Spun

So no one rejected me yesterday, neither in my conscious life, my unconscious or my subconscious. It was a good day, involving old friends, delicious halloumi, white wine and stand-up comedy and I felt very lucky. Probably not feeling quite so sprightly was the guy sitting on a stool high up in the slips at the Soho Theatre who, halfway through Greg Davies' winning set, started having a massive fit. The lady next to him shouted out, the house lights came up, and we all swivelled our heads, Wimbledon-like, to the right where we helplessly watched the man slither off his stool and vibrate on the floor. The floor manager called out for a doctor and eventually a man went over and knelt down, trying to calm the fitter down. It initially worked, but he then started up again, probably freaked out by the fact that he'd come round to realise an entire theatre audience was watching him jerk and flail. The man had been alone, so no one could confirm exactly what was going on. After a minute or so, we were asked to decamp to the bar, and it was a fair while before the stretcher arrived and he was carried out. Returning to our seats in the auditorium, I asked the gentleman next to me (who hadn't decamped as requested) if I'd missed any major excitements, and he said that the guy had seemed fairly wrecked when he came to, slurring his words and being a bit aggressive with the paramedics, but he wasn't sure if it had been too much booze or if everyone's like that post-fit. After another couple of minutes, Greg bounced back on stage and we all got back to laughing.

I often don't have a bent when I'm writing - I just tell you what's going on in my head. Maybe I should start trying to be more polemical, but I can't really find an angle on the guy-has-fit-during-comedy-gig story. I didn't learn anything from it and it was handled well by the theatre. Still, it seemed like an anecdote worth recounting.

In a slightly more opinionated fashion, I can admit with pleasure that I am grinning from ear to ear at the news that David Cameron's chief spin doctor has had to resign due to being a lying, unscrupulous, Murdoch-loving hack. It is a glorious moment of karma and one that I'm sure is bringing a lot of shadenfreudic happiness to a lot of people. I can but hope that Coulson's departure will assist in exposing some of the disastrous decisions that have been made of late, the sneaky dismantling of our treasured NHS being only one example of many hideous neoliberal choices that are changing this country for the Much Worse. I'd be furious about it all but, as usual, I feel powerless and completely unrepresented, so whinging on here and on Twitter is about all the vitriol I can muster. I used to think it was laziness that stopped me getting involved - now I think it's a total unwillingness to compromise my ideals - I'd rather do nothing than pour a phenomenal amount of time and effort into a system that is inherently flawed for very little reward, safe in the knowledge that my incalculably large sacrifice will be shortly forgotten. Actually, that's basically laziness isn't it. Either way, I'm aware that it's a sad response to the current political state, but I don't think I'm alone in doing the maths and finding the situation doesn't add up. I've always suffered from black and white thinking, and a political life strikes me as a very grey area of no man's land: an over-academicised, over-wrought, out-dated, unfair system that I'm happier ignoring. Except when twats like Coulson get exposed - that bit's fun.

What else is news? I'm off for the weekend shortly, a lot of cleaning to do and then Black Swan and a reunion tomorrow and hangover brunch on Sunday. In amongst all that I need to squeeze in a run, some yoga and a substantial chunk of writing. I don't have much hope that the latter will happen, but maybe if I state my intentions here, I'll be forced to do something about it. Because looking like a failure in front of you would be unbearable, given that it's never happened before. Oh no. Not ever. Not even once.