Count up to Edinburgh #1 Doing my own head in

Fuck sake. As much as I often talk about how much I enjoy the solitude of writing and all the other stuff that goes with it, in any given week (often daily in fact) there is without fail several moments where I want to rip off my own head and drop kick it over the garden fence and off into the distance, hoping that it lands in a Biffa Bin somewhere and some kind of salvage hunter finds it and turns it into something actually useful, like a car battery.

So I'm going up to Edinburgh in August for the Fringe festival with this new show called The C/D Borderline. Let's have it right, I'm glad I'm going, I want to go and this time I'm doing it off my own back, partly to see if I can actually do it, as in get the thing up there and pull it off, what with all the stuff that's involved with putting on and promoting a show. It's a lot, it really is, especially for someone like me who really does lack those essential organisational, admin and marketing skills. I'm not worried about getting the punters in (well not at this stage), I have zero expectation on that front, I just want to go up there and put on a good show, with good material and if that's to a handful of people everyday I'm cool with that.

The show itself draws on a lot of my experiences from school, how difficult I found it and how I've struggled as an adult more or less ever since. Those same traits that saw me bunking off, dicking about in class, struggling to understand what the fuck was going on when I actually was trying, mentally withdrawing from whole entire lessons, sitting down at home to do homework but just staring at it on the table to numb to even lift a pen, are all coming to the fore with a vengance in the run up to this. It's like diamond hunters siffing through the mud, except they're not looking for them precsious shiney things, instead it's something shit like, I dunno, used scratch cards or something. I'm probably juggling to many balls at once, as I have a few other projects on the go plus a regular job Mon-Fri. It's a bit nuts but it's always been like this with me and most people I know are in the same boat, a lot of these have children too and that's a whole another level so what am I getting so wound up about?!

I can look at it and see how ridiculous it all is and often I can laugh about it, as you'll hopefully hear in the show, but it's just when I'm at home,on my todd, with a ton of things to do, I'm sat at my desk and suddenly I freeze. My normally hyper active mind just goes blank like someones pulled the ariel out of the telly and before I know it, I've loaded up yet another grime video or a Fire In The Booth freestyle that I've probably seen a hundred times, or I start working on something totally new which has nothing to do with what I'm supposed to be doing. But even when I am concentrating, I just seem to fuck up really important things. Twice in the last month I've had to reply to emails regarding the show, one of which if I hadn't there would be no show, so I spent ages on them; making sure there was no mistakes, re-read them a hundred times, sent them and then bosh!: Surprise-faackin'-surprise I've missed off a vital piece of information on both emails that almost fucked up the whole operation! And I'm left, as ever, embarrassed, humiliated and really fuckin' annoyed with myself. But what's worse, is that someone else at the other end is affected and could quite understandably now think I'm an idiot, well meaning, but an idiot none the less. This has happened before...

No idea what the neighbours must think, what the with the random: FUCKKKK OFFFFFFFs most days as my computer freezes or my phone starts wigging out and I slam my fist down on the desk remembering that I've forgotten to do something, very important, again. The amount of times in the last month I've visualised myself going into Wolverine Berseker mode and smashing up everything around me, before ripping my clothes off and running into the woods to a live a feral life away from humanity, living off Squirrels and Parakeets (as long as I've got Mayonnaise, I'm fine.) Thankfully, I've not smashed anything up, it rarely gets to that stage but I've been close of late. In my school days I used to punch-up a lot of walls and I've put my fist through a few toilet doors (probably in the year 11 toilets in C block, few times I think, apologies) and I've probably damaged my right fist from doing that, which is very stupid considering I use that hand to write, type and grip microphones.

Anyway, this started off as a few lines just to vent a bit, but then I got the idea to make this into an Edinburgh blog, documenting the journey and that, so every cloud has a silver lining I guess. Even if no one reads it it's been kinda fun doing it and certainly better than putting my fist through a door. I also wanted to write about the other side of things a bit. As in the writing / performing stuff. Most of my online activity is either promoting gigs or talking about gigs I've just done and how great they were. To be honest, as cheesy or insincere as it all may seem, that is genuinly how I feel after most gigs, I like doing it. It's been a few years now (my entire adult life actually, plus a bit more, I'm 32) and I still very much enjoy it. But with the smooth of course comes the ruff, and sometimes it's a sheet of discarded sandpaper on the toilet floor when you've just clocked that there's no bog roll and the post man is ringing your doorbell with a recorded delivery of that car battery you so desperately need to get your muggy show to Edinburgh...

Peas and taters

Some things I learnt from secondary school

SOME THINGS I LEANT FROM SECONDARY SCHOOL

1:          Most of the stuff in that Maths set, you will never use.

2:           There are some things that I have to learn myself if I want to understand them, like finding out what left wing and right wing means, and that money you get given from credit cards and loans is not yours, you have to pay it back, and if you don’t you get those red letters and those bastards phone you, a lot, and they keep phoning you until you pay (and telling them to fuck off does you no favours).

3:        Unless you get a trade, join the army, get really really lucky or do A-Levels and get a degree, there are not a lot of options for you, and you may well end up in one of those jobs where your sat in a call centre and you have to phone people who havant paid back their credit card or loan, a lot, and you have to keep phoning them until they pay (even if they tell you to fuck off, which they will)

4:         On older car models, if you prize off the rubber from the passenger window, with the use of a twisted coat hanger, you can open the door (without a key)

5:          On those cheap fluorescent cigarette lighters, you can wiggle the flame adjuster thing till it breaks, causing the lighter to become a mini flame thrower everytime you use it

6:         On those cheap florescent cigarette lighters, if you throw them really hard against the wall, they explode.

7:          On those cheap florescent cigarette lighters, if you throw them really hard against the wall, and they explode, you might want to stand back. Little bits break off and if they hit you it fucking hurts.

9:          Throughout life, I’ll have to get up, probably 5 days a week, to go somewhere I probably don’t want to go and do something I probably don’t want to do

10:        If you hold biro’s under the Bunsen burner flame you can mould them into some really interesting shapes but those fumes give you a horrendous headache and are probably poisonous. 

11:        If people are giving you shit, and involving adults hasant resolved the situation, approach them when they are all together in a group, find the biggest and hardest one and lamp the cunt. Observe how all the minions will peel away like paint doused in thinner. Violence is rarely the answer but standing up for you’re self is something you should learn young. It’s a lot harder to do later in life when your self-confidence regularly takes a pathetic round 1 exit from the Jonhston’s Paint Trophy. 

12:        The way to spot a fake Ralph shirt is to look for the double stitching in the collar and if the ratio* between the horse and the jokey is just plain ridiculous.

13:        Having the best trainers is not the be all and end all (Though it is pretty sick, if only for a while).

14:        That the best thing I could and should and wished I had learned at school, was learning how to learn. Regardless of what I’m studying, whether it’s Trigonometry or simply trying to assemble IKEA flat pack furniture, the skill of applying you’re self to something never ever changes, and learning that skill later in life is really fucking hard and pretty embarrassing, when you realise most other people have been doing it for years and you were too busy dicking about or day dreaming.

15:        Despite all of the above, even if you didn’t do very well at school, it doesn’t mean you’ve failed. Life can take some interesting twists and new roads present themselves all the time if you look hard enough (Just don’t take those new roads as an excuse to park the car up and get cained with your mates, it’s a good laugh but it really really slows you down and you’ll end up doing something a bit crap with your life like writing poems).

16:        Writing poems and stories isn’t necessarily for bellends or people that get high marks and have good spelling.

*ratio?! Shit, I did learn something afterall.