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Happy 84th birthday to my dad. That doesn't make any sense. He's still in his forties, surely?
After a morning on the beach we dumped the kids on their grandparents and went out for lunch. This was our first real break from the kids all holiday, but also, I think, our first meal out in a restaurant/pub since March.
For both reasons it felt incredibly liberating and decadent. We drank a couple of pints of lager in the sunshine and ate some nice food and considered never returning to the flat.
Kids are great and all, but they are nothing compared to no kids.
Covid has given you non-parents a taste of what having kids is like and I hope you will appreciate your first meals out in four months just as much as a parent does. Sometimes it is good to lose something that you completely take for granted, the you really appreciate it when you get to experience it again. All those meals and drinks I had before I got hit by the double whammy of the viruses of Corona and tiny humans.
Two pints at lunch time is now enough to more or less wipe me out so we took it pretty easy for the rest of the day and I managed a confusing nap.
So I feel like we’ve relaxed into the holiday now, though there’s only one full day left, which is a bit disappointing. But I don’t have too much on my plate when we return so maybe we can keep boozing in the sun when we’re home and keep our fingers crossed that the kids can look after themselves.
Either that or I’ll make an effort to get a bit fitter again.
I haven’t decided which yet.
Probably a bit of both.
The important thing is that I was pretty much sober by the time I had to do any parenting duties again, so all is good. The kids squabbled a bit at bathtime, but they've actually been very well behaved this week, enough to make me believe we might have entered a golden age of parenting where they're both capable of taking part in stuff and being reasonably logical human beings. Obviously I am deluded, but maybe we're through the first tricky bit of parenting. And we surely get at leasst two months before we enter the next tricky phase. They're so sweet and funny (mainly) that I wish we could keep them at this age, but giving them anti-growth drugs is apparently frowned upon.
I can never really enjoy any of it though. Whenever something adorable is happening I can't help thinking that this is the scene in the TV drama before everything goes horribly wrong. It was better when my life was going badly because at least then I never worried that something terrible would happen to ruin it all.
RHLSTP with Maisie Adam is now up
And for the people of West Yorkshire, my prediction that we'd be in the second week of second lockdown at time of broadcast came true. I am Nostradamus. Look upon my works ye mighty and despair.
My new book is available to preorder on audiobook at these locations
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