The Plague is here

Adelaide is a beautiful city, full of awesome architecture albeit ‘new world’ and the people are feisty and funny and it also gets a plague of locusts. Did you know that? No I didn’t either, but these things are over an inch long and crunch when you stand on them and make a rattling noise if they get caught in your thick Scottish hair.

Am horrified and disgusted and scared of them and the fringe club is covered in them, the trees are full of them and the fairy lights make them INSANE. You would think after flying into a light for four hours would be enough for an insect to recognise that battering itself is useless and it’s time to ignore the light and go to a locust dwelling and have a wee sleep? No, they don’t do that they seem to senselessly just drive themselves mad at a street light then finally swoop down to street level, all dizzy and angry and confused yet still addicted to street lights. They are mental.

Am shit scared of them and spend most of my time screaming as I walk the streets of Adelaide, people stare at me as I screech and flick yet another locust off my face, they like sitting near your nose.

The show is going great, I am really loving it, I also love the amazing Japanese students they keep giving me as front of house staff. They have trouble understanding plain English and with my accent they stare and giggle and after we communicate by the form of physical dance and mime we muddle through! Awesome! Thank God I have Ashley to do everything needed. Please don’t take this as me criticising people, it’s not - am just exclaiming the odd things that happen, most of the other volunteer staff are painfully shy, I think their parents have told them to do some voluntary work to get ‘involved’ and they come to work at the theatre. Some of the kids do that thing where they whisper or start a sentence then let words drop as is they can’t commit to a sentence and confuse you, they do this with panicked eyes, I feel so sorry for them and then wonder why they are allocated as the fire marshal, yes a kid that can’t talk much in public is in charge if a fire takes hold! I love Adelaide.

The room is a safe haven of coldness with the air-con blasting full time, as outside feels like someone is chasing you constantly with a flame thrower, the heat blasts you like you had opened a pizza oven door instead of your hotel door, who lives in this heat? I now feel sorry for those ‘Ten Pound Poms’ who came here from Aberdeen to be faced with that scorching unrelenting heat, they must have just been exhausted. I don’t know how people can get up and go do a full eight hour shift in this heat, thank God am a comic and only work an hour a night!

I feel incredibly guilty about not going to the beach and not going on the trams and not going to the parks, I cant...am exhausted its 100 degree heat every day and night time is blistering hot as well! Am a whingeing pom!

The show is hard work up at the Town Hall as I thought it would have hundreds of people milling about between shows, but it doesn’t! People haven’t yet got used to the Town Hall as a venue yet and some shows had been pulled due to lack of numbers- it’s a rotten feeling but luckily and with huge hard work on Ashley’s flyering part, not my show! It hasn’t been cancelled once (fingers crossed) I am a trooper and the Adelaidians are awesome.

Australians have a crazy deep sense of gleeful doom, every time you say “I love your city” they say things like “yeah, well, it’s going downhill fast” and they are quite upfront rude as well. Whenever I hand out a flyer men especially say “Fuck you look good there, how much photoshopping did you do in that image? You are rough in real life” nice eh?

Good things have happened as well people have been going onto www.talkfringe.com and registering and voting for me at The Adelaide Fringe! The other good thing that happened was Michael Buble is in town and he stopped Ashley and asked for directions, got chatting and carried my flyer up the Rundle Mall. How awesome is that?

This weekend I am going down to Rundle Mall to do some book signing at the Book Boys shop. Do come and buy a copy of my autobiography.