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Only two more paid subscribers as a result of the tortoise abuse post. What do you people want? I have passed their details on to the police.
A week to go before our move and though I've been taking boxes across to the new place on a regular basis and seen the builders and decorators working hard (it feels a bit like seven days to get everything done might be ambitious, but the lorry is booked so we're moving regardless) I still haven't got my head round this yet.
It's going to be a wrench to leave the village and my Stocean after seven years and who knows what the consequences will be. This is bigger than a Fish Pie Mix Up or even a Sliding Door. We are massively altering this family's story. For good? For ill?
At bedtime I asked Phoebe what her favourite memory of the house was, but she's got to an age where she prefers a sarcastic remark or a joke about my weight to giving almost anything genuine consideration. I thought it might be the snow days - like when
I made a snowman full of cat shit. Her memory was of Wolfie going nuts in the snow and attacking a snowman, which I don't recall. My first thought of happy memories from this house was weirdly those lockdown days where the family ate at the kitchen table at breakfast and the kids danced round the kitchen singing "The Sun'll come out, tomorrow." As it happened it would be my ball that came out. But aside from that the optimism of that song did prove to be true. We got through that weird time and escaped our happy prison eventually.
But I wasn't overwhelmed with happy memories, in the moment of asking at least. We've generally been content here, after the nightmare of the first few months beset with ghost babies, carbon monoxide leaks, living in a building site with a tiny baby and a brand new puppy....Lockdown was a breeze compared to that.
I suppose the whole thing is my favourite bit. Being a dad (which does overlap with the last couple of years in Shepherd's Bush) has been the best bit of my life, but the first few years of both those little lives was the toughest. Now we're through that I think it's all going to wall to wall fun from now, right?
With stone clearing and Twitch of Fun and ever more sprawling snooker I've been pleased with the creative impetus that this place has given me - even if all those things are a bit insular and possibly the result of being isolated in the countryside. But imagine a world where Twitch of Fun never existed. It doesn't bear thinking about. It will continue once we've moved.
Can't leave it at episode 99. So understandably nervous about the big unforced change. I wonder which way it will go. Nothing can possibly go wrong.
RHLSTP Book Club with the fascinating and fantastic Moon Unit Zappa (who I am married to in another reality)
is now up here.
Here's a video clip!
