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Those glory days post-holiday when Phoebe was sleeping until 8am and I was getting back to having a normal life where I was fresh enough to read and exercise are gone. She’s back on UK time and that means waking up between 6 and 7 and so everything is blurry again.
Still that fortnight of sleep gave me a window to 2034 when I will finally be able to get on with some proper work again.
I did manage to write one sketch for AIOTM today and cook a nice chilli for lunch, but I need to be doing more. I guess it’s my own fault for putting my sexcrement somewhere where it could flourish, rather than wiped on the curtains where it belongs.
Ah, she’s OK. I went through all the people she knows today and she had a crack at saying their names and she did OK for someone who can’t speak. And there’s a bit in one of her bed time books where one of the characters cries. I have started pretending to cry during that bit, so every time we get to that bit she looks at me to see if I am going to do it again and then when I do, she pats me on the shoulder to comfort me. I mean, she seems to be sort of enjoying me crying, but also shows some empathy and wants to help me stop. But that’s children for you. Insane, but loveable psychopaths.
We went out for dinner with my niece and I had alcoholic drinks for the third consecutive day for the first time in a long time. Maybe that’s what’s making me feel tired. I didn’t have many drinks on any of these nights, but enough to make me wake up in the middle of the night feeling weird each time, because I am a lightweight.
We went to the Greek restaurant in the Westfield which I’ve never been to before. It was OK. I always think of Greek food as feta heavy and I am not a big fan of feta but I forgot it also has haloumi, which is the best cheese in the world. This restaurant always has a bearded and jolly man standing outside offering passersby a nugget of free food. He must be good at attracting people in as he is ALWAYS there. I have begun to wonder if he might not be employed by the restaurant but they can do nothing to get rid of him. We’d already decided to go in but he gave me a bit of red food anyway. I thought it was a bit of chorizo or something meaty, but it felt texture wise more like a bit of pepper, but I genuinely could not work out what I was eating, my expectations so different from the reality. That could easily have put me off going, but we were more or less in the door now. He asked me where I was from and I said Shepherd’s Bush. He seemed surprised, because, apparently, most men who have their sunglasses on top of their head (as I usually do) come from a Mediterranean country. I just use sunglasses as a way to keep my hair out of my face. I rarely use them as sunglasses.
But it felt exciting to be viewed as exotic. I should have put on an accent and fronted it out.
Maybe it was the booze, but I loved looking round the restaurant at people on dates, people who’d been together for years, groups of friends enjoying their Friday night out. London is just the best place in the world and people from different backgrounds ate together and dated each other and it was just totally fucking normal. Forty years ago it would have caused a stir and maybe out in the heartlands of Brexit it would still do so today. But we’re not a Metropolitan elite. We’re a load of normal people. Who happen to have got it fucking right. I hope we’re not dragged back 40 years by the idiots who think this is anything other than normal and human and correct. And I say that as a bloke who looks a bit Greek. Because of my sunglasses.
