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Wednesday 13th May 2020

6379/19299

Nothing happened today. The shagging dog didn’t even shit on the floor. Give me a break.
I am still excited by the fact that the food waste collection started up again this week. It makes me genuinely very happy. I think I might be middle-aged. But how? I am only 23.
It is good to have the dog back though, especially for the non-broadcast dog walks. Last night I took Wolfie out for a precautionary wee/poo in the field next to our house. I forgot the torch and it was dark. A sudden sound like thunder shocked me, but it turned out to be one of the horses belting down the field. It was exhilarating and slightly scary. But primal and beautiful and nice to see these usually very chilled horses living it up in the dead of night.
This evening I did a walk after the kids’ baths and the village was bathed in crepuscular light and nature was blooming and I could see my stone field on the other side of the valley. A rabbit hopped around the horse field and the horses pretended to be placid and not crazy and chewed on the grass.
The lockdown has relaxed a bit, which is scary but probably necessary. The unspoken truth of it all is that we’re pretty much all going to get this virus at some point and the government is just trying to manage it so that the NHS can cope. So we can only cross fingers and hope we’ll be one of the lucky ones that it bounces off and not one of the ones that head to intensive care.
Or we can stay locked down til the vaccine (that I think is unlikely to come) or we die of natural causes. Alone and unhugged. 

I got a wonderful reaction to RHLSTP with Michael Palin. I am too nervous to watch it myself and conscious that I will just regret the things I didn’t ask (and that I didn’t give him more opportunities to riff), but others are less critical of my efforts and seem to be enjoying it. Have a look to see how we acted (just) before lockdown.
It felt like it was hardly worth continuing doing RHLSTP after this. Didn't expect the Universe to agree.

And another fun remote RHLSTP tonight with another national treasure, if a slightly less valuable one, Richard Osman. You can watch here  or wait for it to be released as a podcast.
The thing that I wished I talked about, but forgot to talk about (and may have asked him before) is the fact that he got the Pointless job because he was the one demonstrating that role when they did the play through for executives. Clearly someone decided they liked him doing it, but that might very well not have happened and someone like Gyles Brandreth or Rob Beckett might have been given the role. Richard had not been in front of the camera before and would presumably have been happy to carry on as before, but instead, due to that decision, he has become a bona fide major broadcaster. He deserves it because he is effortlessly witty and charming (and also charmingly rude when the situation calls for it). He is really one of the funniest people off the cuff that I have encountered. But there’s an alternate Universe where no one but his friends knows about that. Chance plays such a big part in life (and show business particularly), even if talent is also required to be a success. He makes everything seem so effortless, which it might be for him, the clever sod. Always fun to talk with him. Though he didn’t go for the jugular as much without an audience to egg him on.
Or maybe we’re finally friends!


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