Sunday 15th March 2026
With no gigs this weekend, I did what I probably shouldn’t have done from a mental health point of view and that was stay in since Friday. Time and again I make this too-easy-to-make mistake and by Sunday I am struggling. I don’t think it’s been as bad this weekend because I threw myself into rehearsing for the upcoming solo shows where my feet are now pretty much to the fire.
I lost too much time at the start working on the design for the image, which was my fault and that time should have gone into learning the new bits for the show. It is a work in progress and as I finesse it, obviously some bits will come and go, but still trying to do this three and a bit weeks before the first show is a big worry, more so when there’s still all the marketing to do for the London shows.
I haven’t even been able to tackle the admin for the Brighton fringe shows and I anticipate the result will be no different. Those shows are over two months away but I know this version of me will be going into May still up against it. I just do not enjoy project management at all these days and it’s only in the early part of this decade running my historical (and commercially doomed) football podcast When Shorts Were Short that I was able to oversee big projects in an efficient and very thorough manner. I liked having the bit between my teeth. I was a doer. Too much of one really. I was obsessive with my work. I don’t have that now.
I know why this is happening and why it’s been happening for the last three-four years now and I know there’s not much I can do about it. I just have to try and ensure I do what I can. The talent remains but that’s never enough with these things.
I’ve spent the weekend rehearsing, hours each day, though even then, probably not as much as I should be. Today I’ve done 3 hours, missed a lot of football, and still have another half an hour to go of trying to learn the trickiest bit of the first five new sections I am trying to nail down. I’m not an actor so I find learning lines very difficult though I have improved over the years but sometimes new bits just take forever to stick. Also, I never appreciated that when you write a lot as I do, you often forget the very old material you have and you have to learn it all over again. It’s a massive challenge for me.
I tried to look into acting courses last summer, not because I suddenly wanted to act, but because I wanted to see what I might be able to do to streamline the line learning process, but I saw only one course devoted entirely to ‘memorisation’. Speaking to some actor friends, they all told me the same thing: it’s the same for every actor. Some find it easier than others but there’s no way around it. You have to burn these lines into your muscle memory. It’s what I am now having to do and it’s keeping me up. And it’s incredibly boring. I set the stopwatch on my phone, plonk the phone in its stand, and spend 30 minutes repeating each section.
I’ve also recorded each segment and on Friday’s run, was listening to the chunk giving me the most trouble on what was a difficult run. I know enough by now to know that for some reason, listening to material doesn’t help me learn it. I seem to have a block with audio as a means of learning which is weird, perhaps, given that I am a big radio guy and obviously have that long radio and podcast background. I have the same problem with audiobooks. I just can’t get on with them, so learning my lines is only going to happen by going over each line on the printed page.
There’s a problem with my eyes too which makes learning material harder because I’m constantly taking the glasses on and off while rehearsing. I find this enormously frustrating and I do believe it slows me down. Wearing three different glasses these days after failing to adapt to varifocals and that is a pain. At one gig last week on what was a very narrow stage, the mic had been left tangled up for me and it took a little longer than it should’ve to untangle it because of my vision and this is something I plan to look into in the next few months. If I wasn’t having to learn lines, I’m not sure I’d bother. I’d accept the age-related vision deterioration but I do believe it affects my work.
I have tried to make an effort with the sleeping the last two or three nights. Eight hours is always beyond me. I had nine and half hours last night, probably sleeping for six of those, before waking up to another issue I had to address in this c*** of a flat and losing a couple of hours on this morning’s planned rehearsals which is why I later had to skip the early football games.
I did manage to watch the Liverpool v Tottenham game this afternoon. Coincidentally one of my WhatsApp groups was comprised entirely of Liverpool and Spurs fans and I probably spent too much time in that instead of focusing on the game.
I did call it right though. Liverpool have been pants this season. I was not surprised at all that Tottenham got a late equaliser.
I have a workshop gig tomorrow night and it would be great to have some of these new and revamped bits ready for tomorrow. I’m not sure that’ll be the case but I have to keep at it. Historically I always backed myself, putting myself in high pressure creative situations because that often brought out the best in me. I’m less sure these days. The show, I am confident, will be very good as I work and improve it but the process to get there is definitely problematic. And selling tickets is a monstrous issue for all emerging acts these days.
Four of these five chunks that I have been working on are pretty much there. That last bit in this initial tranche of new material I am trying to learn, isn’t.
It’s going to be a week of rehearsals, rehab, some running, and hopefully some improved sleep.
Back to one final 30-minute session of rehearsing now.
You can book your seats for ‘The SMALL Stuff’ here.
Dates 8th and 20th April.
The Bread & Roses Theatre
68 Clapham Manor Street, Clapham SW4 6DZ
Lastly, to all my friends and subscribers here who no longer have their mums and find Mother’s Day difficult or unnecessary, a positive thought to you guys. We never forget our mums. They are the most important people we’ll ever know. They give us life; they shape us and we need to appreciate them when we have them. I’m not sure I fully did though she was the most important person in my life when she was about, but advancing through life, I appreciate more and more everything she did for me and these people are always with us.
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