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So Boris Johnson finally acts like a leader a day too early and so the O2 gig in the O2 office has had to be postponed. On the bright side this means we should have a live audience. If anyone is still alive by then.
We’re starting to have to get used to having both kids at home in the daytime and no one to help us - Catie’s parents can no longer come over, nor any baby sitters. Somehow we have to find time to do work and do home schooling (interrupted by a curious toddler) and (most importantly) create content for my new Twitch channel. But I have to say that on day one, stepping back and bit and having more family time is a delight.
For my hour of home schooling (we’re doing two hours a day of one-on-one and lots of joint play in between) we decorated the old computer that I dug out for Phoebe to use with stickers and then went on a nature walk. We had to tick off various nature things like daffodils and insects and birds on a sheet. Most were pretty easy to find, though there are no lambs near to our house, so we missed that one. But we had fun walking up to the woods to look at the fields up the hill and Phoebe went off up a slope to take a more dangerous path because she’s a littler adventurer. I’d foolishly forgotten to put her in her coat (though she had a little hoodie top on) and though it was sunny there was a cold wind on the top of the hill, so I put her in my long coat which reached down to the floor on her. We laughed and did silly rhymes and I carried her down the steep bits. It is genuinely one of my happiest moments of parenting so far. It’s very rare that I get a chance to spend an hour with just her. It was incredibly spiritually rewarding.
Maybe this is what the virus wanted all along.
Weird that it decided to kill loads of people and cause terrible situations for other families, when it could have just suggested I put my coat on my daughter and left it at that….
But the point is that even at the most unpleasant and scary times our humanity shows through. Maybe especially.
I may not be quite as full of the joys of isolation after a week. Or even two days. Presumably we are no longer supposed to go on extra walks, even here in the countryside where it’s very possible to keep away from other people.
Another stonking frame of snooker tonight - certainly the big fixture of the first round with a whisky drinking Me2 taking on the calm and some Me3. You can catch up with the action in the videos at
http://twitch.tv/rkherring (and the first match should appear there soon too). We had more problems with the mics, but we will look into what went wrong this time. I tried turning them on and off again, but that’s all I had.
I am very sad to lose another job and one that would have seen me through a couple of months had it gone ahead and provided some good entertainment too - James Acaster is never not brilliant. We can hopefully get it together again. I started the year in such high spirits, where every day I seemed to get a brilliant piece of news. I don’t know what effect this will all have on the secret TV project I’ve been working on (will be devastated if that is lost), but I am presuming another TV quiz opportunity I was up for will also be postponed and all those cancelled RHLSTPs make my heart ache. The only saving grace is that we got Michael Palin in before everything turned to shit.
I am so very lucky and have enough going on to weather the storm, but even in January when I was thrilled with my good fortune I felt certain something would come along to fuck it up for me. I assumed it would be my own death, which would at least have been clean and easy, so I am sorry that the rest of you have got dragged into this vendetta that God has against me.
I don’t have to deal with the sharp cut off of adrenaline and work that many live comedians are currently coping with as I’d been largely resting from live performance anyway and my dopamine levels are more like a non-performers now. My heart goes out to everyone having to deal with much worse disappointments and tragedies than I have so far encountered. As I say, after day one of the real situation hitting me, it’s actually been weirdly pleasant and relaxing.
But how long will it go on? And how much is it going to hurt us?
Stay indoors (unless you’re doing your daily stone clear) hope for the best and keep in touch with the people that you love. And if you’re alone then there’s lots of people out there online to chat with and watch playing snooker against themselves.
