The comedian, Jim Holland (not to be confused with the Irish Folk Singer or the Glaswegian Typist), arrived at my house last night to join us in a dinner of Burger & Chips and partake in some sauntering and stabbing in the virtual world of Skyrim.

I helped Jim create his own little character and mentored from the far sofa. After he’d sauntered and stabbed aplenty, I thought it would be good to show him where I was in this fair digitised land and went to load my character.

For some unknown reason (fate, magic or maybe even a bug in the code) my last save had reverted to an earlier version on Level 20, rather than Level 23. This may sound alright to you mere mortals but as any seasoned Skyrim aficionado will tell you….there are many dungeons of difference. Long hours had been ploughed, dozens of battles fought. I’d married a shopkeeper’s sister and now this arrangement no longer existed. I’d have to start my quests and civil wars all over again. I’d have to find love once more, both ingame and out.

After I had got over the initial shock and stopped blaming Jim’s presence I became accustomed to this. It was out of my control and there was nothing I could do. I would just have to sit and start again from Level 20….maybe even try and do things a little differently. Did I really love that Shopkeeper’s sister, or had I married her on a whim for her bank balance and home cooked meals? Was there possibly somebody else out there with a little less repetitive dialogue?

However, I decided today that enough was enough.  This had demonstrated to me that I would need to regain some control of my real life with tough decisions.

So I have made the decision to quit stand up comedy indefinitely. 

Somebody might actually be a little sad by this, so I’ll just clarify some reasons for doing this. Not all of them because they are too numerous and dull.  They are not because I lost 3 levels of play on Skyrim. That was merely a metaphor….albeit one that has no correlation to what I’m talking about. Maybe it’s a mixed metaphor.

Anyway, my initial reasons are that I am just not able to commit myself to it completely. I work during the day, I look after a family outside of that. There is precious little time to sit and work on material and performance honing. Plus, I have not written any new material of worth for quite a while. The inspiration is just not there.

The other reasons I have….well, I think the stand up comedy world is a little over crowded. Everybody’s jostling for a position and nobody really knows where they’re going to go. Unless they want to be the new Keith Lemon, in which case they’re a prick. 

I once told myself (and my wife) that I would have written a book when I was 30. I’m almost 9 years overdue. It’s almost impossible to think about writing a book when you’re trying to spend your spare time working on a new comedy set. When you spend more time wishing you were working on the book than thinking about a set, then it’s probably best to work on the book instead.

Finally, the other day I saw the movie Drive. It’s a brilliant filmic work, destined to be a cult classic. It also has an excellent soundtrack and it’s inspired me in some ways to work on a new Rashamon album. This had been at the back of my mind for some time but the movie and soundtrack have really pushed it to the fore. I switched on the studio the other day and started experimenting with bleeps and beats and tape loops. It made me happy. The album will be called ‘You Can Solve Everything’. It will be the third and final Rashamon album. I think it’s good to have things in threes. I can assure you I won’t return in 10 years with a bunch of prequel albums. Promise.

I don’t have any release dates for either book or album at the moment. I suspect the album will be ready first but I will also utilise the creation process to soundtrack the book writing. Dark Medieval electro pop? I think I like the sound of that.

Now I've got that off my chest I shall have to go away and consider the actions.  So on that note....I'll try and give you an update on both projects as soon as I can but this could be a week or it could be a month or so.  I will get back to you when I can.

Adios for now!