An Evening of Progress

Yesterday was "Progress Evening" at my daughter's school.

It started at 3pm and involved a painful process of dashing from teacher to teacher, each one being more stressed and further behind schedule than the one before. I'm used to doctors' appointment times being somewhat over-optimistic. But this was like waiting for several doctors one after the other. I can only assume that the title "Progress Evening" is meant to be a joke - "at this rate of Progress, you'll be here all Evening!" Boom Boom.

My experience of Progress Evening was given something of an edge by the fact that I needed to be at a gig in Burton-on-Trent by 8pm. I got so anxious I kept standing up and sitting down again, causing Brady Jr to eventually say, "Dad you look like you've got OCD. Chill!"

Anyway, the good news is that Brady Jr is clever and that she shows particular promise in Drama, Music and English which makes me very proud.

The bad news is that I almost burst a blood vessel as I crawled through the roadworks on the M6, trying to get to my gig.

I got there though. I didn't make it for 8pm but I got there before the show actually started at 8:30 and I was on in the middle, so everyone was cool about it.

The gig was a lot of fun. It was in a pub called the Wetmore Whistle. It's a fantastic pub. It's a Free House, lovely inside, good atmosphere and great beers. And best of all they have created a great little space for performance, with room for a crowd of about 70 and a neat little stage with good lighting.

The Burton crowd are a good laugh as well. I played about with them a bit and took the piss out of most of them. They loved it. The material got some great laughs. I tried a few new bits and they went well. I'll be listening to the recording over the weekend to see what I can learn.

The quality of the comedy last night was excellent. The compere, Matt Turner, did a great job - a good compere makes such a difference to the evening.

The opener was Geoff Norcott - a very clever observational comedian with a very distinctive style. All through his act I found myself thinking - damn! why didn't I think of that?

And the headliner, Alex Boardman, was just exceptional - much better than most of the people you'll see on TV. (So go and watch some live comedy!)

To quote one happy punter: "You was all f**king brilliant!"

You can't say fairer than that.