Durham/Bedford

I've had a lovely few days on the road. My car is still making weird rattling noises (including a few new ones) but when it really gets warmed up, it's fine, and the 500-mile round trip to Durham didn't feel like an issue at all...if anything, it drove really nicely. 

Durham's a lovely place, but I didn't see much of it as I'm rubbish at being a solo tourist. Indeed, in the many spare hours I had between shows, I found a layby, sat in the back (tinted windows), and did some admin work (teaching invoices, tour booking) on my laptop, using my phone's 5G hotspot. The whole car office thing was rather cool once I'd removed the smelly dog blanket and bought a meal deal from Sainsbury's. 

The venue for Durham was a 'proper' theatre, 70-capacity. The manager seemed concerned that I brought my own PA speaker with me rather than using theirs, and that I didn't bother with any fancy stage lighting ("just switch them on mate, I'll tell the story") but their fears of my, shall we say, lack of production value, seemed to clear after the first show when I think it looked like I knew what I was doing. I mean, I do, obviously, I've been doing this stuff for over 20 years, but I just like to crack on with the story rather than surround myself with fancy graphics. I just scraped double figures for the first one and it was fine, the four in the front row in particular seemed to really enjoy it. Possibly flat in places, but it's a dark serious show (this is my 'No Dreams...' theatre play) and it was probably the tightest I've performed this one yet.

After a lovely stay at some wonderful converted stables, and a hearty breakfast the morning after, I was back for my second performance. Much bigger, up for it crowd this time, including people who saw me perform in Edinburgh way back in 2022, and some people who saw the film up north earlier this year. It honestly feels like I'm building a fanbase, a small, dedicated little pocket of supporters who turn up to watch me again and again, there was a few of them in Brighton, too. Performance probably wasn't as strong as yesterday's, lacked a bit of silence, a bit of calm, I think I played this one more for laughs, but the audience seemed happy. 5 hour drive home, home by 10pm, car wobbling but fine. 

The next day (yesterday) I spent a good few hours looking at my 'Band Playing...' show and fixing all the audio bits that I feel have dragged previously, just making it tighter, changing the intro, that sort of thing, ahead of the show that evening. Unusually awkward drive to Bedford, which felt more stressful than Durham despite being 4 hours closer; just so many roadworks and a really complex ticket machine at the nearby carpark. 

The venue was, like Durham, a 'proper' theatre, this time a wonderful 40-capacity studio space. I arrived sweaty and flustered from the scraping sounds my car had made, but felt welcome from the off by their lovely team. Communication in the run up to this show had been minimal, so I wasn't sure if I'd sold any tickets, but it turns out I was 3 tickets off selling out. 

I hadn't done this show since the Cambridge Fringe performance in May, and, despite the rehearsal in the morning, I went into it feeling a touch anxious. THAT audience, though. Wow. They just WANTED to like me, from the off. I spoke very fast, I derailed my own structure several times, having to backtrack to get back to the plot. I loved playing with that audience. I think this could be me at my best; sweaty, wide-eyed, manic big hands, dicking about with people who get it, before eventually stumbling back in to the punchline at the end. I know this doesn't always work; it really, really didn't work during the first performance in Brighton (which spiralled into a row with an audience member because I told her "hip-hop and rap are the same thing"). But when it does work, like it did yesterday in Bedford, where they even demanded an encore which you really don't normally get when performing a play, I'm on top of the world and I wonder why I'm not doing this full-time, like I tried to about 10 years ago before realising I couldn't make a proper living out of it. I have a good balance in life, and I need to remember that, but I've also realised that I'm also most comfortable when I'm creating chaos.