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I may finally be heading towards some kind of semi-normal life. As a comedian bank holidays are usually meaningless. We are gigging and if we’re not gigging we are writing. We don’t have weekends either, unless we force ourselves to take Monday and Tuesday off. But what kind of weekend is that? Not a very good one. It’s literally at the start of the week. It’s a weekstart. Or at best a weekendend. But that’s a lonely time to relax. And in any case, there’s work to be done.
But I’ve had almost a proper bank holiday weekend this weekend, if you ignore all the work I did on Saturday. Barbecue with the in-laws yesterday and today we had a few of our friends with kids around for some food and drink. I did most of the drinking, to be fair.
Catie did an amazing job with the food, though I stepped in at the last minute to make the bruschetta. I have never handmade tapenade before, but it turns out I was a natural. And if anyone tells you it is pretty easy to use a hand blender to mix up olives, basil leaves and salt, tell them they should fuck off. I wouldn’t say I am a hero. I was just doing what anyone would have done in the circumstances. Others might call me a hero. I tried to get Catie to call me a hero, but she didn’t seem to want to call me a hero. Perhaps recognising that I didn’t want to be called a hero.
Then I cut up all the tomatoes and grilled the baguette. I assumed Catie would call me a hero now. But she remained tight-lipped, perhaps in mute awe at my heroism. She should buck up her ideas. All she’d done was hand-make fallafel, cook soup, make salads and blend together home made lemonade and lime and ginger drinks. I had made bruschetta, from scratch and also been to the supermarket. I will let you decide who is the hero. (clue, it is me).
The afternoon passed in a whirlwind of booze and high-pitched screams. New friendships are forged or strengthened through having kids about the same age, but this gaggle of comedy/show biz based procreators are lots of fun and our kids get on well too. The beautiful cocktail of booze and childcare and attempting to keep the balance where you’re in a fit state to care for your off spring, but to basically nearly not give a fuck about anything, is a hard one to achieve. But I got there. No kids died and that is a victory for a bank holiday shindig. I did end up with my daughter and another child rolling around on me in the floor and somehow ending up with a mouthful of sand. But these are the golden years and I will miss them when they have gone. I mean when I have to give up booze due to liver failure obvs.
So well did I keep the balance between drunkeness and responsibility that I even managed to bathe my daughter without drowning her in any serious way. Although when I asked her for a kiss she decided to do that by smashing her teeth into my teeth in a violent fashion. Luckily both our sets of teeth survived this game of teeth conkers, though she did cut my lip. Maybe she’d managed to find a supply of booze herself. She noticeably likes me a lot more when I am drunk. I think being drunk and being a toddler are pretty much the same thing. Her mood swings tonight were extraordinary! I just felt happy to be the split lip, sand-mouthed, drunkard in the middle of this mayhem.
