It’s a sad and pathetic boast, but I am the best at planning work, just one of the world’s worst at getting it done. I’ve got a bit better recently, managing to devote myself to something after a lot of faffing around, when once it was pure faff and no devotion. I think that, no matter how futile it was, writing The Power Of 10 proved to me that I can get something finished, but God knows how much tea making, flat tidying, Lovejoy watching and CD organising that involved, all helping to slow me up.
I love shopping for stationary, but how often do those pens get used, those files filled? I love the idea of a great office, but what would I do in it?
Wade needs a desk, I’ve decided, if we’re going to work solidly and equally on Global Hangover over the next few months and so I went to Habitat on Tottenham Court Road to find him one. This, I decided, could count as work for the day. I’m in London to get GH moving, and despite having the paperwork in a folder under my arm to be getting on with, I chose to carry it around and look at desks for my business partner instead. This is so very, very typical. It’s actually working to avoid work.
I’m acutely aware that I’m doing this too. Everything in my head, well let’s say 95% of it, is saying ‘just sit down in a café and get on with the stuff you should be doing’ but the 5% that knows there isn’t a deadline or anything for the proper work is saying ‘you could do that, but think of Wade. He’s not got a desk. You should find him one. That counts as work. It does.’
I found a great one, and at a good price. He’s the proud owner of an iMac (being a compete Apple nerd like myself) and there’s a desk that is made out of exactly the same shiny white plastic. The computer will look good on that. And there’s another example… thinking about the aesthetics of the office, not the work that needs to be done in it. I’ll tell you how long GH will keep me interested – until the office is finished. Then I’ll be bored again! No, GH will be my life. It has to be. There is no other life.
Habitat is up in Bloomsbury, one of my favourite parts of town. Obviously it would have been better in the 30’s when the literary set, known as The Bloomsbury Set, made it their own, but then pretty much everywhere was better in the 30’s. Presuming you were loaded. Otherwise it was shit, same as any decade that has preceded ours and any that will follow it.
“Oooh! Wouldn’t it be lovely to have been alive in Victorian London…? All those white Christmases… All those toffee shops… The dances…�
No-one says “Oooh, wouldn’t it be lovely to have been alive in Victorian London…? All that dysentery…. Throwing excrement onto the street… The rats…. The alarming rate of infant mortality…The murder…�
Standing on Chenies Street I saw Karl Pilkington again, as first mentioned yesterday, and this time he was walking along with Ricky Gervais. The attention the latter got was quite incredible. No-body approaching him, but people stepping out of their offices to watch him walk away. It could have been Madonna. I watched him and Karl pass and thought how it’s really impossible to plan a career. I believe Gervais was stony broke until he was 36. In fact, A used to work with him before he’d made it. And now… multimillionaire, fans across the globe, darling of Hollywood, King of the Beeb. And a self-confessed lazy bastard.
I was saying this to Dad yesterday, the idea of hard work paying off is rubbish. It’s all chance. The lazy do occasionally win. The idle and stupid can win too. It’s not true that you do get back what you put in, although I suppose you could argue it highers your chances. I don’t even know what I mean by ‘win’. I suppose ‘win’ means proving people wrong, in part, and fulfilling some ambitions. Getting a platform. It’s just a case of being yourself, innit…
That’s a great philosophy. Can you tell I’d not really thought any of that through?
So my own comedy career needed to get some attention tonight, not that I even want to think about the gulf between mine and Gervais’. Not that I’m jealous, I think he’s great. It’s brilliant that he’s done things his own way and ‘won’. But anyway, it’s fair to say I’m lagging behind a bit. Drew back a few centimetres of the miles that are between us with a good performance at The Comedy Café in Shoreditch this evening. Really enjoyed it.
Now all I need to do is come up with The Office. Might get a new desk first…
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