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My stupid son woke up super early today and I would have been struggling even if I’d got a lie-in to my usual waking time of 6 or 6.30am, but this made things a little more wobbly round the edges.
Though I managed to write my blog while he had breakfast, so that was something,.
I was mainly prepping my interview with Robert Webb today (aside from the welcome lunchtime child care) and wanted to get a little way into his new book, Come Again. It’s about time travel and alternate universes (and love and relationships and how going back to our teenage selves wouldn’t be all that enjoyable) so I was interested to see if it would pass my demanding rules of what must happen in stories like this.
The book is funny and a page turner (or as I was watching it on kindle, a button pusher) and I somehow managed to get through the whole thing by the kids’ dinner time. It’s a long time since I’ve read a book in a day and usually with the podcast I do my best to get a taste of the guest’s work and rarely get through the whole thing (especially if it’s not on audiobook). I preferred the first two sections of the book to the final section and I was not on board with the logic of the ending, but it’s definitely worth a read and it’s only pretend, so just enjoy it and don’t be a dick about it.
It filled me with memories of college and the 90s without trying to do a Peter Kay style approach. But it was also about the randomness of how we form friendships and choose lovers, which is also a theme of my slightly similar alternate universe sitcom/book (which is lying unwritten due to me having a more pressing deadline and no fucking time to do anything). The situation is different enough and the relationship struggles not quite the same, but it’s good to see another middle-aged man wrestling with the chance at play in finding love - as compared to Sliding Doors implication that we are fated to meet the right person (even if they will kill us and our unborn child 50% of the time)
Hey look, I am just delighted that I managed to concentrate on a book and was able to read it within a day. It’s either a compliment or a terrible insult to Webb’s writing, but for my sake let’s hope it’s a compliment. Nice escapist pleasure from a novel which barely mentions viruses at all, which will make you nostalgic for your own past, but delighted that you can’t go back there.
Buy it here or not from Ian Amazon.
Robert has also been through a terrifying personal journey involving unexpected
open heart surgery, which is oddly foreshadowed in his own book. So I was ready to talk about life and death with him too. And hopefully sing a kids’ show theme (we didn’t)
Next week’s guest is Kiri Pritchard-Mclean. Tune in to
my Twitch channel at 8pm on Wednesday.
And this week's regular RHLSTP guest is the no-fucks-giving Fern Brady.
Here’s the release dates for the podcast
6th May: Limmy
13th May: Sir Michael Palin
20th May: Aisling Bea
27th May: Adam Buxton
3rd June: Michael Spicer
10th June: Mark Watson
17th June: Robert Webb
24th June: Kiri Pritchard-Mclean
