The wisdom of toddlers

It's mid-January and I am sure that many people are beginning to flag in maintaining their wholesome new year resolutions. I have decided that I needed inspiration to maintain the holistically balanced, wholegrain-eating perfection I have maintained since January 1st. Therefore I have looked to my children for inspiration. I impart to you the wisdom of toddlers:

• Start every day by singing "I love my bottom bottom, I love my bottom bottom, I love my bottom bottom, I love my bum bum!" to the tune of 'I like to move it' by Reel2Reel. Preferably naked.
• When you eat don't look at the calories, instead shout loudly "Scrummy yummy in my tummy!"
• Jump for joy at least once a day
• Go outside and stay outside for at least half an hour a day.  Look at a rock, pick up a stick, play tag with an invisible person, but do it outside.
• Jump in front of a camera when someone is taking a photo - photobomb the fuck out of life.
• Try something new, except food. Don't try new foods. They may kill you.
• Match your girliest party dress with wellies and a gruffalo hat - scream 'I am a princess!' at anyone within earshot
• Show a stranger something you are proud of - a leaf, a doll, a bogey - it doesn't matter what, just be proud.
• Cackle when you fart.  Try to do it again. Demand someone else deals with it should you follow through. 
• Demand praise for something you do every day; be it wiping your own arse, doing up your coat or counting to 5 on your fingers.  You are a treasure and people should acknowledge this
• Always stamp loudly and carry a big stick.
• Sit upside down on a chair, it helps with the farting.

I'm proud of the BBC

It's a short post tonight as I have been mainly surfing the internet and growing increasingly fond of the BBC.  Have you seen the writers room?  Have you?  It's fucking amazing. All those juicy opportunities just sitting there, waiting for me to get on my arse and start writing something good. No agent, no built-up reputation needed, just the work itself. It's just brilliant. There are so many ways to get involved, so much to jump in on.  Get on it people - we are so bloody lucky. I think I'm going to listen to Mitch Benn again

... originally this was followed by my 1st unhinged rant about what the Tories are doing to our revered institutions but I think I need to drink some chamomile tea and edit heavily before publishing it. 

On a wing and a prayer

I didn't blog last night as I was off doing actual stand up. It was at the lovely lovely Big Nose Comedy - I saw some great acts, Sophie Henderson in particular was bloody brilliant. For me, it was my most hair raising one yet - it's the first time I've gone in underprepared, without the set fully memorised beforehand. I've had to wing it a couple of times when I realise I've forgotten a chunk (usually my best bit) and have had to slot in another bit to round out my five minutes.  I feel like a fucking superhero when I do this smoothly. But this was the first time I wasn't confident that I knew the whole thing.  I was really wobbling when I got there - I'm such a good schoolgirl I can't let anyone down so I turned up expecting to pull out - but sweetheart Aaron Levene, punsmith extraordinaire, really helped me to buck my ideas up, so I did it.  I bloody did it. I even wrote an actual, honest to goodness proper joke for the theme of the night - which was North Korea testing a possible H bomb: 

Kin Jong Un has moved south.  He wanted a change of career. (it works when you say it.)

I got laughs.. there was a bit of tap-dancing as I struggled to get my ideas out of my mouth in actual intelligible english at one point but I did it.  I bloody did it. 
Now should I listen to the recording or not?

Calling all dryathletes

In December I started this blog in an attempt to stop drinking wine every evening and actually do some writing instead. Once the sun goes down, when I get the urge to crack open a bottle, instead I crack open my laptop and write.  It's been going pretty well. 

I didn't really know much about the Dryathlon until this year when the ad caught my attention - probably because I was sober when I saw it this time! I thought maybe some of you lovely dryathletes might find this idea helpful. Every evening using the twitter account @finisfunny I will be sending a tweet with the hashtag #wineoclockblues and will sit down to do some writing or some other creative thing for an hour or more and you can do the same. I promise it really does help to keep your mind off the booze when you focus on something creative. If any of you are interested I might start a dryathlon team, I know it's a bit late but I've learnt that it's better to do something late than not at all. 

Even if this doesn't help you, I wish you all the best in your endeavours this January.  I raise my cup of tea to you all. 

Why I stand up

I love stand-up comedy. To me it is the most fluid form of public expression; the friendliest, most challenging, most engaging, most disgusting art there is.  Any medium that can contain a range of acts from the charm and wit of Sarah Millican's word play to Jonny Vegas shitting live on stage it is truly all-encompassing. Stand up can be performance art, theatre, poetry. In the right hands it can be philosophy. It sits at the nexus of all the great art forms, and I really believe it is an art form itself. 

In his book Playing to the the Gallery Grayson Perry says 'My job is to notice things that other people don't notice.' (He also says a lot of other very wonderful things, you really should read it.) I would say that comedians could use this as a job description equally well. That and the description Richard Herring uses on his podcast RHLSTP (as the cool kids are calling it) of 'bashing incongruous ideas together'.

Stand up comedy allows you to present big big ideas in a palatable form to the deafest of ears.  It sneaks revolutionary thoughts into minds that may otherwise remain closed. Comedy is the friendly face of new concepts. I know that there are artists who fundamentally disagree with this - the Distraction Pieces podcast with Sara Pascoe talking to Scroobius Pip contains an eloquent discussion of stand up's limitations as a political force; that it mediates the rage we should be feeling by allowing us all to think together and not act together. But I know my comedians shaped my ideology.  If someone asks me why I'm pro-Europe my starting point is often 'Well, Eddie Izzard said...' For me this isn't just 'thinking along', I doubt it would have occurred to me to think about it at all if it wasn't for the comedian I love raising this specific issue. I'm not stupid - I will read multiple opinions and as much evidence as I can understand (or at least the Cochrane review if we're talking medicine) on any topic that interests me but I often find the most palatable form to present an idea when discussing it is the one that was created by a comedian. Also, you really should write to your MP, attend marches about things that matter, buy a Christmas single to highlight the plight of the NHS, do those things too.  Don't just talk, action is also needed. For me, however, talk is where it starts.

The joy of stand-up is how easy it is to try.  At it's purest it is just talking. Just pitch up at one of the hundreds of open-mic nights across the country, screw your courage to the sticking place and mumble a few words.  If that doesn't work,  go back and shout at the audience instead.  If that still doesn't feel right do something else, do something that works for you. When you feel that adrenaline trace its way from your palms to your fingertips you'll probably go back and do it again.  At least a few times. (Open mic has taught me the difference between good adrenaline and bad adrenaline - I now know that when I am excited I feel silver rivulets of adrenalin trickle up my palms, when I am terrified, for example when I think the car is going to crash, there is an instant hot prickle of adrenaline all across the backs of my hands. - see, comedy is educational.) 

I have been doing open mic nights for about 6 months and in that time I have met a huge range of people and heard an amazing array of stories, puns and dick jokes.  I have so much more respect for all character acts now that I've seen some at their inception, maintaining a character whilst being funny is extremely difficult. I've seen and admired people trying truly strange things, things that might just be the start of something great. I can see the difference between saying something funny and being funny - though I can't quite see how you get there yet. 

The hard work of it is to keep going, to keep booking spots, to yomp across London to experience good nights and bad ones; to keep doing the jokes that work and make them sing, even when they feel stale in your mouth; to try the new stuff even if it's scary and honest and raw and if the audience don't laugh a small bit of you shrivels to dust; to try the new stuff again and find a different audience will water that material and make it bloom; to ride the laughter and to keep talking in the silence.  Just keep going for the sheer love of the thing. I'm going to keep going.

Inspiration

I love Jane Espenson, I have ever since Buffy.  I will watch most things with her name attached to them, usually multiple times, so when I saw she had started the hashtag #writingsprint on twitter I was ready to jump on board. The idea is that she gives a 10 minute warning and then, usually at the top of the hour, she encourages her followers to focus on a project, any project, for an hour. It's a lovely, inclusive way of becoming part of a creative community... if you live on the west coast of America. I'm always hours behind her and usually only catch tweets saying 'writing sprint finished' or 'I'm keeping going' and this doesn't inspire me - it makes me feel I've missed an opportunity to be part of something bigger; it's an unnecessary feeling, there's nothing there that stops me using this as a cue even if I'm not on LA time, but as much as I like the idea it hasn't worked for me. 

So for those of us on Greenwich Mean Time I'm starting my own hashtag #wineoclockblues and I will tweet it from my @finisfunny account every school night when the kids have wound me up and the thirst kicks in (which is almost every night to be honest) and you can join me if you want.  You can put down the corkscrew and pick up a pen, a laptop, a knitting needle (probably 2 of those) and create rather than consume.

Thanks Jane, I pour tea from my mug in libation. 

Games for Children (for parents)

This is a list of games that children should be encouraged to play when parents are feeling fragile, on New Year's Day, for example.

1. Musical chairs (without music - it's essentially just sitting on a chair)
2. Sleeping lions who have taken a powerful sedative
3. Who can make the quietest sound?
4. Who can cross the room the slowest?
5. Hide (there is no seeker)
6. Who can sort the most lego bricks according to colour?
7. Who can be this statue for longest?
8. Who can stay the furthest away from daddy?
9. Who can make the best bloody mary/cup of tea/cappuccino for mummy? 
10. Who can stay in bed the longest? - in our house there is little point in playing this one.  I am the winner, I am always the winner.