Day off.

Tuesday, 1 April 2014

One of the differences between Melbourne Comedy Festival and the Edinburgh Fringe is here you get a day off each week. So in melbourne we have every Monday off. You can see the logic as there's less of a comedy-going audience on a Monday night and it gives the acts, particularly the international ones, an opportunity to explore the city and a break from doing their shows.

for us this meant a trip to the zoo and then miniature golf, for what better way is there to experience a new city than through its caged animals and novelty sports?

it was a scorching hot day which whilst enjoyable for us, unfortunately meant that almost all the animals were either asleep or hiding in the shade.

koalas? asleep.

kangaroos? asleep.

lions? asleep.

we even saw a rabbit that we thought was asleep, but it turned out it was dead. it was food for the tigers, who couldn't even be arsed to come out and eat it.

so feeling slightly deflated we headed off for a spirit lifting game of miniature golf. eighteen holes of pure putting perfection followed. david didn't make par on a single hole, paul refused to take off his backpack for the entire round and as the sun set on the back nine lee ruthlessly sunk birdie after birdie much to the annoyance of matt who was about the only person taking it seriously. lee returned to the clubhouse the champion by one shot but i think we were all in agreement that the real winner was golf.

we got a round of beers and ordered a taxi to take us back into town for dinner. fifteen minutes went by and the taxi hadn't arrived so we thought we'd get another round of drinks in. forty five minutes later there was still no taxi, so we went and asked about its whereabouts. apparently one had arrived and then left (it hadn't) and they would send another one asap, so we got another round in and waited.

two hours later the taxi still hadn't shown up. the sun had set, dinner time and come and gone and david had pissed himself twice. there was a toilet, but by now we had gone feral. we were in the middle of nowhere and were starting to think we were the unwitting cast of a horror film, just drinking in the dark and waiting for our certain death.

two hours and forty five minutes after we ordered it, the taxi arrived. spirits broken anew we filed in and collapsed in the back. david pissed himself once more for good measure and paul quietly sobbed.

we arrived at mrs parmas at half nine and ate melbourne's signature dish: a chicken parma. whilst undeniably tasty it is probably the stodgiest meal you could imagine which meant we couldn't go to sleep when we got back to the hotel, and instead were forced to stay up and watch gangster squad- which might be the most disappointing film ever made.

so, what started as a lovely day off by the end had descended into something of a soul-crushing disappointment. the good news is we're really looking forward to doing the show again tonight, mainly to bury the memory of last night.

let's hope for a better day off next week.