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Yesterday I’d been walking barefoot in the hallway and got a big splinter in my foot from one of the ancient wooden tiles that line the floor. It hurt but I pulled out a big chunk of wood and thought the discomfort I felt for the rest of the day was down to being speared by a booby trap laid by a long dead work person.
Today the pain was still there. I looked at the sole of my foot and wondered if there might still be some splinter in there. I couldn’t get it out, if so, so I asked my wife - already preoccupied with trying to get our kids ready to go out - to have a look. She thought there was some splinter in there and tried to squeeze it out, but to no avail. She then went to get some tweezers, but only succeeded in sticking them into my wound. Then she told me to soak my foot in warm water and a few minutes later she pulled a chunk of wood as big as the beam of a ship from my leg end.
And suddenly my foot no longer hurt.
Like Androcles and the Lion or possibly Daniel and the Lion or possibly both, she had pulled a thorn out of my paw and turned pain into no pain and at that moment I pledged that I would love her forever and if she was ever in a colosseum and I was charged to kill her, then I wouldn’t kill her. I’d help her. Because she had helped me. Like in Androcles and the Lion or Daniel and the Lion or maybe the Wizard of Oz or possibly those Narnia stories. I am not going to look it up.
Some may say I should have pledged to love her forever when I married her, but I just did that for the tax breaks (it turns out there were none - I should have checked that first really) and to trick her into carrying my babies inside her stomach (as me and the Stereophonics believe). But after she did this kindness for me I now promise never to leave her and from now on to be faithful only to her. She really is amazing.
And it was a big help, because I was about to embark on a 15 minute run. Up a big hill. The hill was near the beginning of the run and it was a tough ask given how little I’ve put on my training shoes in the last 3 years. I guess I was about to find out if my heart was working properly. It’s a dangerous way to test it - if it really hurts and then stops beating you need to go and see a doctor (sadly I’d have been on a country path on a Sunday and I didn’t see any people on the run, so I would have died alone, my skellington only found centuries later by an alien archaeologist).
My the top of the hill I was breathing deeply and had slowed down to a walk, but once I caught my breath I was off again and given my lack of exercise recently I felt pretty good. And not dying of a heart attack was a major victory.
I may be pissing in the wind whilst running up a hill. Obviously there is only so long that I can keep up the cross country now I’m 50 (but some 90 year olds do the Marathon so you never know), but it’s good to be fighting back against the inevitable.
And I needed the extra calories as we went out for Sunday lunch at a local pub. I had a huge plate of food, but I was essentially having all three meals in one. And it was amazing to be hanging out with the family. After lunch we took the car to be washed in a carwash. It was a little bit dirty, but it had been done quite recently when the car was serviced and there’s little point in cleaning the car in the countryside as it gets dirty straight away. But Phoebe had seen a couple of TV shows with car washes in them and we wanted to show her what they were like from the inside. I was worried she’d be frightened, but she loved it. I felt a bit more claustrophobic and started wondering what happened if the big hair dryer that seemed to know where the car was and moved accordingly failed to lift up an crushed the car. Would we be able to escape?
Luckily it didn’t come to that.
But it was nice to manage a regular feeling Sunday and still go out and do a gig.
There are three huge gigs in the next six days - or at least the three with the biggest tickets sales. Tonight I was in Nottingham and sales were very nearly at 500 (and might have hit that with walk up). It’s always a tour highlight and a terrific venue to play. Coming up at the end of the week are Leeds and London (with the slightly less well attended Scarborough first), so I will be playing to this number or more twice more in the next few days. Tickets still available for all remaining performances. 
