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My whisky drinking debauchery did not knock on to inducing a hangover, though I had slept a little bit worse than usual. My wife tried to induce me into having half a bottle of wine tonight, but I didn’t feel the desire. Maybe I’ll just have a drink every 13 months. Just so I still haven’t given up and become uncool.
We’ll see.
And I did my first Park Run in four or five months this morning, as I listened to the last chapter of Palin’s fascinating “Erebus”. I ran as me, not as Me1 or Me2 or any other version of myself, as my only goal was to get round. But given how little I’ve been running it went OK and I had lots left in the tank. It was my worst non-Woolacombe time, but I enjoyed it. Again if you don’t like running you can enjoy the bums. I like running though. I am just saying most things can give you some pleasure if you like looking at bums. They are the great leveller. Choose the right bum and you have a great pace setter.
I do it for the running though and for the listening to books about people dying in the Arctic.
Because I am not strange.
I am not obsessed with looking at bums and don’t know where this rumour even started.
Panic at bed time as Phoebe’s favourite cuddly toys that she needs to sleep had all gone missing. It’s an eclectic triumvirate who have achieved this vaunted position - Fluffy Rabbit, longest serving member of the crew who has been with her pretty much from the start, Froggy a spiky looking but actually soft frog and newest recruit, a blue dinosaur that I don’t know the name of, but it’s a good bet that it’s Blue Dinosaur or Dinosaury, based on other naming choices. Phoebe’s mum is always pretty keen on keeping these three on the bed, but Phoebe had brought them down for breakfast this morning and even though they’d then been returned to the bed they had subsequently disappeared. Had they come to life and gone off on an adventure? It seemed possible, certainly as we struggled to find them.
Phoebe thought they might be in the car, though I hadn’t remembered her carrying them there when we’d gone off to gym lessons. Still I was fearful that I had been unobservant and we’d lost all the toys out in the real world. I went to check the car, but they weren’t there. I searched the rest of the house and there was no sign of any of the terrible trio. This was worrying. They would have to have been actively hidden or removed from the house. They are hardly camouflaged.
We asked Phoebe where she’d last seen the toys but she couldn’t remember. She’d already suggested the car, which I was almost certain could not be true. She was an unreliable witness.
Ernie was already asleep in bed, but we crept in to check his room in the dark and there was no sign there either. It made no sense. We had to tell our crying child to select some other toys for the night and I said that if I found them I would put them in with her as she slept. But it made no sense. They’d come alive hadn’t they? It’s the only explanation.
But as I walked the dog I thought about it logically. They had gone missing some time between my run and me taking the kids to the gym and I was almost certain they hadn’t come to the car. The kids had been in Ernie’s room when I had returned from the run and as I had properly searched the rest of the house with he lights on, it became clear that they must be in there, if they hadn’t come alive (and possibly even if they had). I suddenly had a memory of the kids playing with the toy kitchen in that room. Was it possible the toys were in the oven?
I came home and went to look and there they all were, sitting quite happily, with innocent looks on their faces, as if to say “We didn’t come alive.”
I took them back to Phoebe who was still awake. Surely I would be her hero for this and the hard work I’d put in, but she didn’t even thank me. “Where were they?” She asked.
“In the kitchen in Ernie’s room.”
“Oh yes,” she replied, “I remember I was playing with them in there.”
Shame you didn’t remember a bit earlier.
All the effort I’d been to and I got nothing. But this is parenthood. My love will never be truly returned and my efforts never appreciated. Maybe my parents did the same sort of thing for me. Who cares? I am not interested. I am only interested in my own greatness being recognised. Bloody ungrateful kids.
