I made it through the day. I even worked after 6pm, though my last act before leaving the office was to have a bit of a chat with the new departmental manager and get her to ban me from the office until Monday morning. I needed it doing for my own good. The temptation to keep working was apparently there, which is sort of good, but rather not good if my obsessive personality is allowed to go on unchecked and drive my body into the ground.

I drove home and sat down. My head spun slightly. I had two choices. I could go to bed or I could organise a night out. Why did I organise a night out? I have no idea. It's that inability to stop. I guess it's like getting to the end of a massive endurance race on your bike and then freewheeling a few more yards, rather than stopping dead. I don't know. My bike was still in the repair shop.

Anyway, a comedy friend of mine, the excellent Toby Hadoke was doing his one-man show Moths Ate My Doctor Who Scarf in Reading tonight. When I first found out the date, I planned to go. I didn't get tickets. I just planned to go. As the date drew nearer, I still intended to go, but still didn't quite get around to buying tickets. I rang the box office to find that they were sold out. This didn't bode well. However, I could go down there and see if there was a standby ticket.

I rang Toby to see if he would like to meet for a drink after the show. I also mentioned my predicament, not expecting anything other than him to acknowledge that I might not be able to make it after all... or maybe getting him to talk the box office into releasing a "house seat" - there's always one or two extras. He said he'd have a word.

I got into town on foot - surprisingly well. I was on the phone for much of the journey, which helped. I spoke to the box office, who hadn't heard of me, nor had they got any tickets. I found out the stand-by system and went for a drink. I had a Red Bull. I needed one. A phone call from Toby made it clear I would be getting into the show somehow. In the end, that somehow was "as a guest", which was very generous.

The show was superb, as always, with a good mix of genuine passion, deep thought and emotion... and laughs along the way - a good way to end the week. After its conclusion, we headed to a local pub with a couple of the attendees of the performance and drank a celebratory pint. After closing time, we headed back towards Toby's lodgings, which were pretty much on my direct route home.

It was midnight when I got back, tired and happy. On my second double-day of the week, I got to bed at about 39 hours awake. I faded out pretty quickly.

I like the world of comedy, and though it might be said that my all-nighters were a partial result of being unable to do a working-late and then going-home because I had a gig to go to, it's the gigs and shows which give me some of the cheerful energy that makes it possible for me to function. Seeing "Moths" tonight was a sort of a coincidence. After a certain amount of delaying, I'd managed to send a copy of the CD of the Radio version of this show to a friend of mine. He'd emailed me today to say that he was going to listen to it on the way home as something of a pick me up. I don't have the monopoly on hard weeks. I thought it would be encouraging to tell Toby that a friend of mine would be listening to his show. You know, as a way of saying, before he went on, that I'm really a big fan of the show and that I get my friends to enjoy it too. I think that, pre performance, a bit of positive reinforcement is always worth sharing. The problem was that I couldn't find a way of expressing "I sent him a copy" in a way which didn't sound like "I burned it for him and stole your performing rights royalty payment from you".

Later on, I managed to slip into the conversation that I'd bought it from Play.com just to be clear that I wouldn't be so cheap as to deny him his Royalty for less than the price of a couple of pints.