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Wednesday 25th November 2015

4744/17403

I believed. And I was told that if I believed then it would happen. But it didn’t happen. My faith in the world is lost. 359 pledged towards the Me1 vs Me2 million, but because they were all too mean to put in an average of £3000 each, that only made a total of £105,040. Tantalisingly close, but so far away. The snooker arena will not be built and at a tragic time like this it’s hard to see how Me1 vs Me2 snooker can continue.

But it will continue. And it will become stronger. Thanks to those who believed. I am disappointed in the 7 billion plus people who didn’t even think this was worth a pound of their money.

I mean some people might argue that it’s incredible that so much was pledged. But not my wife who seems to think this is a vindication that I am wasting my time and should concentrate on more traditional work. That’s what hurts the most. That people weren’t even prepared to give a small amount of money as a symbolic gesture to prove that their partners are idiots who are wrong to piss on their dreams.

I am not bitter about it though. Just heartbroken.

Weirdly my wife has never complained about the monumental waste of time and energy that is this recurring daily blog. Today is the 13th anniversary of it beginning and I have continued to produce an entry for every day ever since. To what purpose? At least there’s a competition in the snooker.

I suppose amongst this guff there have been a few good ideas that I’ve managed to turn into stand up routines or newspaper columns, so it’s not been a complete waste of time. But think of all the stuff I might have written in the 4000+ hours I’ve spent writing this. I have spent about half a year of my life writing Warming Up. What a prick.


But even if you were take a snap shot and read every entry from 25th November over those years it would give you a little indication of the way my life has changed. Today, my wife was having a spa day with a friend, so I was looking after Phoebe. She had a check-up health appointment (just to be measured and to see how things were going) and there was also a free music class we could go to beforehand. I realised how much more than me my wife does with the baby care (in spite of my attempts to play an equal role) as this was the first time I’d taken my daughter to an activity like this on my own. I was though, the only adult male in the room, so can still claim some kind of victory over my parenting participation, due only to the low bar set by the rest of my sex. 

But how different my life now is, to the idiot who began this journey. He would never have sat on some crash mats waving a maraca and blowing bubbles over a dozen babies. And if he had he would have been quickly arrested.

Well, that’s not actually completely true. There was a baby in my life back then, the son of my then girlfriend, but I wasn’t ready for the responsibility and I certainly wasn’t acting like anyone’s dad. I thought maybe my life was becoming stable, but there were many rocky earthquake years to come.

That day on a tube train heading up the Northern line that began all this seems to belong to someone else’s life, it also feels like it might have happened last week. Like someone has taken a vacuum cleaner to my life and sucked up 13 years and thrown them in a bin. Not that they were wasted or useless years, just like it feels like they can’t have happened. Like this blog is some kind of written version of the Portrait of Dorian Grey - or my life is perhaps. Loads of things have happened on here, but in reality no time has gone by (in my head at least). 

 I was 35 and an idiot who needed to grow up and suddenly whoosh I’m 48 and still an idiot, though a more settled one who is more comfortable with himself and smart enough to be happy with the lucky, lucky hand he’s been dealt.

Only now I’ve discovered that if you have a baby you can do all the childish things you wanted to do, but with a valid reason. I was fucking excellent at blowing bubbles. The woman running the class even commented on that. Take that mums, with your relatively small lung capacity. Phoebe would have been proud of me if she could have understood what the fuck was going on.

In another 4744 days I will be 61 (or, you know, not here any more) and will have a teenage daughter (provided World War Three hasn’t taken us all to a radioactive grave) and who knows what else will have changed? Will I still be plugging away here? Surely not. The internet probably will have been usurped by something else by then, or our alien overlords will have us working in sperm mines. Those are the only two options. 

I had the best fun with my daughter, even though she is beginning to assert her negative feelings more than she used to. She’s spirited and is going to keep life interesting for us, but she has a smile that lights up the Universe and I love watching her becoming more aware and I even like seeing her become more frustrated. Life’s a battle, Phoebe, but I think you’re a fighter.  I can see a lot of myself in her (not just that she’s got a head that is almost too big for the measuring charts) and today felt like I had another tiny and cheeky version of myself and I looked forward to all the childish mayhem we are going to create together. I pity her poor mum. It was hard enough dealing with one of us.

It was a long day as I’d woken up at 5.30 (Phoebe slept for an hour or so longer) and it was one of the toughest bed times yet. I haven’t yet lost my patience with my daughter and have tried to stay upbeat and find the harder times amusing, but I was nearly at the end of my tether today as she refused to fall asleep. But eventually she went down and I didn’t shout at her or call her a dick (to her face).

I like my life  better than I did yesterday on 25th November 2002. I look forward to seeing how I like it tomorrow on 25th November 2028. If you’re reading this in the future, then just skip ahead and see. But don’t come back and tell me what happens. No spoilers. 

Thanks to you for reading this, especially if you’ve been here since the beginning. It is something that I am really doing for myself, but if it was actually private then I know I wouldn’t have kept it up for anywhere near this long. I can’t work out if this thing is a triumph or a disaster, but as I treat those two imposters just the same, it doesn’t make any difference. It’s just a load of shit that has happened and which has disappeared into the ether. Trying to catalogue it makes no odds, but it’s fun to try. See you tomorrow I expect.



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