Newsletter Number Five
Newsletter Number Five. Ready steady… go!
Setting the scene: I'm in my girlfriend's flat listening to Alice Boman. I’m a big fan of Alice Boman. I don't really go to gigs anymore, on account of my tinnitus, however last year Alice Boman was coming to London and so I bought tickets. I also bought a pair of earplugs. They were £25, which is £24.50 more than I like to spend on anything, but my hearing was at stake and it's useful for listening to podcasts/hearing approaching panthers that you can’t see in the undergrowth.
THE SENSES, RANKED:
1. Sight
2. Hearing
3. Taste
4. Touch
5. The Sixth Sense
6. That Sense Of Dread You Get When You Realise You’ve Slept Through Your Alarm And It’s 11.30AM And You Were Meant To Be At Work at 10AM And It’s An Hour Away By Public Transport So You Get An Uber - Yes It’s Going To Cost You Forty Quid But You Really Are Late - But Then The Traffic Means That The Uber Is Actually Taking Longer Than Public Transport Would Have Taken So After A While Sitting In A Traffic Jam You Get Out And Start Walking At Which Point The Traffic Jam Miraculously Melts Away And The Uber Speeds Past - It’s 12.40PM Now. You Start Running But You Never Run So You Only Manage About 100 Metres, But Your Level Of Perspiration And Facial Redness Befit Someone Who Has Run An Ultramarathon Across The Atlas Mountains - Then You Get To Work And Everyone’s Quite Chilled Out About It Which Actually Somehow Makes It Worse.
7. Smell
I sat in the corner of the gig venue with 20 minutes to kill before the gig began. It was time to get to grips with the earplugs.
In general, my ears are the wrong shape. No earphones ever fit. These earplugs were no different, but I did my best to jam them in.
I jammed in the earplugs a bit more.
Are they in? I thought. Time to really jam them in.
Jam jam jam jam jam jam. Oh my God. Where's it gone?
There was something very satisfying about the motion of the plug being slowly but unstoppably sucked into my ear. Right into the inside of my ear. Right inside. Like, inside my head. I asked a woman working behind the bar if she could see it. She said she couldn’t and very clearly thought I was mad.
Accident and Emergency at Homerton Hospital was busy. I told the receptionist that an earplug had disappeared into my ear and she told me that the wait would likely be about 5 hours. My phone had about 10% battery left and I didn’t have a book. I settled in with a pamphlet about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease but after 10 minutes, a nurse came out and read my name. The other people in the waiting room, all with much more visible injuries, glared at me with eyes that said "you better have ebola, MINIMUM”.
I think I'd been chosen to be dealt with on the basis that I wasn't really a medical case, and more a case of a man with an earplug stuck inside his head.
The nurse produced some plastic tweezers and got involved. After three attempts, it wasn’t moving. She said I’d have to go back and wait and then they’d use some sort of machine to suck it out. I said OK, but my eyes must have said “please, I don’t want to wait for the machine - my phone’s on 8% battery and I don’t have a book and I already know everything I need to know about chronic obstructive pulmonary disease” because she said, “let’s have one last go, eh?”. With everything riding on this last heave-ho, she limbered up like an Olympic weightlifter about to attempt the world record, and really put her back into it. Time seemed to slow down. I reached out and gripped the desk, my knuckles white. I was ready for her to put a foot on my cheek for leverage.
And out it came.
If the feeling of the plug being sucked in was weirdly pleasant, this was transcendental. I sighed “aaaah that was amazing” and she looked at me in such a way to suggest that my reaction was inappropriate.
The nurse sent me on my way with the advice that I should never to put anything smaller than my elbow into my ear. Which rules out both earplugs and a tiny submarine full of scientists who’ve been miniaturised by a shrink ray.
So I’ve never seen Alice Boman live.
Anyway, good old NHS and all that. I'm led to believe that if that were to have happened in the USA, I’d have had to have chosen between a lifetime of debt or going to a struck off doctor operating in a sewage pipe deep below Las Vegas.
I haven't sent one of these newsletters since July. So much has happened between then and now. Selected highlights:
I went on holiday to America and saw two pelicans.
On the way to American I went to Munich for one night and by mistaken booked a hotel in the red light district and went to bed googling the phrase "can you passively inhale crack?"
I ate about 65 Magnum ice creams.
Josie Long wore a Mitchell's T shirt (available here!) on Masterchef and it made my year.
NICK OFFERMAN came on Beef and Dairy Network.
Also, I guested on a few podcasts:
Tom is amazing so I was very happy to play a small part in his new podcast series where he plays an awful toxic male who mansplains “woke” culture.
As usually happens with live podcast recordings, I had a pint and was too excitable. But I love love love this podcast and it was a pleasure to be a guest. I tell a story about playing a dead fox like a set of bagpipes.
Moments before we began recording this I had been in a Korean spa, my naked body being scrubbed all over by a Korean man only wearing pants (UK meaning). It was the greatest afternoon of my life, and so I was in a very relaxed frame of mind. But you can hear me waking up about half way through.
This is an improvised comedy sci-fi podcast that came to the London Podcast Festival and asked me to be their guest. I got to play a giant alien crab called Belmont, which has kind of always been my dream.
My mate Rhys recently realised the UK is rubbish and moved his family to Canada where despite having to spend 80% of his time making sure he haven’t left a biscuit in his car, because otherwise a bear will tear it open like a can of tuna, he has started making a podcast about the process of making a podcast. The interview is probably not very interesting to the layman, but might be useful if you’re interested in starting a podcast yourself.
I also appeared on television in BBC Wales’s Tourist Trap, an improvised comedy about the Welsh Tourist Board. I play a tour guide, Martin, who takes Wyn (Mike Bubbins aka Eli Roberts) and Charlotte (Mari Beard) on a gruesome murder tour which culminates in him dressing as the ghost of a priest called Reverend Nebuchadnezzar Jones. If you’re in the UK you can watch it on BBC iPlayer here.
Anyway, enough about me. Night! x