Leftwing Idiot’s been away for over a month. We last saw him in New York in April where we’d been showing our film ‘Me, My Mouth and I’ at a film festival.

This morning Jen and I met him at Heathrow but he wasn’t heading home – instead together we were all heading for Bern in Switzerland.

We landed safely this afternoon and are just settling into our hotel. We’re also settling back into each others’ company. I’m super excited to see Leftwing Idiot but I’m also conscious that my excitement could feel a bit overwhelming after his weeks of traveling alone.

We’re in Bern for a festival called ‘We Need To Talk’. It’s being held in an incredible space, an old riding stables with very high ceilings in the main room. I’ll be performing my comedy show – Stand Up, Sit Down, Roll Over – in one of the theatres.

The comedy show is just me on stage and I do sometimes feel the pressure of being the only performer. But I’m not quite alone though because the show also features a Geranium. The geranium’s a real plant in the audience and my tics can always be trusted to pick on it.

The geranium isn’t one of mine – these are back at the castle enjoying some peace while I’m away. The performing geranium is always sourced locally, and in some places we’ve been to this has been a bit of an issue – sometimes they haven’t been able to find an actual geranium. But apparently this wasn’t a problem here as Bern’s full of geraniums. They’re everywhere, and there are even competitions for the prettiest geranium.

I had no idea about this before we arrived but it’s brilliant and really made me laugh, though I can’t be sure that the audience will find my geranium-berating funny. My tics however seem inspired by both the location and the flowers and a few minutes ago there was a flurry of tics that included:

“The Geranium Protection League – greenfly speaking.”
“Gentle Bern and the Geranium of Hope.”
“Burn a geranium in Bern.”

And the less clear:

“Bern Geranium Burn” or is that
“Burn Geranium Bern” or perhaps it’s
“Bern Geranium Bern” or maybe even
“Burn Geranium Burn.”