How I'll Spend My Summer Vacation

Just as an FYI, I’ve decided that the “trying really hard to be funny” thing, while entertaining (for me), is not a sufficient raison d’être for a whole entire blog. I will still be doing that going forward, but today’s post is the first in an occasional series of exciting glimpses inside my actual head! At long last! PROOF that something is happening in there!

As some of you may know, I’m on The Twitters (@kwerky_girl - follow at will!). I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much useful information comes through that timeline, and one of the more wonderful items in the past few weeks was the announcement of fortnightly sketch shows penned and performed by one of my most revered writing role models, John Finnemore! They’re taking place in London, which might be a problem for some Atlantans, but not me! My first thought was: “HELL YEAH I will be dumping my savings account into a duffel bag, carrying it to the nearest Delta agent, and yelling ‘LONDON PLEASE’ at the top of my lungs.” But then I remembered that before I can do that, I have to dump $200 of my savings account into a much smaller bag along with a picture of myself to be delivered to the US State Department, then wait 4-6 weeks for them to get out their damn glue stick and slap the picture on a new passport, because the Delta agent will almost certainly notice that my current one expired earlier this year. There’s no way I can make it. [insert heartbreak here] I mean, they do can do a 24-48 hour renewal in extreme/emergency situations, but I bet they have a loophole that excludes “I will kill myself if you don’t give me a passport” from that. Otherwise everybody’d be doing it.

So I was despondent for a while there. I pulled the website up and just to see how nauseatingly affordable the tickets would be if I could just get there (answer: £6. ARGH!). Then I saw the text on the ticket-purchasing site, which reads as follows:

The triumphant return of the least imaginatively named show since 'Cats': John Finnemore, writer and star of Radio 4's Cabin Pressure; regular guest on The Now Show; and popper-up on things like Miranda and That Mitchell and Webb Look, presents an hour of brand new sketches every fortnight over the summer. Completely different material every show. Bloody hell. Now I see it written down, that's a lot of sketches. I should probably get on with them.

And as I read those last few sentences, I thought, “Christ! That really is a lot of sketches. Assuming one page=one minute, that’s 60 pages of original sketch material every two weeks. Jesus. Someone send that man a metric ton of coffee.” And then I thought, “Wow. That would be a really incredible challenge. Especially for someone who, say, needed to dust the cobwebs off her brain and get back in the habit of writing sketches regularly.

Like she used to.

Yep.

60 pages every two weeks.


Quite a challenge.”

And then a [really stupid] part of my brain said, “I ACCEPT!” And thus was born Kimberly Welsh’s Sketch Night. That happened a week ago today, and so far I have 15 pages. And based on their content, I had to modify the name to Kimberly Welsh’s Incredibly Mundane Sketch Night (Mostly About Ordering Coffee). Then I realized that there won’t be any public performances, so the “Night” part doesn’t really fit. So: Kimberly Welsh’s Incredibly Mundane Sketch Challenge (Mostly About Ordering Coffee). I’ve spent more time rewriting the name than finishing sketches. Not exactly epic progress, but give me a break! I had to work 40 hours and spend 2 evenings at the theatre. I have most of my weekend free, so hopefully I’ll be able to get on track now. Wait - not “hopefully”; DEFINITELY. And while I’m not going to get all obsessively serious about it, I will keep you posted. Why? Because you care.

The good news for everyone is that this will keep me off the streets this summer. And it has taught me a valuable lesson about why it’s important to keep your passport up-to-date at all times: Because you never know when John Finnemore will start a run of sketch shows. Apparently.