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Saturday 7th July 2018

5701/18721

Man, I was tired this morning though. As I drove my daughter to Little Gym I had a moment where I managed to hallucinate. Luckily my eyes just misinterpreted sunlight shining on the road, as a body of water (not quite a mirage - the water looked properly real right until I was nearly driving through it - I knew it couldn’t be water really, but it looked like a point until the last possible second).  It was definitely sleep deprivation and not the strong cheese (or wine) that caused this mini-trip, but that didn’t make it any less worrying. 
Life is but a dream. 
We had friends over for lunch and combined it with a World Cup viewing, which meant that I was quickly mildly drunk again. Which was good. Because I hallucinate when I am sober. Ernie was in his element with three new girls to dote over him and Phoebe was her boisterous self, keen to impress the older girls. Our friends have done an amazing job of raising their kids who are smart and polite as anything. I came into the kitchen to find Phoebe looking guilty and showing off to the older girls. I asked her what she was doing and she pulled the kind of cheeky face that I pull when I know I don’t have a leg to stand on and said nothing. I asked the visitors if that was true and they were torn between not grassing up their new friend and knowing they had to tell the truth. They didn’t directly spill the beans though and whatever misadventure my daughter was up to remained secret enough. Then the oldest girl said, “Can we be excused from the table now please?” It was about 15 minutes after lunch had ended and these two had been patiently sitting here, putting up with my Caliban of a daughter, waiting for an adult to give them permission to get down. I laughed because I knew that I will never get anywhere near that level of respect and obedience from my own children. But these little Ariels (from the Shakespeare thing not the Mermaid thing) are fine young people and it’s good to know that this is at leat the standard to aim for.
The football was fun. My uninterested wife stayed in the garden with the kids (though the visitors kept our kids entertained so her job was not as hard as it seemed, giving Catie the kudos of having looked after five kids for two hours, without having to do too much - her own words). I tried to jinx England (or at least show that I wasn’t capable of jinxing them) and once we were two goals up, invited our team to let the opponents score (as that was only friendly and the point of getting two goals ahead). But England were amazing and won with relative ease. I missed their last World Cup victory by a matter of months. Are we to have another in my lifetime (assuming I last til next Sunday?) What a likeable team they are - not like some of the wankers we’ve had to put up with recently, mentioning no names  (though John and Terry spring to mind). Something, along with all the other nonsense we’ve been putting up with, for our nation to be proud of and Southgate proves that you don’t have to be a horrible prick to get on or be respected or be successful. They’re all already heroes and they’re just two games away from being the kinds of legends that some as yet unborn child will be amazed to be contacted by on social media in 51 years time.
This is the kind of relaxed summer afternoon with friends that I have not really been able to experience in previous Julys, because I’d be be too beset with the stresses of the Fringe or some other work. It’s the kind of day that not having any commitments until September was made for. 
Do we dare to dream? Of course we do.


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