I am writing this whilst nibbling on a piece of celery. Now there’s a sexy image for you; however, there is nothing provocative or suggestive about my celery nibbling. I hope I didn’t get your hopes up with that opening sentence. Perhaps your racing brains excitedly imagined me starring in a 90s Cadbury’s flake style advert, sitting in a bath whilst suggestively nibbling on a stick of celery, as part of a TV commercial for an organic vegetables company. I have to say, that’s quite the mental leap you’ve made. Might I suggest you tone down your caffeine intake?

The celery nibbling is purely utilitarian. I am very hungry, and celery is currently the only existing aspect of our rider. I’m starting to worry that this lone vegetable might be all that we’re receiving for tonight’s gig in Exeter. Our agent has recently had some extensive dental treatment, resulting in a bit of a speech impediment. He called us up a few days ago to excitedly inform us that he’d wangled us a very healthy salary for this gig. But I’m now beginning to worry that the person taking the booking thought he said celery. No wonder the staff at the venue seemed so pleased to see us. They’ve got the best deal ever: three award winning folk singers for just one bag of celery.

I haven’t written a blog for a while, but I’m sure you’ll all agree that these opening two paragraphs mark a triumphant return. And, without wanting to blow my own trumpet (to present you with yet another suggestive and provocative image – (if you need to take a break and come back to this blog when you’ve cooled down a bit, feel free) I came up with all that creative brilliance with nothing but a single stick of celery for inspiration. In fact, our agent has not even got a speech impediment, nor has he really had to undergo extensive dental surgery. I manufactured that entire scenario just to make the celery/salary based pun. There I was, nibbling on a stick of celery, in Lu of anything else to eat, and then the joke hit me, quick as a flash. That’s how amazing I am. Just put me in a room with a vegetable and I’ll do the rest – which incidentally is the title of my next Youtube video, but I won’t say anything more about that for now; it’s not really the kind of thing that words can adequately describe. And bear in mind also that I made the celery/salary joke in a malnourished state. I’d only had one piece of celery all day, but nevertheless, my comedy brain was still firing. Well you can pretend not to be impressed, but you’re not fooling anyone.

While I’ve been writing this, some sandwiches have turned up. Just think, if we’d arrived at the venue twenty minutes later, the sandwiches would already have been there, and this blog would never have existed, and your day would have been much bleaker, proving that the secret to comedy is indeed
………………………………………… timing.

And in this case, a stick of celery.

We, as in The Young’uns, are currently touring our new production, The Ballad Of Johnny Longstaff. It’s an audio/visual performance telling the story of Johnny Longstaff, a Stockton lad born in 1919 who, at just fifteen, attended a hunger march for jobs, stood up to fascism at Cable street when he was sixteen, fought Franko’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War at seventeen, before going onto serve in World War ii. All that before he was even twenty!

When looking at a life like that, it causes me to consider my own life with a horrible realisation that at the age of twenty, I’d achieved absolutely nothing of real note. I tried to do good deeds wherever possible, but nothing remotely on the same level as Johnny. I mean, what noble acts did I carry out? I helped a few old ladies across the road. To be honest, I’m not even sure that any of them really wanted to cross the road; I just felt overcome with a desperate urge to administer a bout of spontaneous altruism, and in Lu of any fascists to fight, taking old ladies across roads seemed like the next best thing. Unfortunately, being blind, these assisted road crossings often backfired, still, in fairness, I was always very quick to call the ambulance, and so in one way you could argue that I saved their lives.

Obviously nowadays I don’t need to worry about my personal contribution towards the betterment of the planet. I mean, just think of the joy I brought to people’s lives in 2016 alone with my daily dose of wry observations on quotidian life.

There is a sign above our dressing room sink that says, “please do not dispose of your unwanted liquids in this sink, for the benefit of our drainage system.” I wonder what kind of unwanted liquids have previously been disposed of in order to warrant this sign’s existence. Is the “your” in “your unwanted liquids” meant to be literal? I’m not sure I want to go anywhere near this sink. I’m shuddering at the thought of what bodily fluids might have been blocking up the plughole in order to necessitate a sign. I assume that the sign is referring to more viscous liquids, rather than just tea or water, otherwise simply by turning on the tap and washing your hands you would be responsible for unwanted liquid disposal.

Maybe the viscous liquid is caused by artists puking up after binging on celery, due to their being nothing else around to eat. Maybe there’d be no need for the sign if the people at the venue were twenty minutes earlier with the sandwiches. Regardless of whether the errant liquid is regurgitated celery or a more sinister viscous fluid, I’m going to stay well clear of that sink, so in a way the sign has done its job, as there’ll be no unwanted liquids disposal from me.

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