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An excursion to London today for a Mothers' Day treat and celebration of my mother-in-law, Pat's birthday and a boat ride on the river Thames. I don't know if Pat has a big thing about boats and the river Thames but it's two years since we celebrated her birthday with
a somewhat disastrous speedboat ride on the same stretch of water. Pat told me she loves that blog and reads it often and was hoping for something as funny to happen this time. But sadly and luckily it was a much more gentle trip. Lunch in a covered boats moving at a reasonable pace, though the rain poured down and the windows steamed up and so you couldn't really see much, so it was really just eating lunch with no real choice of what you got inside a moving restaurant with the occasional blurry glimpse of the Shard.
A trio of middle-aged musicians played some standards like The Girl from Ipanema to no applause. Pat did try to start a round of applause going, but no one else cared and the keyboardist gave her a look to say "Thanks, but don't worry, this is just how it is". I spent most of my time wondering about these three guys - how much did they get paid? Were they happy? Is it just a side hustle or their regular gig? Is this where they thought their life would go? Did they always work together or were they thrown together randomly depending on availability? What did they go home to? What bands had they been in in their youth? Were anh of them in love with the Eastern European waitresses who gave us our chicken?
They were more than competent and good musicians and they seemed content enough - the guitarist looked a bit like Stewart Lee and I could see the actor Kevin Eldon playing the keyboard player and I wondered if there was a sad and sweet sitcom in it. Or a dark one where one of them was a serial killer.
Without them there I think it would have been a strange atmosphere, so they were mainly there for atmos. Is that the title? Atmos?
We all have dreams of where our life might go and I know as well as anyone that life does not always end up where you hoped. They are in showbiz, like me and are middle-aged like me and were perhaps once in cool bands, as I was once in a cool double act, but now... but now.
I wanted to know who they were and what they'd done. Which is all you can hope of for a piece of entertainment... another idea to add to the pile of things that will never happen in my own tragi-comedy.
Back home and the kids wanted Catie to be distracted as they had something planned. She went to walk the dog and I was too knackered to be any help, so completely off of their own backs the made their mum a weird and wonderful dinner. With flowers picked yesterday from our friends' garden (with permission) on the lounge table, Phoebe brought in grated carrot, a bowl of berries and some fruitshoots and Ernie filled a toy wardrobe with Quality Street declaring it contained "the finest gourmet delicacies). I suggested that their mum might not be into fruit shoots and that she liked wine so Ernie took ten bottles of red wine out of our wine rack and put them in a little trolley. They put paper napkins over their arms to look like waiters and Ernie drew up a guest list with all of our names and some squiggles so that he could pretend there were other guests for him to be checking in.
It was utterly delightful and Catie loved it and ate her grated carrots (with a few chunks in when the grating had got too tough).
Sometimes it feels like it was a very good idea to have kids. Just occasionally.
And look at this amazing picture of Catie that Phoebe painted last night.
