After some time off for decorating, holidays, weddings and all manner of other stuff, my first gig in over a month was at that good old, friendly gig; Jester Jesters. And boy, was I rusty!

Failing to learn a lesson from previous gigs, I hadn't really put enough time into rehearsing for this one, and I really needed it. The problem with having a lot of short gags is that its a pain to remember them in order if you've not practised enough to make it second nature. As a result, I ended up doing the woefully unprofessional trick of writing my set list on my hand...then skipping through it in the wrong order in the hopes of keeping up momentum. I took a video and could see my nerves manifesting in all the things I used to do: hunched shoulders, dropping volume at the end of ad-libs, etc. Must work at not doing those again!

I was also trying a lot of new material, with the aim of making my set a little less "punny". Upside: they got some laughs. Downside: my delivery was terrible. Silver lining: I can get a lot more out of them. Unfortunately, this meant that I overran to the tune of about a minute, which I hate doing. I've since done some pruning and think I have a lean 5 for Thursday's gig.

So I've broken its back and I'm back into stand up after my break. Not a great gig, but not a cringeworthy disaster either. On to the next!