Bulges and Pheasants

This has been quite an interesting and exciting week for me. I’ve taken a holiday - or rather, even though I haven’t been away anywhere, (except for a day trip to London), I had a week off from writing.

Those of you who work from home will know it’s not always easy to give yourself permission to do this, especially when you have a partner who goes off to work every day. Actually, for me, this is always the case, because I do something I love - something which barely feels like work even though I work very hard at it - and my partner has a job he’d willingly give up if he could.

Anyway, back to the interesting and exciting. Phew, I hear you say. Ha!

Monday evening was the final session of the six-week stand-up comedy course I’ve been doing, and we had to perform the five-minute comedy routine we’ve been working on. We were allowed to read out our material rather than learning it off by heart, which took the pressure off, but it was still a nerve-wracking experience. The group was hugely supportive though, and overall it was very uplifting. Unfortunately, whenever I do this sort of thing I seem to include swear words and er…rude material, so I’m not going to post my whole five minutes. But here’s an audio of the beginning of my performance.

Another topic of my routine was the traumatic time, aged 11, when I had to give a talk to my French class. I intended to start off by saying that Joan of Arc was brought up as a peasant, but instead, I confidently told the class she was raised as a pheasant. I’m sure I don’t have to describe the ensuing hilarity, arm flapping and pheasant noises to you.

This disaster had a - greatly exaggerated for the purposes of my comedy routine - major effect on my self-confidence. It gave me a public speaking phobia it took years to overcome. I could barely speak in class, and generally hid silently at the back hoping I wouldn’t be noticed. It wasn’t at all funny back then, but I really wish I could go back in time to tell that red-faced, humiliated girl she would make jokes about it in later life. And that people would laugh for the right reasons.

The other members of the comedy course are busy planning to perform their material at open mic sessions. I’d definitely join them I think, if I lived nearer. They mostly live in an around Manchester - a five-hour journey by train from me. We don’t have the same comedy scene in Norwich, though I’m not saying definitely never!

Performance wasn’t my main motivation for doing the course though - I’m currently developing a character who wants to be a stand-up comedian, and I wanted to learn methods for coming up with material. Now that the course is finished, I’m really looking forward to experiencing the whole thing through her eyes and seeing what she comes up with!