8174/21094
Haven't Waitrose read Animal Farm? Pig Farmers are all very well in theory, but it doesn't work out in practice.
Catie, my wonderful wife, was so blinded by love for me (you can't blame her) when we met that she didn't do the maths in her head. Sure I was a youthful 40 back then and in my prime, (blooming beautifully, but minutes away from turning into a rodent infested pumpkin) and she was 27 and the age gap wasn't noticeable (to us at least). But she's recently realised that in a couple of years she'll be in her 40s and I'll be in my 60s and she'll be married to an old, old man. She should have done the math(s) back in 2008, but if the life assurance wasn't enough to convince her to do me in then surely this revelation will be.
This is all exacerbated whenever we go home to see my folks because Catie gets to meet my (admittedly loveable) idiot of a father and see how similar he and I are and realise that if she hangs around long enough, that's exactly what she'll end up with. I love my dad, but I wouldn't want to be married to him. My mum is an absolute saint, but when you look exactly like ex-England football manager Bobby Robson you don't get your pick of the crop.
Even if Catie can escape her fate via murder (or divorce- that's also an option, I don't know why I'm pushing the murder narrative) then she can't escape the Herring curse, because like some perverse Russian doll, the next generation has another clone of TK Herring, Ernie Herring, so her days will be dogged by an affable fool, making jokes about everything, occasionally overstepping the boundaries of good taste and being a general buffoon.
I just have to look into her beautiful eyes to see the regret. So I never look into her eyes so I can pretend she isn't disappointed in the curse she has placed on herself.
If she needed any more pointing up of what her future will be, as we packed and prepared to head back to Center Parcs to pick up my coat and house keys that I'd absent-mindedly left behind on Friday, our morning was spent trying to locate dad's credit car wallet that he'd had at the restaurant yesterday but now couldn't find.
I was pretty sure I'd checked the table when we left and there was nothing there and I'd walked with dad back to the car and think I'd have noticed him dropping it, so I was reasonably confident that it was somewhere in the house, but he'd checked his pockets and armchair and we looked in the car. Nothing.
Shortly after we'd made a stop at Longleat and I'd disappeared to the lost property shed to get my coat, we got an email from our niece saying that the small credit card wallet had been found. It had been in dad's back pocket the whole time, wrapped up in two blank cheques (who still carries cheques around?)
Catie saw her future more clearly and a tear fell down her face.
At least this means my dad can no longer take the piss out of me for the time I lost my car key at their house and we looked everywhere for it and we were at the point where Catie was going to have to go back to London to get our spare one. I'd checked my bag so when Catie went to do so I shouted at her that it wasn't in there, obviously. Then about 30 minutes later I had a vague memory of having emptied my pockets into it the night before and found the key in my bag.
Again, the similarity of the Herring hubris and idiocy would not be lost on her. If I truly loved this woman why have I ensnared her inside a nightmare that will only end with my manslaughter? I have to be honest that divorce won't do it, as I'll still be hanging around like a clumsy bad smell. Also I smell bad.
My mum has put up with my dad for 75 years now and still seems to love him, possibly hoping that after enough time he will surely learn. He is, it has to be said, a much better man than I am and my mum has the patience of an England football manager, which doesn't make things any better for Catie.
I know Catie loves my dad though, and rightly so, he is a generous, smart and kind man who loves his family and has done so much for his community and his kids. Sure he sometimes eats lip balm thinking its cheese or thinks you pronounce Doritos "Doritoss" or falls in ponds in his best suit or leaves the family passports and credit cards on top of the car or (sorry don't have time to list them all)... It felt like there was going to be a "but" here, didn't it.
Ironically all these good things probably give Catie hope that I will have inherited some of those, along with the Herring idiot gene, but sadly I've only got the bad stuff and Ernie has been distilled down into pure concentrated Herring foolishness, so it's not looking good for her.
I hope she sticks with me. She's invested so much time in me already and has to believe that I will learn to be a better man soon... it is her only hope. Although she did ask me today if it was possible to buy those fruits from the White Lotus in England....
And with almost three days to go, tonight we hit our Kickstarter target, which means the recording of the show will go ahead and that I now have to write a 5000 word biography from the perspective of a testicle.
Still a few days to join in if you want the DVD (which won't be available anywhere else or any of the rewards (most of which are also exclusive to the kickstarter)
I massively appreciate the support and faith that about 600 people have put in me. Genuinely it means so much that things live or die based one whether enough people want them or not.
