Warming Up

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We went for a day out at Hampton Court Palace and Phoebe got to meet her Aunty Jill and her cousin Andy for the first time.  A day out for our little family and a chance to introduce the latest Herring to her relatives. Despite not being able to find anywhere to park and then getting caught up in some road rage car horn honking as we pissed off another driver and then having a brief mini-row in the car park that we finally found a place in, it felt special to do our first outing. “We must do this more,” I said to my wife, "and I don’t just mean the bickering in a car park”. Luckily my wife found this funny and we immediately forgave each other for our mildly cross words. And to be honest, the bickering in the car park was a part of the fun. The car park bickering is one of the things I mainly remember from the family trips I went on as a kid. I remember my exasperated mum   shout-whispering at me, my sister and my brother, “Do you see any other families behaving like this?” I don’t even remember what we were doing. I felt sure that other families did act as badly as us, but I recall looking around and not seeing any other kids being naughty and thinking that maybe we were the most evil children in the world. I don’t think it stopped us bickering though.

And my parents remained remarkably calm I now realise in hindsight, as the fatigue that comes with even one kid does make tempers much shorter than they once were. So goodness knows how they coped with all three of us. The reason I can remember the times my parents lost their rags is because it happened so rarely. 

And in spite of this stressful and fractious start to the trip we had a lovely time, though it becomes much harder to look around a tourist attraction with a baby. We had to abandon the pram and carry Phoebe in our arms and she’s now over 10 pounds, which makes her surprisingly tiring to hold for a long time. I realised that in the last 15 months I have lost the equivalent of two Phoebes in weight (though at one point it was three Phoebes) and was carrying around that mass all the time. 

I enjoyed the splendour and the history, though as much as I am fascinated by the Tudors, the Stuarts and all those Georges and Williams leave me cold. Not just are the stories more boring, but the art and the artefacts are as well.

My favourite spot was this portrait of Christina of Denmark, or rather the accompanying label, with its unintended (or maybe intended) diss. “At 16, Christina, a noted beauty, was suggested as a potential bride…” Whoever was adding this information clearly felt conflicted by the historical fact and the face that was staring back from the painting and felt compelled to add, “[this portrait was painted much later in life]”. Just in case anyone looked at it and thought, well that 16 year old is no catch - she looks about 60. What was Henry thinking? It made me laugh in its unnecessary bluntness and judgement. And distracted away from Christina’s rather good joke about if she’d had two heads, one of them would have been at the king’s disposal. But then it’s not the first time that comments on a woman’s looks have over shadowed her wit and intelligence. I reckon they could have left the parentheses out. We’d have worked it out. I feel like the sexist ghost of Henry VIII had been looming over the writer’s shoulder, demanding that that line got added. I don’t want people thinking I would have married a minger, even though I didn’t. There’s no real denying that Henry VIII was sexist. And a bit worse than that. Maybe the sexist ghost of Henry VIII would be a good comedy character.

We watched "St Vincent” tonight, a slightly smaltzy and unrealistic story about a grouchy old curmudgeon making friends with a small boy next door. It was enjoyable because Bill Murray is great, but ultimately I’d like to see a comedy about a grouchy old curmudgeon who doesn’t make friends with anyone or look after prostitutes and nothing changes for him. And it made me a bit sad, only because one of my crazy ambitions was to one day write a film that Bill Murray starred in (he is absolutely one of the greatest comedy film actors of all time) and I realised that that probably isn’t going to happen now. I mean it was probably never going to happen. But there was a point where writing films within the working life of Bill Murray was a possibility. But now, whilst I haven’t given up on the idea, I can't see me coming up with something in time. And I’d really like to write a film for the young Bill Murray (not because the old one isn’t as good, he’s better really and made quite a flimsy film work here). I suppose I just wish I’d written Groundhog Day and Ghostbusters.

The retro video RHLSTP with Russell Brand is now up on Youtube and iTunes.