Bookmark and Share

Thursday 7th February 2019

5913/18933

Writing is coming pretty easily now, after the usual stultification of thinking a project can’t possibly be done. As always it’s 1% inspiration and 99% prevarication, but I might actually get draft 1 of version 2 of this script (I think that incredibly not a single line has survived from the first version) done on Friday. I have no idea if it’s great or terrible though. This has been a long old struggle for 22 minutes of television and there’s every chance they’ll come back to me on Monday and demand a third version with not a single line from this script either…. I think there must be a line in there that’s good enough.
I worked into the night tonight, whilst my wife was out podcasting and the kids slept. It’s a nice time to get stuff done with the house unusually quiet. As always with writing, it’s application that lets me down (which I know sounds weird from a man who has written 5913 blogs in 5913 days). My childhood (and adulthood) dream would have been to sit at a desk writing stories all day. And yet, it seems, I only do my writing when deadlines are pushing on either side of my skull and my brain might fly out. Imagine if I just sat up in my office every Thursday night and knocked out a couple of thousand words. I’m only 51 and a half. Maybe I can change my ways. There’s nothing else to do in the countryside.
2019 seems to be shaping up well though. The push to fitness is going well, the podcasts are ramping up a gear and the tour dates selling well and parenting is less fraught with a lot more laughs. I was drying my daughter’s hair tonight and she danced like a loon to the music of the hair dryer. Stopping when it stopped. Starting when it started. It’s great to have a little person here to remind me that you can dance to a hair dryer. Well not really remind me as I don’t think I’d ever thought of doing that. But to show me that I could.
I love you this much, I told her, holding my arms wide. 
I love you this much, she replied, pushing her hands together so tightly it was like she was trying to make a diamond from coal.
But it’s a joke. 
Nearly entirely a joke.
My daughter senses that thing within me that makes me an acceptable butt of humour of this sort. I’ve had it all my life. Luckily I don’t mind (cries himself to sleep- no really, it’s funny).
Sometimes, in case she has really hurt me, she holds her hands a centimetre apart. 
I’ll take it. 
It’s best that she sees through me now, than I disappoint her later in life.

Trying out audiobooks while I walk the dog and today got started on Sapiens - A Brief History of Mankind. It’s a book I did read a chunk of before, but I wonder if I might get up to my book reading quota of a book a week if I have people to read my books to me. Like a baby would. If I can walk a dog, clear a field of stones and gain knowledge all at the same time, imagine what a high achieving man of mental and physical fitness I will be.
The book is recommended though, for understanding our origins and why we’re so screwed up by the world we have created and also for the clear explanation of why pretty much everything we believe in is an invented fiction. How insane we must look to any intelligent being looking down at us - but they will probably be insane in their own peculiar way. And I sort of wonder if maybe only here has the weird circumstances that create this kind of intelligent life and allowed it to survive - until now. The author Harari, says that we maybe don’t have 1000 years of Homo Sapiens left, but I haven’t got to the chapter why he explains why yet. My guess - destruction or genetic manipulation shall wipe us all out. Been a fun ride though.

Your occasional reminder that if you want to switch to renewable energy, probably save money on bills, give me £50 for all those podcasts you listened to and give yourself £50 for having had to listen to them - then switch to Bulb using this link.


Bookmark and Share



Subscribe to my Substack here
See RHLSTP on tour Guests and ticket links here
Help us make more podcasts by becoming a badger You get loads of extras if you do.
To join Richard's Substack (and get a lot of emails) visit:

richardherring.substack.com