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I had a RHLSTP hangover. Not that I had any booze (I have stayed on the wagon for 25 days now), just that that level of concentration takes it out of my body and mind. Plus I woke up at 6.30 even though it wasn’t my turn for baby duties.
So it was mainly a day of letting my brain lie fallow in the hope that something might grow in this barren field in the rest of the week. So this blog will be the kind of literally-nothing-to-report that makes me wonder if I should make the 5000th consecutive entry in 51 days time be the last. It almost certainly won’t be. Even though there are plenty of days when it isn’t worth the electricity it’s written on, enough stuff comes out of this for stand up, columns and As It Occurs To Me to make it worthwhile. But it’s got to stop some time. Is that really going to be at the same time as I do?
I don’t really think of the people reading this any more (if there even are any), it’s a resource for me. I could do it without putting it online of course (I believe people used to do that in the old days and called it a diary - idiots), but I don’t think I would have the motivation to do it so regularly. Something about posting it up and keeping the chain going means that the blog carries on, even on a day like today, when really there’s nothing going on. But sometimes the days when there is nothing lead to the best blogs. The obvious example being the “Someone Likes Yoghurt†blog which only came to me after a long time of wracking my brain trying to think about anything to write about.
You’re right. I am just playing for time here.
I can think of one thing that happened today, but I doubt it will have a stand up show named after it. We have been putting our TV remote controls on the radiator behind the sofa to keep them out of the prying hands and pressing fingers of our annoyingly curious child (oh who jumped for the first time today - that’s two things). Once before I knocked one of the remotes off and had to move the sofa to retrieve it, but this morning, as I sat with my equally bleary-eyed wife, one of us did it again (I think it was her, but I was so tired I can’t even remember). My wife wanted to move the sofa immediately to retrieve it, but I was weary and wanted to watch Bing! uninterrupted and said that I would do it when we left the room. "It’s happened before,†I said, “It’s really easy to do. Let’s leave it."
“You’ll forget,†my wife told me.
“I promise you I won’t forget,†I replied.
I forgot.
Later I came down to the TV room and wondered why the TV was still on (the sky box was off so it as a black screen with a little AV symbol in the top corner). I thought my wife must have forgotten to turn it off. The idiot. But then I remembered that in fact we’d lost the control and then I remembered that I hadn’t retrieved it as I had promised.
My wife, who had had all her fears justified, almost like she knows me, can predict that I will let her down and wishes that she’d never married me, had clearly made an attempt to get the control out of the back of the radiator as the sofa had been moved and there was a wooden spatula on the floor. Look at her, overthinking it as usual. I was sure it would be easy to get the remote back. Last time it had just been on the floor.
But last time, I realised it had just fallen off the radiator to the side and not gone down the back. The gaps at the side and bottom of the radiator were not big enough to get a remote control through. The only way to get it out would be to somehow push it to the top of the radiator from the bottom, or grab it with some kind of thin grabbing tool from the top and pull it up. My wife had tried the former and had found this method wanting. Now my honour depended on getting the remote back easily. Yes, I had failed to get it back straight away, but I could take the moral high ground if I at least retrieved it easily, thus making my wife’s wooden spatula attempt look ludicrous.
But I couldn’t think of another way, so I tried the spatula method. But it didn’t work for me either. The spatula was too short and couldn’t keep the remote vertical as it needed to be.
So then I got my snooker cue and tried to poke the remote up the wall. That didn’t work so I thought I’d use it to press the remote really hard downwards in the hope it could be forced out of the too small gap. For some reason physics defeated me. Then I got the other snooker cue and tried to use the two together like two long arms with single unbending fingers. But I couldn’t get purchase.
This all took me about 20 minutes. And it looked like my wife was going to be proven right about me and finally have the legal grounds for divorce that she’s been looking for.
I thought about trying to unscrew the radiator from the wall, but my guess was that that would cause serious flooding and need thousands of pounds of repairs. But at least I’d have the remote and show my stupid wife…..
But then I thought, that remote is gone, we should just forget it existed and remembered that the DVD remote that we rarely use now, had a TV button on it and I could use that to turn the TV on and off and the volume up (you’re right, the Sky remote should be able to do that too, but it’s broken and can only be used for Sky). I had solved the problem and my wife has to stay married to me. Cheg on!
You’re right. This should be a stand up show. The blog must continue.
