Warming Up

The other day I wrote about the joy my daughter has when coming out of school and how life will one day probably crush that spirit. I didn’t realise it would happen so quickly, or that I would be responsible. But due to a mix up between Catie and me neither of us went to pick her up from school today. She had voiced concerns about this happening and her dreams that we would forget her and we told her that wouldn’t happen. So this was a particularly bad parenting fail. I was only about 12 minutes late, but 12 minutes is a long time when you’re 5 and my exuberant girl was in tears.  It was heartbreaking and I felt terrible and it’s good to make a note of this trauma now so that her future therapist can sort out all her issues easily.

I know this is the kind of thing that happens to most of us at some point, parents being human beings and thus fallible. My wife remembers a mix up that left her and her brother stuck at school. My school gate trauma was my mum turning up with a new hairdo and me running and hiding in the toilets because he now had straight hair and presumably I thought she was a different person. That one must have been much more traumatic for my poor mum, forced out of trying something new by her stupid babyish child. But if kids teach us anything it is this, don’t try to have any kind of life or personality of your own from now on or you will regret it.

Luckily things settled down a bit once Phoebe had seen her mum and been smothered in apologies and given hugs and sweets. But the first pain of letting a child down and what would be my first sign of parental fallibility if my daughter hadn’t seen through me at the age of 2 and basically realised I was rubbish.

It was another super busy day and I felt a bit ground down by the last two late nights and early mornings, but I managed to stay alert enough to fight my way through another Twitch of Fun (watch it here) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oCGC6PcCMc&t=2s. There’s a couple of new characters (because there’s not enough of those), a glimpse behind the scenes and a life changing surprise for Donkey. As well as more existential angst for Cocky Carrot, who not only doesn’t really understand innuendo but is unable to wrap his head around who he is. The new version of Total Recall starring him is already in production.

Doing a sketch in the show is something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while and I hope there will be more of this (and that we can move beyond zoom), but I am keen to do more and to get ever more “professional”. Let’s see what the writers come up with next.

Then a watch along of episode 5 of Taskmaster, in which I largely stayed quiet, but it’s a great episode full of great moments, mainly from the unparalleled Daisy May Cooper. We filmed the bit with the watermelon just days before lockdown and Daisy had some weird cold, so maybe that partly explains my reticence to get so deeply into the watermelon (though I ate more than it looks like I did), but I also don’t really like watermelon and Daisy was concentrating on devouring rather than feeding. I am very much the straight man of this series, both in comedy and in terms of just thinking straight down the line about everything. I think Johnny was very unlucky in this episode and feel bad that I was complicit in making him get marked down for the Christmas tree bagging task (in reality there was a lot more to that discussion though and it wasn’t just a single interjection from me, but Johnny definitely deserved to win for his craziness, especially given the blind eyes turned to Katherine’s attempt and weight lie).

I couldn't even enjoy the fact that I had quite a good episode because I was so angry with myself for fucking up the studio task. That had 5 points for me written all over it in four letter words and I am still not over it. I could have just said "rich" and got through to the next round, but I threw myself with "acre" and then, I think, thought I had done enough words. What a ninny! I am six points adrift in the race for the golden head and I would have only been 3 or maybe 2 behind if I'd won that round. I hope that won't come back to haunt me. But then the tarot lady said I wasn't going to win, so I guess all spoilers are off. She also said I'd be happy with the result. But how could I be happy if I hadn't won? She doesn't know me at all.