This month it’s late night motorway adventures, the joys of skiving and the best things my daughter said to me this week.
Running on fumes
As a stand-up comedian much of my time is spent behind the wheel of my trusty Sportswagon, thundering along the nation’s tarmac-topped arteries delivering a wide load of comedy gold to the good people of Britain. It can be quite lonely and there is only so much Smooth radio and late night phone-ins about alopecia that can be tolerated before one is consumed by madness.
As a result I and another fellow comedian, Dan, have started using this dead time to have late night in car chats; we are like two truckers on CB radios, we even start the conversation with the words “breaker breaker!” It’s a great chance to talk about life before a gig and decompress after it. As any sort of social life has been sacrificed at the altar of stand-up comedy, this is the nearest we get to a chat down the pub. The only difference is that we are both behind a wheel, stone cold sober and going in opposite directions to the various comedy clubs strewn throughout this great island. Of course we have snacks, crisps between the knees or a cheeky packet of dry roasted, opened out into that underused alcove below the stereo.
Last night I performed at a function in a Bradford tennis club; smashing folk; everyone had a ball, well two actually in case they messed up the first serve. A special mention goes to the man on the front table who kept his back to me for the entire performance. It was like doing a gig to a taxi driver; I even gave him a tip at the end, which was to “face the front.” It was a steely determination to not participate that can only be admired. At one point I almost got him to rotate by ninety degrees. I wondered if he was a big owl and would just move his head round on the jokes he liked, but it was not to be. He reminded me of my father actually, mainly because he is often bitterly disappointed in me too.
After the gig I got the phone call from Dan, “Breaker Breaker!” We were so engrossed in our post gig forensic dissections that I failed to notice that I was running low on fuel and had just blundered onto the motorway without thinking. I knew I could be in trouble. Dan proceeded to stick with me like a wing-man; it was like a pilot being talked in for an emergency landing. “Stay at fifty six mate, just cruise,” he said. I was like the hero Sully Sullenberger who pulled off that famous emergency landing on the Hudson River. The car fuel computer said thirty miles to go, services were twenty eight miles away: it’s going to be close. Then the computer blanked out, I was without instruments, I’d lost an engine, I was, in aviation terms, flying blind. You can’t ring the RAC for running out of fuel like this, I mean you probably can, but they’ll just come out, call you a bellend and charge you a hundred quid. It was unbearably tense for the next ten miles. I was now rubbing the dashboard of the car and offering words of encouragement; like that scene in cool hand Luke where they feed him the eggs. It was man and machine working as one. At this point Dan was on his driveway, but being a true professional and wonderful human he stayed with me. “I’m not leaving till I know you’ve made it!” Fourteen miles to go. I passed a turning for Leeds city centre, part of me wanted to turn off. “You’ll not find an Asda,” said Dan, “stick with the motorway.” I now had just 4 miles to go. “Does the car feel light?” Dan said, “Yes,” I said, “think she’s fading.” One mile to go. This was agony, but at this point I knew I could at least attempt a manful power walk from here should I need to. The turning then appeared, Salvation! The markers for the slip road, “three lines, two lines, one line” we counted them down together, like a New Year’s Eve countdown coming live from Big Ben, I’d made it!
It was at that point I looked down from the fuel gauge, where i had fixed my stare for the last twenty five agonising minutes.
“Ah shit Dan, I’ve had the air-con on too mate.”
It was at the point my wing-man lost sympathy and hung up.
I skive to feel alive
The job of a parent is a thankless and relentless one. We live for those stolen moments, the respite of finally having some brief time to yourself. It can be like a little holiday: often you’ll just start to relax and enjoy it and then suddenly it’s over. So here is the confession, I, Scott Bennett, am a serial skiver. A shirker of responsibilities, a conniving, devious excuse for a man who will take any opportunity he can to kill time and bask in the solitude of his own company. This behaviour is addictive. Sometimes I will tell my wife I am going to put the bin out and just hang around behind the shed for forty five minutes. Sitting there next to the water butt just staring at wood paneling, it’s glorious. Whenever I feel low I think back to that special time and smile. On many occasions I’ve often hidden in the house itself, pretending to count the saucepans in the pantry. I can hear my wife on the baby monitor, desperately struggling with the two children upstairs and I think, “I’m going to have one more brew, then I’ll deal with that.” Shameful! On more than one occasion my wife has come to find me, red-faced with a baby under her arm. She asks what I have been doing: “I’ve been shouting for your help!” “Work,” is my reply. The reality is I was looking on Youtube at interviews with the surviving cast members of the 90’s sitcom ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’: appalling behaviour.
My wife and I are as bad as each other. Only last week we found we had run out of nappies. As soon as it was announced it was carnage in that hallway; a race was on to see who could neglect their parental responsibilities the quickest. I’m trying to trip her up, she’s pulling at my sleeves, it looked like a fight in a prison yard; the children looked on in disgust. I lurch for my car keys, my wife grabs my wallet out of my back pocket, “You’ll get nowhere without this pal!” I shouted back, “You can keep it, I’ll steal them!” I race down the driveway still wearing my slippers and open the car. As I get in I can just make out her voice behind me, “on’t you dare be too long.” I drive away as fast as I can, which on that day was nine miles per hour. I put on some Enya, turn on the heated seats and congratulate myself on my victory.
I’m not saying I took a long time, but when I came back with those nappies, my daughter had grown out of them.
Things my six year old said to me this week
Upon asking how her day was at school:
“I think I accidentally ate some soap.”
When passing a discarded item of clothing on the pavement as we walked into town:
“Look daddy, a dead sock.”
Scott Bennett
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