4819/17478
It has often been said (admittedly only by me) that I am the best husband and father in the world. Today my wife enjoyed her Christmas gift of a day in a spa whilst I stayed home to look after Phoebe alone. The fact that my wife has done this many more times than me is irrelevant and should not be allowed to sway your judgement. To be fair to me I only ever go out these days because I am working and did suggest that as I don’t enjoy spa days my wife could reciprocate by booking me in for a day at a high class sex hotel. My wife was reluctant, partly because she felt such a place didn’t exist, but also because our rewards should be equal. But that’s not fair, because I don’t like spas, even the ones with naked middle-aged Europeans in them. I like sex hotels populated by robot whores. And I think I should be allowed the occasional day of relaxing by having sex with loads of robots.
It’s been a while since either of us has had a full day of baby care, as I have been around a lot more in the last few months and I had forgotten how tough it was. It was made a lot harder by the fact that Phoebe had woken up, inconsolably sobbing in the middle of the night. I had managed to calm her down after a while, though she carried on doing the occasional deep breath as if sobbing for another hour (it was quite cute really). I only got about two hours sleep, but I didn’t really mind. Also when I was hugging Phoebe in bed, she had sought out my shoulder with her head and snuggled into me tight. I don’t think another human being on the planet could manage to make me feel happy that they’d deprived me of sleep, but it’s a beautiful and terrifying thing that this tiny human puts so much trust in me. What a mixture of heaven and hell it is being a dad.
Annoyingly I woke up a good 90 minutes before she did this morning and couldn’t get back to sleep, so my 12 hours of solo parenting were a challenge. As she gets older she gets bored so much more easily and it was very hard to think of fun stuff to do whilst I zombied around the house. I couldn’t find time to get showered or dressed properly or even catch a few minutes to catch up on my blogs or do some thinking about the gig I was doing later to try our new material.
It was a lot of fun hanging around with this bundle of idiocy and I am amazed at the leaps she is making physically and mentally. She was trying to get out of the hole (her playpen) and lifting up her arms to me, so I tried to distract her and said, “Can you bring me the monkey?” She thought for a second, turned around and crawled over and picked up the monkey straight away and brought it back to me. I had no idea she understood any of those words explicitly, but it seemed like more than a coincidence. Especially when I asked her to get the phone and the boing ball and she was able to easily fulfil those commands too. I worry if she can understand stuff like that then whatever things is she picking up from our largely unguarded conversations. Clearly she is a genius. I know a lot of parents think that, but she really is. Later she managed to pull herself up and let go and then stand unaided for a good three seconds. Walking is not far away now. Then what fresh Hell will an exhausted dad have to experience.
And I finally managed to get out of the house in the afternoon and the walk and fresh air did us both good. A naughty boy tried to grab at the pram and then knocked down loads of little bottles in Holland and Barratt. Phoebe remained calm and non-plussed as he literally kicked off. But his parents were shopping in a health store so they couldn’t blame e-numbers. I told Phoebe that she should never behave like that and I am sure she never will.
I love the time we have together, but it’s properly hard work and I don’t even get to go to a robot sex hotel to unwind. I was looking forward to my wife’s return though and was glad to hand over our daughter at 6.30. Somehow I then managed to do some work on the blog and the show before going out to do 30 mins of newish material to a dozen people in a cellar in Farringdon. The stuff went well, but I am having real trouble learning some of it. Hopefully I will have a strong 90 minutes by Thursday for my first Leicester Square Theatre date (and presumably my first major reviews for this show). Do come along if you can. Looks like we might be doing the DVD record at one of the other tour dates, so these could well be the only London dates for Happy Now? (The Bloomsbury Theatre has had to stay closed if you missed that news).
Nearly all of the February dates are very close to selling out and many of the others are close to selling out too. Book now.
Frame 71 of Me1 Vs me2 Snooker is now up in the usual places.
