The Fury Homunculus

This blog is really a footnote to my screw up morning at Heathrow, can you read that here https://robinince.wordpress.com/2016/11/12/a-warning-to-the-not-curious-enough/ 

The stomach muscles bruise and the throat tightens with during each new part of the journey I am not meant to be on. My anger comes with dismay at myself. At this point, I should be just over halfway across the Atlantic, traveling towards to a lunatic and joyous mission.

As regular readers know, my blog posts divide into subjects of “hey, I saw a great thing, this is it”, “Grrrr, I am not sure humanity is performing at its best”, and “I am hoping that by typing my frustration with myself I will somehow feel better”. I read rumours and research that revisiting and analysing annoyances can make them dwell over you for longer rather than vaporise them, so this may that both this, and much of my stand up career, was not as useful to me as I might have hoped.

I can blame travel agents or lack of warning that rules to enter Canada had changed 48 hours ago.
I can rail against this system that failed me, but as I rail, the fury homunculus that stomps around my brain is telling me, “you are only shouting so loudly so you can’t hear the quiet voice, with steely eyes, that is saying, ‘but you should have checked everything and you didn’t. Never rely on others if it means you fail to rely on yourself too’”.

On Wednesday, I didn’t know if I could do the Toronto show. Winded and gasping at the Trump victory and with a chest infection, at 7am (GMT), I sent an email to Hadfield Central saying I didn’t know if I could make it. Then, I walked outside, and I walked and I walked, and I thought, “what the hell are you thinking? And it’s only a bit of a bloody cold. And it’s an adventure. This is a show that must be done. In dire times, astronauts, mythbusters and Ninja Sex Party are what is needed. We have to be flamboyant against despondence.
For 72 hours, poetry and lyrical cosmology, and fighting words have been swirling and gurgling in my mind.

And now, I am on a London Midland train, moving in the direction of Canada, but it will only manage to take me 30 miles nearer to it from London. It is raining outside. People smell of stale Friday booze.
In Hammersmith, I saw a brutal young driver swear harshly at a cyclist before driving too fast down a side street.

I think about the people I have let down or inconvenienced. I can hear their voices. Those close to me thinking what an idiot I was not to have checked everything. I think about our tour manager, Giles, who drove me all the way from Chesterfield to Heathrow for no reason last night. I think of how I have screwed up the running order of Generator.

I may resort to gin. I may sit outside the local pub in the rain, hood up, real ale down.

There is no one at home. I can sit in the dark and dwell on my further failures, or, in the spirit of the Toronto Generator I am missing, I can create something, a thought, a scene, or even something insanely ambitious, like tidying some of the corners of the house where vast stacks of books teeter.

I have fucked up. I have been stymied by some new difficulties to cross borders, there will be plenty more new difficulties to cross borders if our insularity increases, as many seem ti hope it does. I will make a not of how I made this mistake by creating a small, lettered scar on my brain, and then I better bloody get on with something.

I am sorry to have failed this grand Hadfield project, and I hope that there is wonder and delight in the Massey Hall tonight. Thanks for bearing with me. I am sorry to miss this adventure.
I liked it when the tour T shirt said – CHESTERFIELD – TORONTO – CARDIFF
NOT
CHESTERFIELD – TORONTO (CANCELLED DUE TO INEPTITUDE) – CARDIFF

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