The End of the Road is Nigh

The bags have been packed for three days now. Actually that’s not quite true, they’ve been unpacked and packed every day for the last three days as my desire to feel like I’m on my way home, ‘bags packed’, gives way to the brutal reality that I’m not, ‘bags unpacked looking for something to wear’.
In 36 hours time I’ll finally be heading home though and after two weeks on the road I’m ready, believe me I’m ready. I’ve tried to behave myself. I’ve drunk less and eaten properly, I’ve given exercise some serious thought - I’ve been travelling with a brand new and as yet unused pair of trainers but as any traveller knows, trainers are great for safely storing electronics or cans of shaving foam in your suitcase – and I’ve even done a bit of work every day. But it’s become clear in the last few days, when generally the only people I’m speaking to have actually paid to come and see me at gigs, that I’m retreating into myself more and more. I’m socially monosyllabic, spending the afternoons sitting in my suit, shirt and tie waiting for the evening’s gig so that I’m one step nearer home.
As little Maurice said on the phone the other night in between sobs, “Two weeks is too long Daddy.”
So I have three gigs to go and they’ll be good gigs too. I’ve always been conscious of the fact that while offstage I may look hollow eyed and tired and give off the air of a grumpy narcoleptic I still have a job to do, a job I’m good at, and one that I cannot allow travel/fatigue/melancholy to interfere with. It’s partly why, a few years ago, I changed my style as a comedian. I used to be very grumpy on stage, certainly deadpan, occasionally moribund but ironically it takes energy to carry that off and I had the wrong kind of energy to do it. I now smile onstage, chat more, sometimes even move around a bit, in other words it’s much more of a performance and it helps me as much as it chivvies the audience along.
And while I’m on stage I forget that I’m not at home.
Three more gigs and that’s it and whereas normally I would then go back to my hotel, not sleep and just count the hours until my plane or train leaves this week is a treat, I’m heading straight home! Okay, it’s a ten hour overnight bus journey from London to Paris, followed by another three hours on trains but I’m heading straight home! It’s become my morning mantra, ‘I’m heading straight home’. (You’ll not be able to walk when you get there) I know, but I’m heading straight home!
And when I say I’m ready, I mean really ready. This is not just a mental state, this is not just about the suitcase being filled, I have thirteen hours of travel to fill and I’ve organised my ‘in-travel’ entertainment to within an inch of its life. I have a laptop, a tablet, an ipod and a phone. The tablet and laptop now have a range of films and television programmes on it which will be chosen depending on my mood, and which have been selected to suit battery lengths, which is an exact science. I have the Scorcese ‘George Harrison’ documentary if I’m brooding on the nature of ‘showbiz’, the French film ‘The Last Mitterand’ if I feel like improving my French, ‘Three Days of the Condor’ if I feel paranoid, ‘Escape to Athena’ if I’m drunk, ‘That’s Entertainment!’ if I’m feeling ‘showbiz elated’, ‘Annie Hall’ if I need reminding just how insignificant my own talent is and Andrew Marr’s ‘The History of the World’ if I feel like being talked at. I have a book obviously, a bilingual thriller to improve my French vocabulary and numerous podcasts and recorded Danny Baker radio shows.
I am prepared for the inevitable night without sleep and I know what I’m doing, I’m good at this.
My ‘packed lunch’ is all planned too, I’m going for a Chorizo and Mozzarella toasted sandwich, two bags of crisps (though not the travel unfriendly Wotsits), a Yorkie chocolate bar, a healthy snack (fruit-based flapjack type affair) that won’t get eaten; a bottle of water, a small bottle of red wine and five small cans of ready-mixed Gin and Tonic to dull the pain of being on a bus for ten hours.
I’ll eventually get back home and like James Bond in Skyfall, I’ll straighten my cufflinks, tighten my tie and walk back into my family.
This is when it gets difficult.This is when I need to calm the crazy. This is when I need to stop being me for a bit and just relax, what no one wants at this point is what usually happens the minute I get home, to whit, me stomping around the house complaining about the mess, noisily tidying up kids toys before I’ve even taken my suitcase upstairs, tutting at what I perceive to be the appalling mis-management of the fridge in my absence or straightening the pile of DVDs that shouldn’t have been left by the television anyway. I won’t do that this time.
I’m going home and this time I’m going to hug them and hold them all first. And I might not let them go for the whole three days I’m there.

NB Having said all that, the chaos that is my home life is available as a book, published by Summersdale and available HERE