Timing


Tomorrow I’ve got seven minutes on stage, so I’ve been rehearsing. Somehow in the months I’ve spent away from regular performance, my set has got sloppy and fat, and what seemed to fit tidily into five minutes has mushroomed in more than ten, and that’s assuming nobody laughs and I maintain a constant stream of syllables throughout. Oh, the embarrassment of having too much to say. I’ve thrown out the baby material entirely for this run through, and yet there’s still far too much. And to think, I’ve been anxious lately that I haven’t got enough.

It’s been a long day. I got up at seven this morning and did another Special High Intensity Training workout: four kilometres in twenty one minutes doesn’t sound either impressively far or fast, but it involved twelve minutes of leisurely jogging to warm up / cool down and ten thirty second sprints, interleaved with twenty seconds of recovery between each one. It’s a highly efficient way of thrashing your body, and although I felt fine all morning, by mid afternoon a strange wave of fatigue had washed over me, and I was no more capable of holding my neck up than my daughter is of holding up hers. Thankfully I’d done most of what I needed to, and could slink out of the office, but it was odd to feel this tired. Maybe our baby is wearing me out.

Tomorrow we have to take her to get registered at the Ministry of Manpower, which depending on how you say it sounds like a camp nightclub or something to do,with digging ditches. Neither of which is suitable for a child of less than two months. Still, you can’t argue with the law. Especially if you lack the rudiments of human speech at this point.

After Mandatory Baby Registration and the comedy show, I don’t get to celebrate, because on Wednesday I have a medical check-up, which entails fasting for twelve hours beforehand. Not that I’d drink on a Tuesday night, but it feels like bad planning to have eliminated that choice just like that. Curses, regular medical check ups, for denying me booze!

As luck would have it, my body is disintegrating. This afternoon, about the time that my neck lost its ability to support my head, a muscle in my upper back, the size of a fist, clenched up and has refused so far to relax. There’s a weird rash developing across one of my arms, and I am worried I’ve not done enough Spanish revision. If I make it as far as performing tonight without falling dead to the ground, the shock may kill me.


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