somerset and London so I can go and visit my family a lot because I get mighty homesick and it would be nice to not have to use the A303. It's very pesky to live in a tourist destination when you want to get there in under 6 hours and you don't want to have to slow down to 10 miles an hour to go past Stonehenge. IT'S CRAP! Just look at a picture of it and I guarantee it will be exactly the same as slowing down as you drive past and pointing it out to your disinterested children who are also aware IT'S CRAP! They should definitely have 'tourist' and 'local' traffic lanes for these occasions so that I can zoom on past in my little car (Roly - because Dad thinks he looks more like a roller skate than a car) and pity the children in the back of the car that are learning to loath Salisbury.

I think I'd also have to find a way to make hair dry instantly - perhaps installing some sort of Sims style 'get ready' where you just jump in a circle and you're all done instantaneously. I don't like the post-shower drying phase at all but I do really like a good shower. It's just tough.

I mean, obviously these are just basic changes for now and I'll sort out economy and infrastructure later. But sod those because my ideas are much more interesting and important. Firstly though I need to conquer the comedy world - and this starts for me, tomorrow, I need to go through this heat or I think it'll be a very not nice ending to a lovely Festival. Courage to the sticking place and all that...

Yesterday I managed to coerce my hip to take a holiday from it's usual position in the socket it has known and loved for many may years. This is awkward now because it didn't really have anywhere it wanted to go particularly and so has chosen to hang around like a yob under a lampost just outside its designated parking space. It's pretty awkward and painful if I'm honest and it is making me walk like a total spanner today so if you see me please don't laugh or push me over. Sigh and sigh some more.

Ron Howard and the Sand Castle

Massive epic huge failure on my part...devastated by myself.

How did I let Thursday and Friday drift by without jotting a single word down on interpaper about what I was up to? I was doing so well with my egocentric intentions to indulge myself in the blogosphere daily. But I did fail.

Twas because I was out having fun. Oh yeah! That's right - take that in the face loyal reader. I selfishly decided it was more important to me to go out and do some stuff than to sit here and pretend I've done stuff so that you can read it and pretend you wanted to. Ha.

If there's anyone out there who can shed some light on the situation as to why the hell people blog and get me some perspective back I'll happily go with it. But for now I've gone Jacob's (crackers) and so I am sitting with a towel on my head, having just eaten a pop tart, insanely tired and trying to remember what I've been up to that meant I didn't come to my little cosy hole of chatty stuff and make use of the online pensieve.

I MCd a lovely little gig at The White Horse on Thursday lunchtime, Mirth of Forth twas called. It's a delightful little room to play and really lets you play with new stuff and enjoy getting to know a good sized crowd. I wa very happy but then it all went a bit wrong after that...

I was kidnapped for a short while which was difficult. Although my captors said it was ok to blog, the wireless was a little bit up and down in my cell and if I was going to type I needed to sit right up against the window which I didn't really want to do because the bed was comfier. So, my fault really. They let me go when someone put up the ransom for me which was half a cucumber (split lengthways not sliced in the middle) and an empty bucket. It was all very strange but sometimes life is and that is a lesson you should have learnt at puberty if you'd been listening.

When I'd been released I made the most of my freedom by drinking my body weight in alcohol on Thursday night! Helluva night that was. I believe I left Brooke's bar sometime after 4:30am and then wandered home getting very angry with everything that wasn't my bed. There are some nights where you think you've gotten away with being very drunk until you get to the next day and people just keep giving you very knowing looks and telling you you look tired. That was my yesterday. Sheesh though, if you'd been kidnapped and then ransomed for less than a fiver you'd have had an excuse to get drunk too. A good cucumber is rarely more than £2 even in Waitrose so I think I can be forgiven.

This all meant that Friday morning was a bit of a hungover mess. Brief contact with the ex was ill advised and caused a sandstorm of mental headfuckery which has yet to abate. It's incredible that in the same week as getting kidnapped I have also had to deal with the complete unexpected from that corner of the wibbly wobbly world. Will I ever learn? I'll certainly learn not to get kidnapped again that's for darned sure. My wrists still hurt from the handcuffs and I don't think I'll ever eat a salad again without retching. As for buckets, well...

Friday pushed on, I flyered. That was painful. I hate flyering more than anything - although I do really enjoy the friends you make on the mile. My favourite at the moment is 'curly haired guy'. Lord knows what his show is but I do enjoy his flyering technique. Although he has a tendency to plagiarise the calls we've invented for Flyering for Quiz In My Pants. These have so far included -

"Free fliers!"

"Free fliers - all four corners included in the price."

"Free fliers - it's bendy but not too bendy."

"Get your free origami kit here"

"Free unfolded paper aeroplane just for you"

"Craft kits, free, incredibly basic, craft kits..."

Then I went off and did QIMP. Our usual walk from the mile to the venue was not as spritely because I was too hungover to sing, but we did pass the teapot shop and the dead pig shop. The tea pot shop has lots of tea pots of all different colours and shapes and sizes. The dead pig shop just has the one dead pig but it's giant and gross and sits in the window and if you pass it later in the day so much of it has been eaten that it's bones poke out. I don't enjoy passing that shop but I always look in the window for some reason. G-R-O-S-S.

Quiz In My Pants was great fun - Sam Pacelli of Noise Next Door fame is our first guest so far to actually WEAR the pants properly. Hell. They are currently in for decontamination from Improv tomfoolery and we'll have to see if today's guests survive!

After all that merriment I had dinner. Uber boring, you don't need to know the details. But it was pasta and it was tasty.

Then I went to The Invisible Dot Club gig By The Sea. It was weird and cool and ever so slightly funky. We all had to get coaches and they took us to Portobello beach and then we walked to the townhall and watched an amazing line up. I guess far and away the best bit was Daniel Kitson Mcing...utterly phenomenal talent and too incredible for words. The whole gig had a really cool vibe and you felt a little bit accepted into a cool gang just for being there. Except for the morons at the back who didn't understand Stewart Lee. The great SL responded to this by refusing to say anything for several minutes...nothing at all. I've never felt such tension as when he went quiet and the whole room just wondered whether he would do as he threatened and not speak for the rest of his set. Thankfully for those of us that understand the concept of jokes that aren't necessarily knock knock jokes, he carried on and stormed the gig.

After that I raced back to C venues to do improvaganza and sadly went out in the first round AGAIN. I have never made it past the first round. Potentially I should just give up but it's too much mighty fun to consider that! Watching The Showstoppers girls kick absolute arse on the singing rounds was one of the best improv moments I've ever watched and rounded off an exhausting but thoroughly satisfying day.

Thank you Edinburgh fringe for everything except the kidnap. Utter horrors they were and they made me watch The Holiday over and over again until I promised to attempt to believe in love. But I don't think I ever shall. I told them to bugger off and that my favourite quote is "Love is the triumph of imagination over intelligence" which is one of the most appropriate phrases I've come across in my 23 years. I got a kick in the solar plexus for that and they told me to stop being such a girl and get on with having romance back in my life. I performed a flying scissor kick and said that even if I was going to consider it, Jack Black would not be the one to teach me anything. For my troubles I was made to eat sand for hours.

Today my day is busy busy again. But good busy busy. Very good. Lots to achieve and accomplish and a police line up later to identify my captors. It should be easy. They were all velociraptors.

Blog Ness Monster

Some evil people got me very drunk last night and made me stay at a party until about 5am. This morning they've mopped up all the moisture in my brain so that it aches a bit and my eyes feel slightly too gritty to move them very frequently.

I got into a terribly silly argument last night with one of my flatmates over the connection between the funnybones skeleton books and the song 'Dry bones'. The argument started with us simply trying to remember the lines to the skeleton books -

In a dark dark house down a dark dark street...

An excellent book designed to teach children how to read the word dark and not a lot else. Although it was interesting to read - I think mainly because it was so dark. Definitely the renegade of the children's bookshelf. If there was going to be a children's book on drugs it would be the skeleton book and all the other books would be shying away and trying to keep their spines clean.

But then my flatmate started singing the dry bones song and insisting that it was all the same thing.

Ridiculous says I! The Dry bones song is a completely separate entity and is not in the books. How could the song possibly portray the well known tune in a book. Ridiculous.

But the argument spread like wild fire. soon the entire party was taking sides, most of them my side because I was right. But it was like West-Side story with skeletons. Of course there were a few casualties of war who had no idea what we were talking about who just sat bemused in the middle. They had a sort of blank stare in their eyes and just started muttering lines about skeletons that they couldn't possibly have understood. It was all very harrowing if I'm honest.

Then I ended up under a bed. There was a curious bed at this party of evil argumentative people. The curious bed was in the corner of the dining room and it's anyone's guess as to why it was there but it was super comfortable on the top of it. Looking back I realise this does not explain my presence 'neath the bed but at the time it seemed like the most logical of places to want to put myself.

I have a habit of getting into small places when drunk. It's sort of turned into a game over the years for people to see what the smallest place they can put me is. We've done tumble dryers, cupboards, under beds, even under the stage in the Cow Cafe at the Underbelly the other night. In fairness, this was because we'd lost the ping pong ball we were using to play 'On The Wonk Table Ping Pong'. OTWTPP is an incredible variation on standard ping pong which involves moving the tables after each failed attempt at a rally to make it harder. This does seem silly on the surface of it because if you're failing then why make it harder? But it totally made sense that night because we were so excited about havign invented a whole new game.

I'm 99% certain it will one day end up in the Olympics and anyone will be able to play it merrily. they actually won't be very merry - they'll have faces screwed up in concentration because they're so serious about trying to win. And I'll have loads of money and statues of me for being one of the inventors and the only one small enough to get under the stage and rescue the ball so that the invention could continue.

Today I'm not totally convinced I can bring myself to drink at all. Not even water. In fact, if it rains I might just die. I also don't want to put myself in any small places today. Unless someone offers me the chance to ride in a baby's pram - because that would be pretty cool. But other than that I am anticipating a relatively peaceful day of nothingnes...it is unlikely to happen.