Early Start

My wife gets up at 5 o'clock every morning. Yesterday I got up with her and it nearly killed me.

I was fine at first. I thought, This is good. I'm getting loads done and it's not even breakfast time yet.

But around 10 o'clock fatigue kicked in and I spent the rest of the day bumbling round the house in a daze, being angry and walking into things. Hopeless.

I managed to waste a lot of time yesterday doing things that don't matter, producing work that nobody will ever see. I think it's called displacement activity. What I was doing was even more boring than what I was supposed to be doing. But at least it had the attraction of not being what I was supposed to be doing.

I'm in limbo a bit at the moment with my day job. I'm waiting to hear if my contract is going to be renewed. My current contract expires in a couple of weeks and there are no jobs out there at the moment. A part of me hopes they don't renew me so that I can just sit in my underpants, eating chocolate and watching old episodes of Fawlty Towers all day. But then another part of me doesn't want to die in abject poverty. It's a toughie.

It would be fabulous to pack in the day job and do comedy full-time, but I can't at the moment. For one thing, I'm not experienced enough. I need more time to build up and test material and hone my stage skills. And the other thing is family. Being a full-time comedian means being away from home a lot and spending every Friday and Saturday night performing. My family is not at a stage where I can even contemplate that.

The time will come though. Although, in the long term, I will probably concentrate on writing comedy, rather than being out on the road all the time performing. I think it would be good to see my wife every now and then. She's nice.

Me and Brady Jr had a frustrating time at the stables yesterday. We wanted to do an exercise with Murphy The Horse that involved him belting round an 18 foot pen in a giddy canter. But we were asked to stop by a riding instructor who was worried that her student's horse was going to join in with the fun and hare off with her around the paddock at breakneck speed.

I could see how that might have been problematic. And possibly fatal. But teenagers struggle to deal with disappointment and Brady Jr complained bitterly. Then I got sick of her moaning (my teenage moan threshold gets lower every day) and told her to shut up. And things kind of escalated from there.

After that I spent what felt like a year stomping round Asda in a terrible mood. I was supposed to be doing a "big shop" but I couldn't be arsed. I just got a few essentials and went through the Self Serve till. I then spent ages waiting for someone to help me deal with an unexpected item in my bagging area. It was a bag of spinach. A bag of spinach in a supermarket. What's unexpected about that?!!

I've been working in IT for 20 years, but I still can't get through the Self Serve till without needing assistance. And I take failure badly. That patronising woman's voice - "Please wait for assistance." There's even a big red light above your head, flashing like an enormous beacon of incompetence. "Look! This blokes 41. And he can't even scan a pack of Quorn pieces without all hell breaking loose! What a nob-head!"

Eventually, my technical issues were resolved - by a 60 year old woman called Dorothy.

Everyone in Asda hates me. Yesterday they all decided to move as slowly as possible. Some of them didn't even seem to be shopping. Just milling about, blocking the aisles with enormous trolleys containing nothing more than a tin of baked beans and a toilet duck.

It was only later, when I sat down to eat with the rest of the Brady bunch, that I relaxed a bit and realised that I was knackered. Getting up at 5 had put me in a lousy mood for the whole day.

So I apologise to Brady Jr for my harsh words at the stables. And to the pensioner in Asda who I fixed with a hard stare over the fair trade bananas. It seems I'm just not cut out for early starts. Sorry.