When good things happen in Bad Oeynhausen

Back in Germany again an a variety theatre in the aforementioned Bad Oeynhausen. The show and cast is largely the same as last time in Essen, with the exception of the replacement of Slava and Ben, with Genevieve and Maxim, who also hang from things high up, in a heavily pornographic manner. Oh, by the way, the video above is the film we use to start our current show, thought you might like to see it.

I flew back from Sydney Australia, had about a day and a half at home, then flew straight here, so for the first week or so I was fairly screwed up. Every night, regardless of my valiant protestations, I would fall asleep at about 7pm, and then regular as clockwork, I'd be wide awake at 5am the next morning. We're now in week two, and although the jet lag has mainly faded, I'm still sleeping fitfully. Two or three times a night I'll sit bold upright in bed and panic about where I am, who I am, what time it is, how many strangers can see me naked, and which cues I've missed, before slowly waking up, realising what's going on, making a chewbacca-type sound, and trying to go to sleep again. Added to this, I've started the dazzlingly attractive hobby of grinding my teeth as I sleep, so as a side effect I've chewed halfway through my left cheek and my back teeth ache all day. Marvellous.

I type these sentences as I sit at my little round wooden table in the bedroom-part of my apartment just down the corridor from the theatre. It's Sunday morning, and I'm attempting to stabilise my mood by doing the familiar: writing, listening to radio 4 and playing Virtual Pro Wrestling 2. Perhaps it's the fact that this is the last two-month block of several, so we're coming to the end of the contract for this show, that there's a slight feeling of finality hanging around me. There's a big old chance that I'll never see most of the performers I'm sharing a bill with ever again, as many of them are from Russia, the Ukraine, or similarly crazy far-flung and fairy-tale places, so that's a bit sad, as I've grown to like many of them very much indeed.

I am, however, looking forward to going home more than I usually do. Feeling that ache, and it's only week two of eight. I've been away too much recently, and I think my soul needs to be reminded where it lives. Right now I don't feel completely anywhere, and I think that's contributing to my fuzzy malaise. It's like I'm one of those red shirts in Star Trek who gets lost in the transporter beam. A half transparent panicky version of me is on the Enterprise, and a half transparent panicky version of me is down on the surface of the planet, but there's not a complete, solid me anywhere at the moment. And for all the sliding of knobs that Scotty flusters over, we all know what happens to red shirts.

Having said all that, the show is going well, and everyone is chugging along pretty much fine - although the day before yesterday Ekaterina the contortionist was showing everyone her hand which was spasming all over the place while she pointed at it with her other hand, grinning, shaking her head and saying "I don't know!", and yesterday she took a day out of the show, because her hand was, y'know, spasming all over the place. Not good when you spend most of your act balancing on it, I guess. But Russian shaky hands notwithstanding, all is well - a review even giving me the brilliant quote "Mat Ricardo does what is considered hardly possible!" and says that me and Dave have "Diagonal humour", whatever that is.

As for the town we're in - well it's more of a village really. It reminds me of the places my family would go and stay in Norfolk, which, while very lovely, used to drive me quietly insane as a child because there was so little actually there. I remember when I was a kid going to the wavy line stores (the only shop within walking distance when we were on holiday) and making myself not look around the whole shop in one go, thinking, I'll save that corner of the shop for tomorrow, to make the excitement last. It's a bit like that. There's the kaiserpalais, where the theatre and my apartment is, which if you google it, you'll see is a large grand and beautiful old building set in acres of parkland, which is all very nice. Then right next door to us there is the bali-therme - a spa, gym and pool complex which all the cast immediately signed up for, because it stays open until midnight and there is little better than a post-show jacuzzi.

If you walk through the park to the station you get to what the locals hilariously describe as "downtown", which is three streets with a bank, a post office and a smattering of shops. The first day I was here I went out to try to find the nearest supermarket and was told by a lady in a knitting shop (Oh yes, there's only a dozen or so shops, and one of them is a knitting shop), that there was no supermarket downtown, no supermarket anywhere near here. I had been told there was one closeby, I said. She reiterated that no, no, no, the nearest one was - and then she pointed out to the horizon as if describing the direction of Africa - the nearest one must be, oh, ten minutes walk that way. I thanked her, and as I began to leave on my way to the supermarket, she asked after me, "You have a car?" she said. When I said that I didn't, but could probably manage a ten minute walk, her mouth literally dropped open and she slowly shook her head. This left me spending half the journey wondering if she's mis-translated herself, and perhaps she meant ten miles, not ten minutes, but no, I was there in five minutes. She was just a lazy German knitter.