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Wednesday 24th August 2016

5013/17933

Gee, but it’s good to be back home…. I sang this obscure Paul Simon song in the cab from the airport at about 7.30 this morning with my wife and baby clapping along. So that was fun. Though it was going to be a tricky day for us all, as only one of us had had any sleep (and only then about half of what she was used to). Could I stay awake til bedtime? I’d already been awake for 24 hours so it seemed unlikely.

It was nice to see the cats again. Though I hadn’t thought about them for the entire fortnight and had forgotten we had cats at all. Luckily someone had been looking after them for us or we might not have had cats when we got back. Or just one slightly fatter one.

I had some coffee and breakfast but it wasn’t going to keep me going and I had a nap before lunchtime. In the afternoon we watched some telly: buying the series of Parks and Recreation that we’d been halfway through (why didn’t we watch more Netflix in America) and then renting Deadpool so I could see the end of that too. It meant I watched three quarters of it for the second time in about 12 hours, but it stood up pretty well even so.

Phoebe was, of course, confused about when she should be asleep, but I got her bathed and into bed by seven and she fell straight asleep, which seemed like an unexpected bonus. But of course she woke up a few hours later and I had an odd and disjointed night of sleep (but think I might have done anyway). To keep myself awake a bit longer I watched some sitcoms that I wouldn’t have watched on any other day to pass the time. I saw episode 1 of “How I Met Your Mother” which I’ve never seen before, but turns out to be a mildly racier version of Friends. It was slick and only relied on formulaic jokes for about 60% of its laughs. I don’t think I will watch the rest of it. Or maybe just when I am fighting off jet lag. I also checked out “Full House” a 1980s American sitcom that was not only much more traditional, but it also showed how far American sitcom has come. We had watched the end of series 3 of Bojack Horseman earlier and this was very reminiscent of “Horsin’ Around” right down to the jumpers and the haircuts. I wondered if this is how they’d come up with Bojack Horseman. Because those 1980 sitcom hairstyles looked very much like manes. It was incredible how poor the jokes and the exposition were: the set up is that the mother in the family has died and the father’s mother has been helping out for the last three months. But she is leaving now, so instead the dead wife’s womanising , demi-Fonz brother moves in to help as well as the husband’s sub-Robin Williams stand-up friend, who is just there to wear a loud shirt and do impressions. Everyone seems remarkably unphased by the recent death of the mum of the family, except for two thirds of the way through the show where they discuss how sad they all are. Not that they have really been exhibiting that sadness at any point. And then, most remarkably of all, the episode ends with the whole new family singing the Flintstones theme around the crib. For no reason. It’s just extraordinary.

I then watched a little bit of Fuller House, the updated version where everyone apart from the Olsen Twins (who both played the baby of the family) reunite 29 years on. At least with a sense of the fourth wall this time. I didn’t get through too much of that one. But sitcom has come on a long way in America since the 1980s, that’s for sure. Though like us, it seems, they still have a taste for resurrecting what was once dead. I don’t know if they sung the Flintstones at the end though.



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