It was a day of all sorts yesterday. By that I don’t mean I was constantly indulging in a bag of licorice based sweets, as that would have proved severely dangerous for my blood sugars and also sick inducing after at least two bags. I reckon I could nail two bags easy if someone forced me to. Not that they would and I do hope that situation never occurs. Although if it did, like I said, I’d be fine, so don’t worry or get unduly upset. It was fairly strange going back to my old University. It was nostalgic and there was a lovely feeling when walking around and remembering places, but at the same time, I really felt like just a visitor. Certain things were clear indicators of this. The first was being so much older than everyone else there, bar the lecturers, and whilst it may not have appeared obvious immediately, a quick scan of the amount of skinny jeans and plaid shirts applied to people who looked as though they were still excited by life, showed me up. The second sign was that lots of things had changed. There were some new buildings and there is a whole new Drama and Arts Centre currently being that looks a bit like if The Cube was for performance practice. Again, to clarify, I mean the Cube from the film the Cube. Its not an affectionate term for Ice Cube. Although had they built a building in the shape of Ice Cube, I’d have been hella impressed. There were lots of other little changes but the one that made me realise it was definitely no longer my Uni, was that they had rebuilt Mungo’s Bar in Eliot College. This will be of little significance to most people, but for a Kent Drama student it was our bar. That was were all spare time was spent: pretending to study and drinking, socialising and drinking, drinking and drinking. I have so many fond memories of the place ranging from doing my first ever stand-up gig there, to the day me and Mat spent seven solid hours there to the point where the bar staff let us be in charge of the TV remote incase there was anything we wanted to watch. Then there was watching a friend of ours in severe poverty, go round and eat all the leftovers off people’s plates like a complete tramp, the downing pint ‘boat race’ as part of the kickboxing team’s social night, the day we declared our friend a University of Kent letcherer, and hundreds of other events that filled a big part of my life 1999-2003. It was a garish green and orange, clearly designed by someone with colourblindness, with small booths to sit and waste away in. Since then, the University have taken all those memories and demolished them with a big swinging ball of violence, rebuilding Mungo’s as some sort of trendy bar with flat screen TV’s and proper coffee. How will they ever have fun with a bar that’s actually nice? What are they trying to do to these students?
After seeing that I felt firmly like I was there on a visiting basis and so after a very nice lunch with my old lecturer Ollie Double, I went to talk to the students. They had loads of questions and I hope I answered them in a helpful and informative way but there’s a chance I also just rambled on incoherently for ages. I also kept consciously not wanting to a) brag about things by accident, b) reiterate just how crap it can be money and social life wise and c) keep a straight face and tell them all to only do gags about airport security, the difference between men and women and wanking. I was very tempted to do the latter as they were all fairly good and full of loads of ideas, and anything I can do to stop them being competition the better. I did accidentally tell them about getting nearly attacked on Saturday and I think that put some fear into all of them. Ollie did make me point out that that really isn’t a regular occurrence just incase that’s what they thought. Then I watched them do some stand-up and helped Ollie give notes which made me feel a bit awkward as I didn’t really know them and felt mean if I gave criticism. So instead I gave a few notes and made sure I remembered any really good ideas they had in order to steal them and ruin their possibilities of a career. I think I’m a great example to everyone.
After bestowing my wisdom/talking bollocks to others for the afternoon the evening was spent doing a corporate for people who do things I could never understand. Most corporate gigs are the equivalent of pulling your own eyes out with a blunt hook, so to make it better I often try to look up these sort of things so I can write specific jokes about them, but their level of computer wizardry was so beyond anything my brain can comprehend that I just didn’t bother. Luckily they were a very nice bunch of geeks and they went with non-geeky material even if they couldn’t understand bits about friends or things that don’t happen on a desktop. I got some free grub, a torch on a keyring and somebody who might want to patent my ‘zips for pitta bread’ idea. When I say ‘might’ I mean probably not but they humored me for at least 3 minutes about it, so I’m expecting big things.
There was a lot more to say about yesterday, including unexpected drinking with my friend who’s randomly going to live in Israel and my thoughts on accidentally eating a whole chilli at 1am. However all these must be put on hold as there is a Matt Reed in my house and he, as usual, is stopping all creativity. Its like the man is a communist general in East Germany circa 1980. Except without all the wire tapping and killing of those who oppose the system. Well he might do. He hasn’t been in my flat for that long, I’ll have to wait and see.
