Panned! Gig 42.

A slow day today as I'm trying to get my head together after a bit too much to drink at last night's LLC. I did the boats stuff from yesterday, but I'd written it as compere bits and it wasn't really working as a short set which is how I presented it in the end. I even read out the following (largely forgotten and sometimes edited) section from the Wind in the Willows. Not funny but quite interesting. Mole has just followed some music while searching for a missing baby otter...

"Perhaps he would never have dared to raise his eyes, but that, though the piping was now hushed, the call and the summons seemed still dominant and imperious. He might not refuse, were Death himself waiting to strike him instantly, once he had looked with mortal eye on things rightly kept hidden. Trembling he obeyed, and raised his humble head; and then, in that utter clearness of the imminent dawn, while Nature, flushed with fulness of incredible colour, seemed to hold her breath for the event, he looked in the very eyes of the Friend and Helper; saw the backward sweep of the curved horns, gleaming in the growing daylight; saw the stern, hooked nose between the kindly eyes that were looking down on them humourously, while the bearded mouth broke into a half-smile at the corners; saw the rippling muscles on the arm that lay across the broad chest, the long supple hand still holding the pan-pipes only just fallen away from the parted lips; saw the splendid curves of the shaggy limbs disposed in majestic ease on the sward; saw, last of all, nestling between his very hooves, sleeping soundly in entire peace and contentment, the little, round, podgy, childish form of the baby otter. All this he saw, for one moment breathless and intense, vivid on the morning sky; and still, as he looked, he lived; and still, as he lived, he wondered.

   `Rat!' he found breath to whisper, shaking. `Are you afraid?"

   `Afraid?' murmured the Rat, his eyes shining with unutterable love.