This is going to be my last blog for a week or so, because I leave for New York on Thursday. On Sunday, I run the ING New York Marathon in aid of the Alzheimer’s Society and I am absolutely bricking it. Not least because I have to pack tonight, due to a (very welcome) last-minute job in Dublin tomorrow. I have to get up tomorrow and run at 5.30, leg it to Heathrow, do the gig, do a few more Dublin errands, leg it back to the airport, fly to London and head straight to the Phoenix for the London Comedy Improv. I will be the smelliest performer there.
As far as New York packing goes, I’ve been out to buy my surgical tape (for the chafing) and my Trek bars (for the carbs & protein). Now I have to decide what to take, ages before I actually have to go. Although, actually, it’s easy – all I need to make sure I have are my trainers. The rest is moot. I shall be taking them as hand luggage and guarding them with my life.
This may sound like I’m moaning: I’m not. This week alone my sponsorship has topped 71%. Yee ha! Thank you, everyone! You are all great in your own, special way. I also had my photos done by Andy Hollingworth. We were on our feet all day but I had a great time (don’t know about Andy, he’s very diplomatic) and the shots I’ve seen, I love. I rarely love shots of me, but these have so much else going on. Strange to see someone else’s talent applied to your familiar mug, but great. Thank, Andy. Can’t wait to see the others.
I had a wake-up call on the train to Chester. I was sitting next to a blind man, who was travelling with his grandson. He had given the grandson his CD walkman and a Just William audiobook for the journey, so he was up for a chat. I wasn’t really, but I couldn’t bear the thought of him not having anything to listen to – even if the compromise were my voice and opinions. I asked him why he didn’t have an iPod. He’d love an iPod, I opined; all those podcasts and books and music. Very matter-of-factly and calmly he told me that he couldn’t use them.
D’uh. Of course he can’t. All that fancy, slidy smoothness and wank-screens only make it easy to listen to things if you can see them. I love my iPod, but I hated it then. I recommended other mp3 players, with completely no knowledge of them, because I felt so embarrassed. I’d taken it completely for granted that an audio product must be about the audio. It’s not. It’s about sales to style-obsessed wankers like me.
I then went on to babble about my day ahead, the photoshoot, and how great Andy was, and although he nodded politely, I am sure he was bored. He will never see the results of yesterday’s shoot, and I’m sure he didn’t care. But he pretended he was interested, all the way to Chester. What a lovely man.
On the way back, I bumped into someone I first worked with so long ago, we’d both nearly forgotten the cast. We chatted on the train, and spoke in Irish when the mad Aussie lady careened up and down the carriage, looking for wine. Even without a word of Gaeilge, she must have noticed the disapproval in our tone. She’d have to have been blind not to.
Catch you when I get back from the Big Apple.
www.justgiving.com/taraflynn Please sponsor me for Sunday’s marathon
