Bald and Toothless Future

Warming Ups

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Am I on the mend? Or is it just that I haven't been talking in a monologue for 100 minutes for the last two nights? I risked an early morning game of tennis and managed to play for an hour, though was fading a bit by the last ten minutes and then stiff for the rest of the day. Still thrashed my younger opponent by two sets to love, but he was 3-0 up in the third when our time was up, so my time of dominance may be over soon.

Ostensibly a day off, but of course I managed to fill it with stuff - doing a quick supermarket shop and then heading to the hygienist to get my teeth cleaned. And even though hygienists want you to forget to brush your teeth, she gave me a pretty hard time about not having brushed my teeth enough. The thing is I always do great for the week after I've seen her and then my enthusiasm wanes. If she saw me again next week she'd think I was awesome.

Anyway she attacked my teeth with the nerve-jangling buzzing instrument and then pulled at them with a big metal pick and then polished them, occasionally bringing out the nerve-jangler again, just when I thought the torture was over. Then she told me how to use a toothbrush. Like I don't know that after 57 years. She might have had a point. But why was she telling me? This isn't in her interest. She must be glad that I am so bad at this. But boy did I clean my teeth well tonight. I expect I will keep it up this time.

I had to pop to the post office to post off my ebay items (thanks so much to all the buyers, you're really helping keep the podcasts going) and then come home for lunch and to prepare for a book club record (and then do the book club record) And then, from 3pm, my time was my own, (which at the moment means half-watching New Tricks from the start, whilst playing online poker, every time not being able to believe that Dennis Waterman is dead. Doesn't seem possible) until the kids got back from swimming and I had to get them into bed. I had to tell Ernie I was away for the next four nights and he was not happy about it. Neither am I, to be fair. It's been an hilarious couple of days at home, which makes going away again all the more painful. Hopefully June and July are going to be a bit less busy and I am really looking forward to August when we're going to all be up at the Fringe and then off on holiday together. Let's see if they're so sad to see me go away after that!

8197/21116

The replacement table tennis table arrived just as I was about to head off to Harrogate. I got them to open the box so I could check it. It seemed fine. But it's a least a two person job to put it together, so the kids will have to await my return.

Still far from fully recovered, though tonight's show was a little less encumbered by lurgy. I'd had time for another weird, mildly trippy afternoon nap where as usual I was trapped between being fully awake and fully asleep. Nice to return to Harrogate Theatre though, which has the coldest backstage toilet in the UK and maybe the Universe (based on my extensive research). Even though it had been a warm spring day, it was Arctic cold in there tonight. I think a thousand or so comedians might have died in there and it is haunted by their frigid spirits.

About a year ago Phoebe looked down at me from the stairs and gleefully told me I was going bald. My hair is all that is left to me, with the rest of my body basically having given up the fight, and though it has been drained of pigment it has stayed resolutely thick. My grandad Don had head of copious white hair right to the end and I assumed that I'd inherited that from him. But I think Phoebe might be right. Things do seem to be thinning a little up there. There's so much hair that it's pretty easy to Bobby Charlton things up for a good while yet, but I am definitely seeing more skull skin than used to be visible.

Let me have something Jesus. You've taken my ball, my penis is cold and useless, my beer belly is back even though I don't drink real beer any more, let me keep my fucking hair. It allows me to pretend to myself that I am pushing forty instead of pushing sixty. Don't make me look exactly my age.

I don't know what I'd look like if I was bald - though I suppose my turn as Peter Dibdin gives me a little idea - but I don't think it will be good. My head is very big, so I assume I'd look like anthropomorphised light bulb.

I did have a skin head for a play at University - I was a tiny part in a production of the Threepenny Opera, but managed to at least partly steal the show with my dim-witted number two length haired character. But a skinhead that will grow back is not the same. The skinhead drew attention to me (just like I wanted). Being bald will make me like all the other old nonentities and thus invisible. You'd think a talking light bulb with a face would attract people's attention like a moth to a talking light bulb with a face, but it wouldn't. People don't want to see that kind of thing.

For now there's still enough hair there for me to pretend I'm OK and hopefully I will die before the baldness encroaches too much. I want my skellington to have long hair on it so it scares any kids who dig me up looking for the treasure I am going to be buried with. Also I need to pretend I am not as old as I am. Please let me pretend.

RHLSTP with one of my favourite ever guests John Kearns (for the first time allowed into the actual Leicester Square Theatre) is now up here.