Just Do More, Richards

Rehearsals, rehearsals, rehearsals, BUT THE LINES JUST AREN'T GOING IN AND THE SHOW OPENS IN JUST OVER TWO WEEKS. Apart from that, it's honestly looking lovely, though. This is for the show I'm performing with Esther in Brighton, and probably Camden as well by the looks of things. A bit like when I was writing it, there's so much more pressure for the performance of it when there's someone else involved. I'm really happy with my solo stuff, but I'm also not exactly word-for-word with those, I have the freedom to change it on the spot. But when there's somebody else onstage with you, they're relying on you and you're relying on them. It's a whole new experience for me, it's a lot harder than I thought. We meet most evenings after work to run the script, and we both work long hours, but we're into this and she's one of my best friends so it never feels like pressure until we realise we're just not as close to nailing this as we ...

Easter Holidays continue, and now that I've 'relaxed' in Norfolk (lovely, but uncomfortable bed, one bathroom between four of us, spent most of my days watching our doorbell camera on my phone), the second week had a bit more action. Great gig with the blues band, packed with guest musicians (slow start, but sometimes all it takes is one drunk woman in Chesterton to start dancing and the whole room wakes up), and lots of rehearsals.  I watched my play, The Second, in rehearsals, with Alex, Nicole and Paul M all being brilliantly directed by Cara and they're clearly having a lot of fun with this. It's basically a sketch show, a very silly one, but with a load of callbacks that justifies me calling it a play and it all ties in really well. It's a show I've had on various post-it notes for years and I'm so glad it's coming to life. I also continued rehearsing with Esther for our show and it's going up a notch or two, after lots of early, "it...

Upon arriving in Norfolk on Monday evening, with wife, parents-in-law and dog, we settled into a lovely little cottage for the first of four nights and said wife, Aggie, simply said, "right, relax." I looked around the room and everyone else seemed to know what to do. Aggie's mum started cooking, Aggie's dad chilled on the sofa, Aggie checked out the garden, Fred dog had a nap. I...well, I got out my laptop and replied to a few tour emails, looked into a few more festivals to plug some summer gaps, that sort of thing. Now, there's two ways of looking at this: 1) I don't know to how to relax or 2) this is how I relax.  Either way, coupled with delicious food and nice wine, I felt pretty chilled. But I don't think it's ever in me to ever switch off, and I'm very grateful that I've married into a family that accept me for what I am...a workaholic, but my work is rather fun! On Tuesday we went to the seaside, which was beautiful but freezing, on W...

Two very different but lovely gigs this weekend with Queen Bee. A bit like Fred's House, QB are a band I didn't mean to join as such as I'm rather busy as it is, but I stepped in to play one show a couple years back and kinda, well, just stayed.  See, I'm so grateful for the career I've had as a drummer; it's been incredibly varied, from rough gigs on what is known in the industry as the 'toilet circuit'. - the gigs you start with, where you learn your craft, all the way up to playing a gala night live on Chinese TV whilst being both jet-lagged AND drunk, huge shows to thousands of people with bands, choirs, the odd musical, lots of national radio airplay...it's been alright, but alongside this, I have my 'bread and butter' gigs, which I enjoy just as much. Whilst FH are on a break, and whilst I'm not needed for the choir gigs as they're doing non-band things, most of the gigs in my diary at the moment are those and I'm having a l...

Let's be honest, it's been an expensive year. Unexpected expenses: choosing to fly with Wizz Air which cost us over £700 to get home with a competent airline instead from France, paying over £500 to get my car fixed, paying £5,000 to buy a new car literally two weeks later. Plus, lesson cancellations when I was briefly ill, twice, and when I had to cancel two days work to be a movie star for a bit. And, of course, shows are expensive - it's only costing me £200 per show to bring a production to Brighton (£120 programme entry, £80 venue hire) but, you know, I'm bringing three shows to the festival, so £600. One is solo and I know it well, one (the one with Esther) started rehearsals proper last night, the other (with Alex, Nicole and Paul M) starts rehearsals next week.  I'm so lucky that, when things go wrong, I can just pick up more work. I have an epic student waiting list and what seems to be a thoroughly decent reputation. My finances may have taken a bit of a b...