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I suddenly realised that my Charles and Diana Ingram poker interview fell within the remit of Warming Up and that I would certainly have written about it.
This is what happened on the day.
Turns out I really liked Diana (really liked her) but found Charles a little scary. Sadly Diana never left him for me, even though she could have got me on millionaire and coached me to victory. I wouldn't have minded if we just role-played that to be honest. Let's not dwell on it. My heart has been broken enough already.
We attempted our first social interaction of the lockdown by meeting up with some local pals on Zoom and playing a knock off version of Cards Against Humanity. It was good fun though I felt as the professional comedian I should have been the one to decide which appalling joke was the funniest. It was always mine. But the other teams often chose inferior ones and that was NOT on. We had some laughs and some drinks and though it wasn't quite the same as proper human interaction, it saved us having to fork out for baby sitters and having to get taxis home and at this stage in my life those are significant advantages.
In the daytime we'd taken the kids out on a two hour walk up to the bluebell woods in an attempt to knacker them out, though it really only had that effect on us. We've been loaned a child back pack thing, so I had to carry Ernie for most of the journey. He is 12 and a half kilos. I am about 10 kilos lighter than I was at the start of 2019 (though 5 kilos heavier than I was in the middle of 2019), so that gave me a pretty good idea of how exhausting it was just to carry myself around 18 months ago.
We wondered if we'd have taken on a walk like this if it wasn't for the virus - we wouldn't have had the backpack as Catie only got given that as a result of a group chat that wouldn't have been had if we were in normal life. And we couldn't have got this far without it. The kids had a fine time squelching in mud and walking in what Ernie called the “duck pond†(it was just a long muddy ditch where no duck could have survived). My daughter had to be rescued after getting a boot stuck in a swampy bit of woodland. We had a lot of fun and created a memory that I know will stick (unlike interviewing Charles Ingram). The woods were ours and we didn't see another soul there. I certainly appreciate how very fortunate we are to be in the place we are, with the people we're with, right now. We're able to tune out everything else and in many ways it's one of the happiest times I've had since we had the kids.
We're knackered though and a late night playing rude card games will not have helped that, but I am counting my many blessings and trying to suppress the horror at what so many brave people are going through right now.
Life continues, bluebells still grow, children still play, we still smile and love. Just aware of the fragility of it all. And of how charmed my life has always been, but might not always be.
