Terror

Okay, so this is my second ostensible attempt at funny writing with a view to shitting myself whilst stood in front of a room full of people.
As you can tell, this prospect, whilst it has indeed been a dream of mine for a number of years, scares the holy bejesus out of me. Fuck knows where to start, you know? Maybe everyone goes through the same things when they start, who knows. Every time I ever read something one of the pros says about when they started they always just go "I did my first gig and it went..." then either "great" or "terribly, which taught me a lot". I mean what the fuck happens before that?

Is it that easy to write jokes? I don't think so. Maybe I'm funny. Maybe I'm also a paranoid, self-deprecating, confidence-lacking shmo and the stuff that falls from my lips would get me by initially. Either that or I'll have a Dragons Den-style breakdown and, well, I guess that would at least be funny for someone, even if not myself.

So what's been on my mind I hear you ask...well, the whole turning into your parents thing. Because it fucking creeps up on you! It really does...how many times as a kid did you laugh off your parents' suggestions and recommendations, and, well, orders, because hey, you knew better. Fuck off, you were 12. You know shit-all at 12. But you get by. You live. Nothing hideous happens to you. But for some fucking reason, when you hit your mid-20s, those little comments your parents made when you were younger start resonating within your head, never to leave.

Case in point - I was heading to the Silverstone Classic festival. I mean I had no idea what to expect, but a reasoned thought process might have been "it's at a racing circuit. It'll be all paved I imagine. I have a feeling they have one or two cars down there at times". But when packing my bag, the latent voice of my mother just popped up, as if sitting on my shoulder, and said to me 'but Dan, what about if it rains and your jeans get soaked through?'. I'm a lazy 26-year-old twat...I wear the same pair of jeans for at least two weeks before I wash them. There's no chance I need two pairs of jeans over the course of one weekend unless I unfortunately manage to catch an airbourne case of "nuclear diahorrea". This seems unlikely. So why did I feel compelled to pack a second pair? I couldn't stop my fucking arms. They weren't attached to my brain any more. My head was going "shut up mum, this'll be fine. I'm not retarded", but my hands picked up the jeans and threw them in the bag...'just in case'.

Fucking just in case. I took a huge motherfucking bag to this festival, wore one pair of jeans and three t-shirts - and that was being flamboyant. I even wore the same boxers two days in a row. But I had sun tan lotion, plasters, extra boxers (at least one more pair than days you're away for - as I frequently shit myself in public), wellies...fucking wellies! At a race course! What the shit?! What's wrong with me? Why have I been conditioned to carry the world on my back whenever I leave my god damned house? I'll make do! Fucking ludicrous....