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It’s not been an easy week and I was more tired today then I remember being all year (which is saying something) but as stressful as things are right now, there are some great moments too. Wolfie is settling down into life with us a bit more and I am slightly less panicked about getting her out of the front door for her early morning walk. It’s still a wrench, but today we were out on the fields before sunrise and I got to see the grey clouds turn pink as the sun approached from behind the hill. Which is where it must have been. If it was in outer space and we were going round it, then how the Hell would it change the colour of the clouds from out there. It wouldn’t- that’s how. The earth is a plate and the sun and all the Heavens go round us. It’s common sense.
I have loved watching sunsets throughout my life, but I am not sure how many sunrises I have witnessed. Not very many. I was always very much someone who wanted to go to sleep and staying up all night either to get lucky or to watch the sunrise (and I don’t think there is any other motivation to stay up all night to see the sunrise than the hope that you might get lucky) were not things that interested me.
But sunrises are more magical than sunsets, even if it feels a bit wrong to be holding a cocktail during the former (but I’d made the bloody thing and carried it up to the field so I was going to drink it). So far every pre 7am dog walk has been stimulating enough to make me forget how annoyed I felt to be woken up so early. But then it hasn’t got really cold yet.
I noticed that a lot of dog owners don’t clean up the poo if it’s on this field (it’s one you can only walk around as it has some kind of crop on it) - I don’t know if that is the correct etiquette. My instinct is to pick it up or bury it, but I suppose if it’s not directly on the path then it might be OK to leave it. But it made me idly think about how dog owners would cope if you were also supposed to bag your dog’s wee as well. What kind of device would you need to collect it (a funnel or a nappy) or would you have to have a trowel and dig very quickly.
As overawed as I was by the wonder of nature, my brain still goes to excrement.
I managed to get a bit of work on the sitcom done in little gaps in the morning. This is the only major job that is hanging over me before the birth of our son (aside from booking RHLSTP which has so far resulted in no guests confirmed). The dialogue comes so easily with these characters (providing I have the time and energy to actually sit down and write it). I hope I will get a chance to write more. With a bit of luck I might get draft 2 finished this weekend. Probably just that bit too late for it to be commissioned, as usual.
And thanks to everyone who
donated on Kickstarter - we hit our target in just a little over a week, with backer number 1233 or 1234 (I missed the actual moment or completion) getting us over the line. It’s still open for another 3 weeks and any extra money we get will go towards paying the crew more money, improving the look of the show and to paying for the podcasts in 2018 (and paying kickstarter commission and VAT which we always forget about). But amazing to confirm that we’ll be filming series 12 and producing the Christmas Emergency Questions book. The team who put that together are motoring onwards so that our pledge to deliver before Christmas (and we’re hoping to get them to you in November) will not prove to be just so much guff. I have total faith in Chris Evans - he wouldn’t have become a multi-millionaire broadcaster if he wasn’t reliable- what, it isn’t that one? Shit. We’re screwed. I wondered why he didn’t just give us the £50K himself.
Getting some nice reactions to the first episode of Relativity. Someone picked up on Margaret using the phrase, “you daft apeth†which led to a long Twitter discussion. I thought it was a Northern thing as it was something my gran said, but clearly it was once used all over the country. And I’d never really thought about what it meant, perhaps thinking like many others that it meant “little ape†or similar. But many pointed out that apeth is a contraction of halfpenny. Phil Tilston tweeted that his dad used to say answer questions with the odd phrase. “a wimwam to wind up the sunshine,†which reminded me that if you asked my grandma what was for dinner she’d say, “wimwams for ducks to swim in.†What the fuck was that about?
