Away and home

Off to Brighton for a delightful couple of days recharging in celebration of Lesley's birthday. There was fine eating, there was walking up and down by the sea, there was falling asleep on the beach and having momentary panics about the possibility of being sunburnt. Mostly, it has to be said, there was eating. My god we had some good food. At one restaurant I had two main courses in the time it took my lovely wife to finish off one. Win.

Then back and hitting the ground running with a gorgeous night headlining a sold out Madame Jojos for Bete Noire. Really strong line-up - Matt Hennem, Beatrix Von Bourbon and Luna Rosa, all tied together by host Ophelia Bitz. And the crowd were up for it - simmering on the boil, just the fun side of rowdy. Exactly how I like 'em.

So, we're all getting ready in the tiny little dressing room at Jojos. Out of the blue, Von Bourbon lets out a little "meep" and announces that she's going to have problems doing her balloon popping act in the second half as she has forgotten to bring balloons. This could be a problem - the shops around Soho that might sell balloons will be closed by now - maybe it'll have to be condoms. Or perhaps we could get some free balloons from Burger King. Von Bourbon's eyes light up at this. "Burger King! Burger King! It's political. It'll be magical!". She's right, of course, but since I'm doing nothing until the end of the show, I'm the schmuck that has to go out and either blag balloons from Burger King, or go to Boots and buy 26 of the cheapest condoms they sell. Either way, it ain't classy.

Luckily, once I'm up the stairs and into Soho, I see the solution - Yo Sushi have a couple of balloons hanging outside - they're branded with a little pink heart. Perfect. I go in and find a staff member.

"Hi, I've got kinda a strange question.."
"Go on..."
"I'm working in a venue around the corner and we need balloons for the show, but we've run out...I don't suppose there's any chance.."
"Sure, I can give you some balloons. How many do you need?"
"Um..26?"
"26? What are they for?"
"A naked girl"
"ahhhhhhhh. I see."

So, thanks to the nice lady in Yo Sushi, all was well.

Like I said, it was a lovely show - afterwards we hung out in the bar for a little while, and a couple of friendly ladies sidled up to us. After saying how much they'd enjoyed the show, one of them pointed at me and said "Where do I know you from?". I said I didn't know, maybe from shows like these? "Have you ever been on TV", she said. Now, there's no way to answer this without sounding like at least a bit of a douchebag, so I said yes, I had been on TV, including a couple of things that get repeated quite a lot, so maybe she'd seen me there. She seemed impressed by this, pondered for a moment, and then said "So, if I slept with you could I sell my story for some money?"

Flummoxed.

"No", I said.

"Not even a bit of money?", she replied.

"No", I said, "Certainly not enough money to warrant sleeping with me"

And I went and hid in the dressing room.