Tents, Booze and Fear

TENT-TATIVE

I’ve just bought a tent. I’ve never bought a tent before. I’ve borrowed tents, often to return them in a state of muddied ruin, with tent pegs bent all out of shape and the whole package shoved back into its tiny bag with seemingly high disregard so that it looks to be experiencing a discomfort not dissimilar to a python that’s swallowed a cow whole. I once hired a tent off the excellent Tangerine Fields people, who put it all up for me, replete with air beds and other such comforts to make it seem like camping in luxury. None of the effort, all of the perks. Except that they had pitched all the tents so close to each other that I could hear all my neighbours breathing let alone any of the other noises they were making and spent three comfy but sleepless nights hating my own ears. So finally, I’ve bought a tent. I’ve never had to do that before and so I feel amateurish in my knowledge of what to get. I knew what I didn’t want from a tent. I didn’t want it to absorb all the rain and transform into a paddling pool should the weather turn. I didn’t want it to be see through. I didn’t want it not to stand-up ok. I didn’t want it full of bees. So I went online, and I found a waterproof, blue, pop-up tent that seemed to have no bees in it. Its being delivered tomorrow and I will spend some time popping it up to work out how on earth to pop it back down again with going through the rigmarole of an ACME cartoon device whereby it continually snaps back in my face until Road Runner laughs at me. Camp Bestival next week will either be like a buddy film with me and my new tent having some good times, or all the bands will be drowned out by the sound of a small man screaming words no one should ever hear, and louds ‘pops’ as my tent refuses to co-operate.

FRIDAY 13TH

Its Friday the 13th in a few weeks and whilst that doesn’t normally cause me to believe or disbelieve anything outside of my usual assumption that the world is out to get me, I met a man last night who’s made the concept of tomorrow more interesting. After a rather superb Fat Wednesday last night with excellent previews from Carl Donnelly (brilliant and very funny show. Go see) and Jon Richardson (also brilliant and very funny, yet at the same time, like watching a man breakdown live on stage. Its a funny breakdown though. Go see), with a nice guest appearance from Alan Carr, I headed over the the excellent Comedy Gold night on Essex Road to see Shappi Khorsandi and Alex Zane. It was there I briefly met a friend of Shappi’s called Bruce Hood. Bruce is a professor in neuroscience and a throughly nice bloke. I am by no means an expert on any of these sorts of things, but managed to hold a conversation about views on Richard Dawkins and superstitions. Anyway, today Bruce is doing lots of radio interviews because Alton Towers have announced that they are closing their ride ’13’ on Friday 13th due to paranoia. Bruce is going on the radio to say what a pile of balls that is. I fully agree. It is a pile of balls, and part of me is sure Alton Towers is doing it mostly for publicity and little else. I have no idea how well Alton Towers does generally, as I’m too small to go on most of the rides (probably) so haven’t been in years. Either way, surely the sort of people that like being scared feckless on rollercoasters would only get more of a buzz out of doing it on a day that’s meant to be unlucky? If anything, they should embrace this and cellotape black cats to the carriages and put ladders up all over the place whilst someone kicks in some mirrors.

Bruce’s blog is here and its mighty interesting:

http://brucemhood.wordpress.com/

Bloody love people.

THIS MORNING

I saw a tiny bit of This Morning this morning, and I haven’t seen it in ages so was looking forward to some Schofe action and witty banter but sadly it was Eamon Holmes and that other woman who looks sad even when she’s happy. I put this down to being married to Eamon Holmes. It would make me have that face too. One of the things they were harping on about this morning was that the new government are getting rid of 24 hour drinking laws as Britain has become a nightmare binge booze town, or some crap. It is crap too as the last job I had before going full time in comedy was as part of the Alcohol Licensing team in Camden. Now things may have changed, but when I was there, only one premises, out of hundreds and hundreds, was granted 24 hour drinking and that has since closed down. Everywhere else was reduced in its booze hours or kept the same, with very few places being allowed to open later. Instead, what did happen, was everywhere that already had a licence, had to pay a hefty fee to get a new licence, even though very little had changed. What will happen now is that that the Tories (and let’s face it, its them, not the Lib Dems as they aren’t allowed to have a say in anything) will renew all the procedures, it will appear as though they’ve saved Britain from drowning in alcohol as the general public can’t be arsed to note that people will get drunk however long pubs are open for and more so now they are all unemployed, and instead pubs and bars that are struggling anyway will have to pay another hefty fee. Well done Liberal Cons for stealing money off another section of society.

Oh and as a last note, I’ve had some comments on my blogs which is always nice. However the best one recently has been from Lea in response to my blog about flying ants the other day. Have a read. Bloody good work Lea. I can never claim ignorance about such things again. (I totally will though):

http://tiernandouieb.blogspot.com/2010/07/flight-attend-ants.html#comments