A day in the life of Kai Humphries

31 July 2016

No day is the same which is what makes this job so exciting, to generalise would do it an injustice so let me talk you through yesterday.

I woke up at 4:30am, I rarely set an alarm but I had an early flight to catch from Gatwick to connect in Guernsey and take me to Alderney for my gig. I never fully let sleep take me because I am so unfamiliar with alarms I didn't trust myself enough to breach shallow dozing.

I started in Bethnal green and got the night bus, my experience with night-buses is that everyone on them looks like a zombie so I really fitted in. I arrived at Thameslink to discover my train was cancelled, a brief twiddle on the City mapper app found my next best route which added an element of excitement and fear that I might miss my flight if I hit the slightest hitch. The sense of adventure snapped me out of my zombie state, I went through check in and security as though the mission impossible sound track was playing in my head and was hit with a huge sense of reward as I boarded a propeller jet in the nick of time.

I treat myself to a sleep, which commenced before I took off and ended as I touched down, I love when this happens, it's the closest you can ever get to teleportation. However, it soon transpired I'd missed several announcements and an hour of circling the Guernsey fog before the pilot gave up on landing and took us to a different destination. I only discovered this when I saw the "Welcome to Jersey" sign on the terminal, which confused the crap out of me.

All flights to and from the islands were cancelled, I had been dumped down in Jersey with no plan B and had a mission on my hands. I took the bus to the port and put myself on a ferry to Guernsey with no idea how I'd complete the journey onto Alderney. I used my time on the ferry to conspire with the promoter who found a local boy called Jake who had an RIB (Rigid Inflatable Boat) which was pretty much a 6 man jet ski. He met me on the coast of Guernsey and equipped me with a life jackets then opened the throttle as we skimmed across the swell of the English Channel getting drenched by the spray.

We finally found land and after a quick wash and change sat backstage against all the odds. Two busses, a cancelled train, a new train, a redirected flight, a ferry, a James Bond-esque speedboat and a short car ride. I remember working jobs where if my car didn't start I'd be calling my boss all "I can't make it into work 5 miles from my house" now the might of the universe can't keep me from getting to work. I should have been shattered when I got to my gig but I'd never felt more awake in my life.