Glasgow Blogsplosion

I feel I may have shot my own leg off by promising a blogsplosion in today’s blog. I’m sure there’s a better more appropriate term for hindering yourself than ‘shot my own leg off’, including just saying that I’ve hindered myself, but as it is ‘shot my own leg off’ is going to be used. The reason I say this is because two days ago when I promised said ‘splosion of bloggery, I hadn’t really thought through what one of those is. For this blog to actually explode you wouldn’t be able to read it, if you tried you’d probably have to wear special safety googles so you don’t go blind, and the terrorism police would see it as a sign to shut down all the blogs ever incase we used words that terrorists use eventually only allowing the illiterate and muted to roam around freely. So I’m sure you don’t really want that to happen and I can say fer sher that I don’t want that to happen either. So to make this blog something more than you expected, why not read it whilst sitting upside down? The rush of blood to your head might make you feel slightly like you are exploding. Or you could drink a lot of whisky/booze of your choice, then eat some gunpowder and hopefully while reading this you might spontaneously combust? In fact definitely try the latter. Not enough people spontaneously combust anymore and its something I certainly would like to see more of. I often get tired of hearing these MPs going on and on about anti-social behaviour and this bloomin’ Nanny State, well I say, you should be able to just explode if you want to and leave your feet behind. In many aspects it makes digging graves a lot easier, is better for the planet than cremation and leaves loads of shoes over that can be given to charity. I’ve gone on a bit too much about this now, but I’ve started to get passionate. Maybe I’ll start a facebook group.

There is, I shall be Frank (you can be Susan) a lot to say in this blog so I won’t say it all. I have only just got home and so to limit my wafflings I have put things in the oven and want to finish before they are done. The things in question are food items, don’t worry. I haven’t just filled it up with potted plants, cellotape and bits of string (this is generally what I imagine when people say ‘things’). But it has been a really grand weekend of much funnery, and despite having a general lack of sleep I seem to have powered through it ok, only stopping to have a hangover midway on my flight home while a large man’s elbow repeatedly poked me in the ribs due to our limited seat space. There is a possibility this rib poking caused the hangover, and that maybe that man should have been shouted at for my churning stomach and general feeling of wrong, but some credit is possibly also due to the amounts of booze that were enjoyed last night. However that booze was enjoyed and after four shows and travelling and a man poking you in the ribs with his elbow isn’t quite the same sort of reward. No one has ever gone to collect their MBE only for the Queen to get the Royal Chubster to come along and slightly dig you in the small of the back with his knees, it simply isnt done.

All hangover pain was much worth it though as all four shows were great fun yesterday. Notable moments included a small boy in the front row of the Kids Comedy show at the Stand telling me he ‘has a friend who named his pet goldfish Hitler’, and an English student at the much fun Stockholm Syndrome gig who claimed she couldn’t say words beginning with ‘i’. My solo show got a very low attendance of only 10 people, four of whom I knew, but as it was a show ‘in progress’ with ‘progress’ being said somewhat sarcastically, it was actually perfect. I gave the whole thing, huge unfunny gaps and lack of links included, a nice run through with some gags and banter either side and I felt really pleased I’d said it all. Notes have been made by Brett and Paul Byrne and further work shall happen. The other six people I didn’t know were all very lovely too and one couple in particular turned up at the Stockholm Syndrome gig too so I did 20 minutes of stuff they hadn’t heard, which they were very nice about. Shows were followed with will power taking a side step to stop blocking the route to the bar and several hours, a great Fullmooners, and nearly setting fire to Andrew Maxwell’s hotel room/air hanger later, and I finally made it to bed 22 hours after my day had started.

All in all I realised I really love the Glasgow Festival. For the last two years I’ve turned up, had a lot of gigs and then got quite horribly drunk. It seems the former can only happen with the latter attached like the follow through on a good bowl. I don’t really understand cricket, or bowling, or a bit of a man’s hat or whatever it is that people mean when they say that sort of thing, but it seems an adequate comparison. Whatever it means, I am very happy about this and will most definitely be returning for another year. Well done Glasgooians, you’re a nice bunch of peoples.

There’s loads more to add, but let’s face it, we’ve all had enough blog for today. If you’ve spontaneously combusted you won’t have made it all the way through anyway. Hope you didn’t make too much of a mess and hopefully you were clever enough to stand somewhere that means you’ve left your foot in the door.

PPS – Completely unrelated – Gil Scot-Heron’s latest album is hellaawesomefantasticbrilloaceness.