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Happy 12th birthday Warming Up. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry! I am doing both.
Almost exactly seven years to the day since I realised that I was in love with the woman who I would marry and impregnate and who would make my life get flipped turned upside down like I was a Fresh Prince of Bel Air. The seven years have passed a lot more quickly than the first five, which is a testament to how much better my life is now. Or maybe how unhappy I was before. It feels like I was blogging “single” a lot longer than that.
But if the journey ended here this ridiculous effort would maybe be a lesson in the realisation (of the bleeding obvious) that professional ambitions are nothing when compared to personal happiness. The only good thing that William Thackeray ever wrote (and you have to wade for a lot of shit to find it) is “the prize I had set my life on was not worth the winning”. Maybe I will one day learn the lesson of what follows - “that I was a fool with fond fancies, too, bartering away my all of truth and ardour against your feeble remnant of love. I will bargain no more: I withdraw."
Poor Dobbin’s loyalty and devotion was to a woman rather than a career, but it still more or less works. Now I realise I’d rather be smiling than successful. If I had to chose one of the other. It’d be good to be both obviously! And whilst I have loved my job more than it perhaps has loved me in return, I won’t withdraw completely just yet. I just realise that the life I would have coveted in November 2002 was not worth the winning. And I have been lucky to be a loser. And you know, even if you ignored my personal happiness, as losers go I am a pretty spectacular success. The worst thing that has happened to me in 12 years is getting knocked out in the first round of Pointless. I have a jammy, jammy life. I have a few months to think about what comes next, but I know what my priority is.
And the journey (of this blog) is not ending yet, so it may have an entirely different denouement. I am hoping that in 12 years time I will have realised that actually it isn’t family that is most important, it is money and fame and having meaningless sex with supermodels. But let’s see.
More looking backwards and looking forwards tonight as my ragbag band of brothers from University got together for our animal Christmas meal, drinks and speculation about which of us will die first. Whilst one eye was on the past, (fittingly a group of men in their late 20s were eating at the next table to us) and our physical decline, changing concerns, for the first time there was speculation of the group’s distant future. As we fell by the wayside through life taking us elsewhere or actual death, would a core group remain. Will those who remain be meeting in our 70s, 80s, even 90s? When we were down to three or two or even one? I realised that conceivably there might still be 50 Christmas meet up dinners to go. Which made life feel long, rather than short. Though I don’t think I will be one of the 97 year olds meeting up in 2064 and eating space food.
I still found that quite a positive thought. These nine men will all live on in memory whilst any of us is still standing (or sitting and slumping). We will be ghosts at the feast as long as any of us are alive.
Stewart Lee fulfilled his annual role of bringing us gifts each year (mainly of CDs and DVDs he has received to review and has no space for in his house). This year, amongst other things he gave me
Madonna’s Sex , a coffee table book mainly made up of naked pictures of the singer and her friends and Vanilla Ice. I had given Stew this very book for Christmas in 1992 - I don’t know whether he remembered that- and now he was returning it to me, it’s aluminium cover a bit battered and scratched (I always thought that was a risky choice of material for a book that people might be enjoying with minimal clothes on themselves - if you shut it quickly because your mum was coming into your bedroom you could be left with a nasty injury). I was never much of a fan of Madonna as a singer or a sex object and had thought the book rather silly (though back then there was some novelty to seeing a famous person with their clothes off). It seemed even sillier now in retrospect, but had a nostalgic interest and by today’s standards seems coy and rather charming.
We ate Persian food in Kennington and drank a little bit too much and had another photo taken to add to the flick book of physical decline (though with the occasional fight back - I am sure I will look better this year than I did last) and then headed out into the unknown future. It’s the first time all nine of us have made it for a while (one of us now lives in Australia and may stay out there, but was in the country this month) and I think it might be the last time all nine of us make it. But I hope at least some of us or even just one of us (with photos of the missing ones) will keep this up for another five decades.
Latest RHLSTP with the amazing and lovely Rebecca Front is now out on these video formats for free. Audio will follow shortly.
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