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Back home again and glad to have survived this tricky leg of the tour. I've haven't yet been on the new diet that isn't a diet for six weeks, but I have now cleared a stone, as I dropped at least another kilo over the weekend. It's really been magical for this to happen so easily, without counting calories, especially given how nothing else seemed to be working in the last 12 months.
I had to reload the fridge with vegetables and do my dry cleaning, so popped into town. The kids were back on my return and seemed pretty blase about my absence. I missed these little pricks so much. I think they missed me too, but they'll never tell. Later Ernie asked me if grown-ups cry. I told him we do and he seemed incredulous. I am surprised he hasn't seen me crying, but maybe he's wiped the embarrassment from his mind. If I ever do the Impossible Questions for Kids book (it came very close this year) then that might be a good one. It's amazing to think that we seem so alien that our emotions may not be the same as his, but he is a passionate kid.
I took Phoebe to football training and she was in a mood and calling me names because she had lost the training match. She tried to kick me. I laughed when she tried to squirt some water into her mouth and missed by miles and that made her crosser, but she calmed down later.
It's business as usual.
Ernie read to me before bed (he likes to substitute random words with the phrase "peanut pot" still - he thinks this is the funniest thing efer and it sort of is) and I read to him from a book about the human body - predictably he wanted to know how we poo.
He wouldn't go to sleep though and after I'd laid cuddling him for 15 minutes I slipped my arm out from under him and went downstairs, but he came straight down, thinking his sister might be watching the Simpsons. "Going to sleep is boring" he told me, "I want to have some fun." I get it. It will happen boy.
And on top of it all I recorded a thrilling frame of snooker.
We caught up with Only Murders in the Building before having an early night. It seemed impossible that I'd woken up in Bath. Equally it seemed impossible that I'd been away from home at all. Nice to be back into the madness and the kicks and the impossible questions though.
