The special day

It's certainly a rule of the universe that I will wake up before Bartelt and want to get up before Bartelt and may well end up waking him later to tell him it's an hour and a half to the tech/train/doctor's appointment. Our first show day in Leeds turns out to be a very special day. The night before we have had a conversation about Bartelt's electric razor. It's not the first time we've had this conversation, and I feel I've could see where it was going from day one, really, but it's been a tough time for him. He an his electric razor have been together twenty years, through thick and thin – and I don't just mean his hair. We have agreed that today we are going to buy a new razor, and I suspect he's hiding in bed so's not to face the shopping trip. But we are Going To Buy A New One.

The other thing about today is that it's my birthday, so I go down to breakfast, sit in the sunlight of the window and watch the road works which are taking place outside. Comfortable, constant change to remind me that we are all ageing and all in need of a little remedial work every now and then. I treat myself to a pretty nasty coffee out of the machine: it may be SecuLent, but it is my birthday, and I open my cards and a present from my Mum. When Bartelt arrives I get him to take some pictures to commemorate this moment. He's not a fan of the coffee either, but then he is a conoisseur of coffee, able to distinguish between 'sharp' and 'bitter' in his espresso.

For a long time all the time and at the moment in the mornings he has no sense of taste, (presumably why he can bear touring with me) yet he can feel the quality of the coffee in his mouth, and knows how he likes the coffee. Can tell if it's sweet enough, that sort of thing. I have a terrible sense of taste and have none of these skills – I can tell if it's coffee. Or Not. That's it. And when we were first spending time together I didn't really believe he had this skill, but he really can do it.

Delightfully it's a beautiful day in Leeds for our shopping trip, sunny and unseasonably warm. There are lots of shops. Really we are looking for the charity shops. Charity shops are a bit of a compulsion with me. But all we can find is the first-hand shops, and lots of them. Neither of us is into shopping, but if we were we'd be very well catered for here. We find a large branch of Boots. We find the shavers. He wants the one which is the descendant of his present one. Well, actually, he want his old one... Even though we have made this show about grief, the loss of the shaver... I... I really don't know how to comfort him.

Then excellences strikes. The best, young shop assistant ever turns up. Luckily it's a bloke, which means he and Bartelt can talk about shaving. I am very, very ignorant about shaving. All I can do is listen as they discuss their necks. I confess I wandered off a bit, mostly metaphorically, but I join in and we start making the lovely shop assistant laugh. The more he laughs, the sillier we get, to the point where he's more doubled-up than anything else, unable to answer our several shaving questions. It's so much fun making people laugh when they're trying to work, one of my favourite kinds of fun.

We invest in the razor. It's exciting. Basically Bartelt wants to go back to the hotel to see if his new razor will make him look like his just escaped from near death by strangulation, which is the look he and the old razor have been developing for a while now. But we have to work. We spend some time and money failing to find much wifi, me getting tenser and tenser about producery-type things. And then it's time to go and tech at the Carriageworks.

It goes really smoothly, the second great technical person of the tour: Ben. His lighting of the seats for the entrance of the audience is the thing which catches Bartelt's eye. And their studio is a great space, ideal for our purposes – as if we have purposes! - and I can feel some excitement rattling around somewhere inside me.