My Own Worst Enemy

This will be a bitty blog. Mostly because my brain is in bits today. Once again (and as is becoming an oft too regular occurrence on these typings) I am suffering thanks to booze. Its not the worst thing to be suffering from. I mean I could have a serious illness, or famine or something like that, but suffering from booze has its own whole extra level of misery whereby you know that all bits of hangover are entirely self inflicted. To know that I did this to myself makes me very untrustworthy of me. I mean, what else am I capable of? Surely its only a matter of time before I convince myself to kick a land mine or tap dance on train tracks? Next time I drink I’m going to ensure that someone forces me to drink and therefore I will be able to blame them for all suffering and feel slightly better about things. Today’s hangover is particularly bad because a barman in the cool bar we were in – and it was a cool bar – decided to let us try odd drinks he was making in the drinks lab upstairs. Yes they had a drinks lab, yes they concocted things, yes the man had a non-descript European accent, yes if I wasn’t drunk I would have been fairly sure it was an evil trap. It clearly was an evil trap as I have had the taste of horseradish vodka in my mouth since I woke up, and its not great. I’ve been contemplating cooking a roast just to see if it would accompany such horrible flavours, but the hangover means I can’t be arsed. Instead I am condemned to vicious burny burny retchy mouth all day long. Stupid stupid evil barman. Stupid stupid idiot me.

This is all made triply worse (I was about to type Tripoli, but that is a completely different type of worse i.e. when bad things happen and you live in that part of Italy) by the fact I have a preview tonight of my Edinburgh show. A show I decided to rewrite yesterday but left most of the rewriting for today. Today, the day my brain died. I must admit, more and more I think about it, I worry that I have set myself up for punishment. Let me just put it out there, that perhaps none of you should trust me ever either. It appears I’m a proper bastard. Still last night was good. I haven’t been out on a Saturday night for ages and I was wary that I may not be able to delve into such things like a normal person who has a normal social life. I was petrified I’d see a stag-do and have to stand on a table, grab a mic, and put each and every one of them down in a nasty way until they attacked me or I was removed. Luckily no such things happened. Instead there was much merry banter about everything from hats and Ireland to music and a man who cut his own cock off using a razor blade. What? Oh yes, I should add that one member of our group was a forensic psychiatric doctor. There’s nothing like some really really grim stories to keep an evening occasionally uncomfortable as all the men reach for their own groins in a sympathy check as though to say ‘I would never do that to you’. While the one woman in the group just kept asking questions despite the fact that I had clearly had enough imagery to give me nightmares for most of the rest of my life. I have learnt, after that and the incident here – EYE HAND IT TO YOU – that I really shouldn’t ever speak to people in that profession ever ever again. But apart from that, it was all pretty good.

So I have eased myself into today with some Doctor Who (which started rubbish and got great – well done them), and Ulrich Schnauss (thanks to Rob Deering’s recommendation) which is the sort of music that makes you feel like lots of clouds are giving you a hug. Thing is, I have a hangover so I’d quite like the clouds to piss off and let me sleep. You can’t really win. Now, sadly, writing must begin. If you are in South London tonight, then pop along to Ed Comedy at the Hob (www.edcomedy.com) to watch a man flail about on stage with all the energy of something dead. Who knows what I will have done to ruin my own day by that point? As long as it doesn’t involve a razor and my private parts I’ll be happy.