Gentleman, Scholar, Acrobat
Warming Ups
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One of the (maybe few) good things about our old house was that it stayed pretty cool in the summer (also icy cold in the winter, which was not so good, but luckily I got loads of free heating!).
On the downside it tried to kill us with carbon monoxide, had rodents in the kitchen ceiling and was full of ghosts.
The new house heats up pretty nice in the sunshine and is hot at night time and last night and tonight I had very interrupted sleep as I sweated and turned (no tossing - it was too hot for that) and existed in a realm between dream and wakefulness where my brain was plagued with weird ideas and thoughts, but I knew I was in bed and felt like I wasn't sleeping.
If I was asleep then I woke up feeling like I had no sleep. If I was awake, that would explain that.
So my sweaty night time experience made me feel detached from reality and confused about what was going on, which led to a daytime experience where I was definitely awake (unless life is a computer simulation or someone else's dream) but still detached from reality, like I was constantly just to the right of the person called Richard Herring and had little to no control of his actions or knowledge of what he was thinking. Or at least that Richard Herring was blurred, like a fly squashed on a windscreen and no longer a complete entity.
Sometimes I get an extreme version of this on stage when I am doing a show I know very well and which runs pretty much automatically and I then leave my body (I feel I go to the left on these occasions) and am thinking about something else entirely, or worse the disembodied me starts trying to undermine the embodied one and heckles or questions what would happen if I forgot how to talk or even more worryingly breathe.
The performance one comes from a dilution of a focused space, whereas the exhausted one comes from a smushing of an already vague one. Like being stoned. Or more accurately like you were really stoned yesterday and need to deal with the real world today. Coincidentally I was really stoned yesterday (I wasn't mum - I very rarely ever got stoned and the last time was over 20 years ago and I stopped because it made me paranoid for three days - or maybe 20 odd years and this is all just part of the come down).
It's interesting that I feel these versions of me go right and left and I just googled which shoulder the devil sits on and it's the left one. Which checks out. The persona that goes left and attempts to make my brain stop working is horribly evil like the devil. That would mean that the angel on the other shoulder is a stoner (how come you get the actual devil on the left, but only one of God's minions on the right?) which possibly checks out. If Heaven is as thick with marijuana smoke as any city centre in the UK then that wuld certainly explain the way that God's creation has gone and why divine intervention is so vague and unhelpful.
Luckily I don't have much work to do and once the kids were at school could fritter another precious day of existence playing online poker and watching New Tricks and eating ice cream.
Some like it hot. Not me. It turns my brain into a Solero that melts and turns to sludge. Sure when it cools down my brain will solidify again, but like a melted and refrozen Solero, it's not the same afterwards. Recognisable as what it once was, but out of shape, full of ice crystals and unpleasant to eat.
The metaphor has started to break down. Though if anyone wants to eat my brain after this heatwave is over, I think it might prove more accurate than I realise.
Somehow I built up the energy to play a damp (from sweat, not from sexy bodily fluids like normal) frame of Me1 Vs Me2 Snooker. It's been a whil and somehow the space is now even more restricted than ever. But it's a fine frame. Listen here.
Or if that's too challenging for you, you can watch it here. I blamed Chris Evans, not that one, for the audio not working, but I had turned off the mic to save the battery. And I did manage to save the battery, so it worked out how I wanted.
Another Edinburgh guest revealed in the badger secret area at rhlstp.co.uk (become a badger here http://gofasterstripe.com/badges
And to paid subscribers on Substack - news below the paywall
See all other confirmed guests here. Should have news on the Sheffield guest soon.
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Strawberry flavour confirmed. Also 2p
Another terrible night of sweat and disjointed thoughts and occasional sleep. Bit of a tougher day to get through though as Catie was off at 7am and I had to do the school run and for some ridiculous reason had agreed to play tennis at 1pm, just when the sun would be at its hottest. Plus Phoebe had a big football try-out tonight, so there wasn't much time to rest up, though I did have a little snooze when she was watching telly at about 4.30.
Maybe the solution to my exhaustion is to become nocturnal, and then I can avoid the terrors that come from being half-awake at night and I might get some work done with nothing to distract me. I will put it to Catie. Can't see why she wouldn't be up for it.
Amazon Prime suggested I might like to watch the Pink Panther show. I don't know how it knew. It's another of the shows that I loved as a kid that influenced my later work, though I had almost forgotten that until some algorithm knew me better than myself.
The other day Catie had given me a posh strawberry chocolate from Hotel Chocolat and I remarked, "Ooh, just like the Pink Panther bar," another repressed memory brought to life by sight and taste (not 100% sure that the bar was strawberry flavour, but that is my memory of it - it was certainly pink). Had that comment prompted my devices to search out the Pink Panther for me.
I pressed play and Phoebe and I watched the opening titles. I found I knew all the words - let’s go again (no cheating)
"Think of all the animals you've ever heard about
Like rhinoceros, tigers, cats and mink
There are lots of funny animals in all the world,
But have you ever seen a panther that is pink
Think. A panther that is positively pink!"
He was a gentleman, a scholar, acrobat. He was rinky-dink and so on. All still in there.
My envy of the boy in the pink sports car returned. Who was he? How did he get this gig? Why was he allowed to drive? Why was he only in the opening and closing titles. Where is he now? NO ONE KNOWS https://www.reddit.com/user/asiawatcher/comments/nxiwxb/whats_the_name_of_the_boy_car_driver_in_the/
There's lots of stuff about the Panthermobile, but no news that I can find on the boy. Or how he got this amazing job.
It's the New Tricks opening titles debacle all over again. Where are the serious journalists in this country?
It reminded me that I wrote closing lyrics for the Organ Gang very much based on the closing titles of the Pink Panther
"So you're met the Pink Panther..."
I thought we'd actually used them (I have a feeling Richard Thomas wrote and recorded the track) but it wasn't used on the cartoons that are on youtube.
From memory it was something like
"So you've met the Organ Gang, the Organ Gang
And weren't they a gang composed principally of organs of the human body?
You've seen that they were groovy cats
Composed of blood vessels, gristle and fat.
They are the Organ Gang, the rinky-dink Organ Gang
And it's as plain as Norman Nose
They are the one and only, truly original, Organs Pink Organs from your head to Tommy toes"
Richard changed the tune enough that it could be played as parody, but maybe it never got to air. I just love putting rinky-dink in there.
Anyway I wasn't interested in watching an episode of the Pink Panther. Just the titles and the song. Like all classic kids show (it seems) the opening titles are the thing that stands the test of time and often the only good thing in it.
But I loved that groovy cat, both in cartoon and chocolate form. And I must acknowledge the influence he has had on my comedy and my arrested development.
RHLSTP Book Club is part 2 of my chat with Adam Buxton
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