Happy Christmas

Tonight was the last show of 2010 at the club, and I'm happy to say it was a stormer. I'd guilted my fiancee into coming out, as well as an old university friend who was presenting at a conference today, and the editor of ActionAsia magazine, so I didn't want to spend ten minutes on stage muttering incomprehensibilities while nobody laughed.

Fortunately, having rested after yesterday's rather painful show, I could talk at a normal speed rather than gabbling, and the audience was much larger and more appreciative. They'd laugh a lot when you gave them a good joke, but they didn't respond to weak material, which is more rewarding than just having a crowd that hoot at everything (or nothing).

Everyone had a good set, and that was relaxing for me, because I didn't need to work hard at bringing the energy up between comedians, and could just put in a bit here and there when appropriate. I even got to use my learning-Mandarin-by-whistling-while-chewing-toffees joke, which was surprisingly well received, my sex with sheep joke that got a much bigger laugh than I imagined it would deserve, plus I got the last laugh of the night with my drunken chicken joke. A good night.

Today was fairly exhausting: we spent most of it tidying the flat, which meant I spent most of the time sneezing uncontrollably from all the dust, and then swearing a lot at my recalcitrant conk. I think it probably burned off a few calories. Further, I was bathed in the happy glow of having somebody write an angry comment on the blog: after all this time, I was very pleased to see (at least right now) if you type "the wire novelistic" into Google, I'm the third most relevant link. Shame that people searching for that don't like having their expectations confounded...