Long Time No See

Not a Vatican pun about absent popes, although that would be a good one...

Back onto the road of Stand up, and fencing, I am slowly beginning to draw parallels.

Both require a swiftness of mind that you don't normally need to use, albeit from different parts of the brain (as a scientist I am qualified to label them 'Funny-making-bit' and 'Fencing-blade-foot-coordinaty-bit') and both can go right or wrong, depending on your attitude.

Fencing requires a mindset (at least in my case) whereby I think about each point as it comes, rather than what happened in previous points. This has an upside and a down (a double edged sword, if you will...) as you don't get frustrated for longer than it takes to walk back to the En Guarde lines, but you find yourself constantly being caught out by old tricks and repetetive moves as you focus more on what you're about to do rather than amending what you have just failed to do... If you catch my drift.

Stand Up requires a similar mindset- if you don't think you're funny, then the jokes seem a little thin and you end up in a right state. It is best to try and guage the reaction of one joke (and maybe indulge in a little smile at your own ingenuity that you just made twenty or so people laugh) and then work out the best way to approach the next.

I've just realised, saying that, that my stand up style isn't particularly jokey, and more of a relatively amusing rant about animals...

Hmm... More to work on, I feel...