Phone Answerer

I have a touch of sunburn on my shoulders. Do you know how long I spent in the sun yesterday? About 15 minutes. That’s all. Barely enough to burn an ant with a magnifying glass and yet my pathetic skin tone wilted under the solar force. I would have thought it would be pleased with all the Vitamin D after a whole year of deprivation. Had there been 4 more months of solid rain I would have placed bets on the certainty of my getting rickets by the end of Edinburgh. But now the weather’s all lovely, I cant cope with that instead. And my hayfever is really flaring up today. There must be loads of pollen around. So far I’ve sneezed 15 times in a row. Its getting so boring I’m considering trying to keep my eyes open for urban myth purposes just to keep it interesting. I think I should probably just walk around in a massive reflective jump suit and gas mask combination. Although I suppose then I might get mistaken for one of Lady Gaga’s backing dancers.

The show at the Camberley Theatre last night was just delightful. I would have thought that with the odds of Britain’s Got Amanda Holden Being a Dick Nightly and the sunshine, that we would have had an audience of one pasty faced TV hater. Luckily this was not the case. A lot more people have taste than I thought and far more of them are also scared of nice weather. I find this partly a shame as it seems inherent to dislike the weather whatever state its in. I asked the audience if they’d been in the sunshine and they grumbled. If I had complained about the rain, they would have grumbled. Snow, grumble grumble, light breeze, grumble grumble. I almost wonder if all the UK should be kept under a big Centre Parc glass dome with a controlled eco-system. I would still wear my reflective jump suit just to scare children.

There were some interesting characters in the crowd last night including a man who claimed his job was that of a ‘telephone answerer’. I poked fun at him by saying that everyone else in Camberley is incapable of answering phones without his sort of training, but in actual fact I love how he simplified his job title to what it is. More jobs should be called what they are. It would work in their favour sometimes. Nurses for example would be ‘Life savers’ with Doctors being ‘Life Saver Generals’. Then other jobs would suffer the brunt a bit more. Tax man could be ‘Sadness Distributor’. Everyone’s boss could be ‘Staff Shouter’ and clowns could be ‘Child Scarer’. Further suggestions below please. No one ever comments on this blog, except to complain about my inability to spell iPhone. A mistake that may not have been a mistake, and in fact perhaps instead of the Apple phone, I might’ve been discussing the lesser know book by Isaac Asimov ‘I, Phone’. I wasn’t. Well please do give jobs their proper titles and then if we collate enough I will propose a restructure of the UK working system. I, personally would like to be called a ‘Laugh Inducer’, or if that’s too much, ‘ A Day Waster’.

Another man, when I discussing people’s levels of road rage, pointed at his wife and said in all seriousness ‘She gets so angry, she gives people the finger, but with one finger.’ I feel that if were to explain the idiocy of that comment to you that you would fall into the same category of intellect as the man that said it. Its amazing how often people create their own downfall. There is a misconception that MCing or compereing is a difficult job. Its not. All you do is let people talk until they make themselves look like idiots. One of my favourites was about two years ago at The Hob in Forest Gate. The was a mustachioed man by himself in the second row and I asked him what he did for a living. He said he was a photographer. Not sure where the banter would go, I asked him what his favourite thing to take photos of was. Without hesitation, or it seems, any thought, he said ‘Children.’ Job done. Man makes himself look like pedophile, rest of gig made easy by his downfall.

Have a trek and a half tonight to Shrewsbury. I don’t really have any idea where Shrewsbury is or if it even exists. It sounds like something that should be tamed. Or a type of berry eaten mostly by rodents. I really hope I don’t turn up to find lots of rodents eating berries. It will be a tough show to compere. “Where are you from?’ ‘That burrow over there.’ ‘And what do you do?’ ‘Eat berries.’ Yawn.