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It feels like my childhood memories of school are mixed up with the plots of this show and so something like this feels like a home video.
Look at this for example. So true. I am pretty sure Pogo Paterson was at the Kings of Wessex. If not, the fashions were. And aside from House of Fun, I am not sure any song other than True sums up school discos more.
It was a day of birthdays though, all of them confounding my broken sense of the passage of time.
Phoebe is 10 on Monday and had her party this afternoon. When will there be a party for people who have been parents for 10 years?
It's very hard to believe I've been a parent for almost half of the 22 years of Warming Up or that the period of blogged time before I met Catie was only 5 years. The pact with the devil that I made to make my wife improbably fall in love with me clearly involved time begin sped up. Or my memory being wiped. Someone has sucked out my hypothalamus and if it wasn't for this blog I'd believe that I was at worst in my early 40s.
The party was in our house and my job was cooking the pizza, chips and nuggets, which was, I have to say, the easy bit. Party games and shouting and tears and laughter filled the house. Ernie was a bit overwhelmed with the unfairness of it all, perhaps forgetting that he'd had a birthday in October. He's 100% going to be one of those "When's International Men's Day?" idiots. And you can't say I am one for wanting a parents' party. Because you don't get those. And you should.
The thing that upset Ernie the most was that one of Phoebe's friend had given her cash in lieu of a present. Ernie loves money more than anything in the world - accruing it, but not spending it, I am sure he's going to be a billionaire who never gives a penny away. He was annoyed that no oneThough I like the idea of telling people at his next party to not bother with presents and just give hime the cash
Then the kids went to stay with their grandparents and Catie and me went to a friend's 50th birthday party in London. There were no party games and no one cried because the birthday girl got more presents than them (though I did resent it). Perhaps it was because I'd spent the afternoon with under 10s or perhaps it was because this was a group of people that I only see very intermittently, but I was conscious of how old we were - a woman who I'd known through mutual friends but maybe not seen for twenty years looked twenty years older (surely I didn't)- and I thought about the fact that one day everyone at this party will be dead and I wondered who the last person left breathing would be. As one of the older people there, I don't think it will be me. Unless I dedicate myself to wiping the others out.
This was just a passing thought in a delightful evening of chatting with interesting people, one of whom is a paid subscriber of this blog so I have to say that he hadn't changed at all in the decade or so since I'd last seen him (and if you become a paid subscriber I will flatter you with lies as well). Middle age and Covid has made me content not to socialise and even before that self-consciousness and the desire to bolt when I rightly or wrongly felt like I was not wanted meant I needed to get drunk to hang around. Perhaps we left before the booze kicked in or perhaps people were not drinking to excess, but my sobriety didn't even cross my mind tonight and no one noticed or mentioned that I was on alcohol free beer, so I didn't have to talk about it either.
It was nice not to have to rush off too quickly for once (we stayed til after 10pm which is pretty racy for us), but we did still have the drive home to contend with. Harder to self-consciously bolt when your wife is relying on a lift home. Nice to have someone at a party who HAS to talk to you because they promised to before God in their wedding vows (I think). Though Catie usually uses parties as a chance to get away from me for a couple of hours and who can blame her?
The trains were messed up so we'd made a wise last minute decision to drive (one of the good things about my sobriety is I am always there as designated driver), but the electric car was on 30% (still 78 miles potentially, though in winter months it goes down quick) and Catie wouldn't risk it, even though I pointed out we could charge it in London where I believe they have a few charging points. I was worried we'd struggle to find a parking place right by Kilburn tube on a Saturday night, big enough for the people carrier. But much to Catie's entirely hidden delight there was a space right outside the pub. Why can't this woman ever be wrong?
