Olympia, Paris
Ahh Paris. City of Lice. You gotta hand it to them Frenchies, they know how to build some kickass city. The Olympia seems to be in the Parisien Knightsbridge (did you know that Armani are doing crash helmets?) and features a fine marquee with giant neon letters, and all the guilded beauty of a truly high class strip club.
It's a hazy, warm and sunny day in a beautiful city.
There's fine food and good company.
We have two dressing rooms.
The audience is ridiculously friendly and noisy, even though I played like a moron.
Matt's publisher takes us out for drinks.
Who could ask for more?
Well.
Yesterday when we were playing football, I got this blister on my right big toe. It's pretty deep and subcutaneous, covering about half of toe, full of blood and who knows what else. I could feel it there, blobbing about. Like walking on bubble wrap, but more queasy. It doesn't exactly hurt, but it's there in the back of my mind, on the base of my toe. This is no surface swelling. The action is all going on in the fleshy midst of the toe. The nastiness wasn't just going to weep out unbidden. It was time for intervention. Kerry bought me a Leatherman for my birthday. It's bristling with hardcore gadgetry, but I have so far only used it for cutting bread and cheese by the river in Florence, which is a precise index of how manly I am.
I pulled out its most wicked blade and set about the ghastly bulge.
They say the first cut is the deepest, but in this instance the first cut was fairly ginger, as was the second, third, fourth and fifth. The sixth, however, punctured the empurpled injury with a realistic gout of 'fluid' and not without a little gory satisfaction. A few moments of manipulation and the tumescence was drained, and I was ready to go about my business, safely plastered.
However, as I sit here typing, I sense an increasing pressure from the area, as if my expert incision has sealed, and deep within my toe, drip by oozing drip, the blister has risen again.
Perhaps I should have a look. Where's my bag... it's lancin' time.
