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Hitchin! This place is the worst of the lot.
No actually, it’s pretty cool, but as I said, don’t try and head there on a Friday if you want to park.
Unless you only want to park for a short time, in which case, come on in, the water’s lovely.
I was coming into Hitchin to pick up my suspiciously cheap reading glasses and the paid car parks I passed were full, but they have parking spaces out on the streets that are free as long as you are in and out in 30 mins or an hour, depending how close you are to the throbbing heart of this town (the bit with all the opticians). I reckoned I could pick up my new spectacles in 30 mins and walk away (and then drive away) no more out of pocket than I had been when I started. If the people of Harpenden could have seen this they would have shat themselves. I think they run the same system, but all their parking spaces are full.
I did it with ten minutes to spare. I could have gone and browsed in WH Smiths (a shop that makes me feel like I have successfully time-travelled back to the 1980s - how is Woolworths dead, but Smiths still alive?) and probably bought a coffee in Costa. But I didn’t. I tried on my new reading glasses, was surprised that there was any way that reading glasses couldn’t actually fit and then I was gone like a paying thief (or non-thief as they are sometimes known) into the night (or day, as it is known when it is light).
Two pairs of reading glasses that I will probably never use and will then be eaten by the dog.
We were then heading back into London for our annual trip to see Father Christmas at the Lyric Hammersmith. Which used to be a lot easier when we lived in Shepherd’s Bush. It all passed in a bit of a blur. As the male housewife, I am doing all I can to let my female husband (when will someone come up with some gender appropriate words for these things) get all the sleep she can (it was pretty easy last night because Ernie slept from 10 until 5, which is frankly astonishing - I slept from maybe 1 til 5, but that is still a huge result) so most of my days are lived in a blur (until I got the reading glasses, right readers?). I was disappointed to find myself sitting two rows behind my family as there was no room for us all to be together - the only fun of seeing this childish play for a third time would be to watch my daughter’s face. But on the plus side, I was able to go to sleep. Beautiful, beautiful sleep.
But when I was awake I thought about how long it might be before I might get to play Father Christmas in the annual Lyric Hammersmith production. I have the gut, I could grow the beard, my hair is maybe not quite grey enough, but this Father Christmas had artificially greyed his hair so it puffed out dust when he brushed it. So maybe if I grow why beard I could do this next year. Looks like quite hard work though. Not as hard work as actually being Father Christmas. But I wouldn’t really like to do that job either. So I hope the Santa Clause never happens to me.
