Contagious happiness.

Yesterday evening i was driving to a friends house. It’s a 40 minute drive so tidy music is helpful. I only have a tape deck at the moment. The two tapes i have are 33 classical hits and The soundtrack to 80’s hit american TV show; Kung fu: The legend continues.

As brill as these tapes are, i’ve played them to death.

So the only option now is for the radio to be on it’s game. I’ll usually go for radio 2 because i am one cultured son of a gun, however, it’s signal died on this journey.

So i started violently channel switching in order to find something suitable. I was in a queue that was looking at some red traffic lights. All of a sudden one of the stations started playing “Moves like Jagger” By Maroon 5. 

A lightning bolt of DANCE struck me. I had the moves like Jagger i think. Or someone young and good at dancing. 

In my satisfied trance i looked out my windows and the car to my left, filled with ladies (well, three of them) were watching me, laughing. As they should. 

I did the only thing i knew to do. SING. At them. They laughed even harder and joined in with the dancing.

And then the light’s turned green and i drove away feeling that the world was ultimately good.

Last night's show

The one i’d been stressing about for about two and a half weeks. ACRE comedy's live show about science! Oh yes.

We performed it last night. It went very well if i do say so myself. My friends are very funny and it came across on stage. I started lacking confidence which is usually the case but it grew through the night. By the end of the first half I had my confidence. Bering on stage with someone else is easier to handle. Also, i got to play my guitar which im better at compared to remembering lines.

Second half came and i started to ride my confidence well. It was an audience participation bit which my friend was managing while i played a little sting and guided the audience, telling them when to “ooh” and “aah”. The participant on stage was, honestly, amazing. Seeing him be such a good sport give me that little extra inspiration. 

We started flowing properly. Faster than we were used to and it felt good. In fact the flow gained so much momentum, my fellow performer, after being introduced by myself, came on as a baffled character. He followed his stage directions (which were to fall over and lose his papers) with such gusto that he landed on his face and lost half a tooth.

We found it, though. It was in his lip.

We wanted to rush it from there but the tooth-lost performer improvised some standup about the missing half-tooth which stalled us for about 10 minutes. We buzzed through our bits after getting him off stage, cleaned him up and, fair play, he came on for the last sketch and danced to the song. (The song was my favorite bit because i wrote it :)

The audience were very polite and i believe that they were definitely entertained.

So instead of drinking and relaxing after the gig, I drove my friend to A&E where i chatted to people in the waiting room. After the doctor told him what he already knew, we got some pain killers and drove home.

The thing i learned is this. You can stress and over prepare for anything and everything. But if a friend looses a tooth during a stage performance it will literally MAKE the night. All you have to be able to do is react well to any situation and things will go well.