Warming Up

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A brave new world, as this is the first blog that will appear on Substack and be emailed to you, if you've subscribed (For a bit, at least, I am also going to video me reading these on substack too, so subscribe here if you want to see that.)

If you've been reading for a while, I hope you've noticed I've pulled my socks up a bit over the last fortnight or so (if you're new you can read 7929 other blog posts at richardherring.com/warmingup. It's not always easy to make a daily blog zing especially as your life becomes duller and more predictable with age, and the ethos of Warming Up is very much chucking shit at the wall and hoping some of the shit might fall in a funny way that at least gets a couple of laughs and maybe some of the shit might be later moulded into something more crafted and less made of shit.... I wish I hadn't started on this metaphor, but the ethos of Warming Up is very much about owning your mistakes, going with your vomit draft and not editing. You'll get used to it.

Anyway, I am hopeful that having this platform to write which is a bit less have-a-look-if-you-fancy-it and more here-I-am-in-your-inbox will mean there might be more hits than misses, more laughs than groans and more entries that I think - hey that could be a Metro column, if I hadn't pissed off the editor by telling her I wouldn't give her RHLSTP exclusives ahead of broadcast and that I wouldn't be able to spot them anyway.

I might try and do more stuff than blogs here too - maybe a weekly cleaned up piece that would have been a Metro column, maybe a monthly short story first draft (I have one on the go which I hoped would be ready today, but I need to do a bit more on) videos and audio. If it gets good engagement and people like it, that is. And though I am keeping it all free (and would like to do that for good if possible), you are able to subscribe for a small amount of money and if enough of you do sub then that will encourage me to put as much up here as possible. I'd love it if those who have a spare fiver a month pay and those that don't don't, but everyone gets everything free if they want to. But we'll see. And I am more likely to put loads more stuff in if I'm being paid. A Metro style column a week if I am making as much as I would have been if writing for the Metro (a very small amount, which is partly why I didn't think I owed them any exclusives), a bit more for a short story and if I'm paid enough so that I don't have to do other jobs then I can put all sorts of things up here. I love the idea of just writing a book for Substack (I've always thought the internet was ripe for doing things like they did in Victorian times where they'd release a chapter a month). Anyway for now, I just want to see what's possible and enjoy it, and if you enjoy it too that is payment enough. Tell some friends. And try out substack in general. i think it might be a cool place to hang out and to interact with writers, readers and for you guys also to interact with each other. None of my blogs have ever come with the possibility to comment on them til now, so that will be interesting in itself.

Today we went to London to visit the Paradox Museum. I hoped that it would turn out to be a box with a cloth over it that might or might not contain a museum but you weren't allowed to look. Instead it was a load of exhibits largely involving mirrors where you could make big things look small and small things look big and finite things look infinite and upside things looks the right way up. But that was good too.

I am not entirely sure what a paradox is and whether my museum or not in a box would qualify, but that's the kind of thing that the Paradox Museum is all about. Really, I suppose if it want's to be a Paradox Museum it should be full of things that aren't paradoxes. Or would that be the Irony Museum?

We had a terrific time. I've been dizzy again for the last couple of days, but it had passed by this morning, so it was weird to go into rooms that spun round or where the floor sloped off in the wrong way or along corridors with things spinning round them and being made to feel dizzy. Had I been dizzy it might have been a boring experience where everything was just normal. Or I could have saved my money and just walked around regular rooms and watched them spin for free.

The kids really liked it and so did I.

Later when driving home we were talking to the kids about how beautiful they both are. We'd been looking at photos of them from the day and they are both very photogenic. Catie had said how some of her friends had recently commented on how handsome Ernie was. I said that was inappropriate given he's six.

Ernie then started to sing a song about Phoebe which went "Phoebe is the best..." and was clearly going on to be about how much he loved her, but Phoebe was annoyed by it and told Ernie to shut up. Which was kind of funny and sad at the same time and basically sums up their relationship.

Ernie has been doing lots of jokes recently, including ones he's made up (like the sign language one) but a few minutes later he said, "Daddy if I am a comedian when I grow up, would it be funny if I went on stage and said, "When I was a kid I made up a song about my sister being the best and as soon as I started to sing it she told me to shut up."

I had to admit that that was not only funny, but a very sophisticated bit to come up with for a six year old. Catie said that comedy is often about finding humour in sad things and that that was a perfect example. I mean, there's definitely the start of an Edinburgh hour in there."

"If I was a comedian, would it be funny to say, "When I was a kid my mum nearly always told me I was handsome, but then some of her friends said it too and that was inappropriate."

Again it would be funny, especially the nearly always part, but I had to say to him, "Hold on, you can't just listen in to out conversations and then repeat them verbatim and claim it's your own material" but then I realised you could do exactly that and that's what comedians do.

Catie pointed out the joke was good, because it looked like he was being arrogant to begin with but still undercut it enough.

I knew Phoebe was going to be comedy competition but hadn't expected Ernie to blossom so quickly.

"I would say my dad helped me with that bit, so he deserves some of the fame from that joke." I loved the idea that that joke would get him fame and that really all that would happen is that if a crowd didn't like the joke they'd now blame me.

I said, "If I go on stage can I say, I've got this son and he thinks it's acceptable for his comedy act to be just to copy a load of things I've said and pass them off as his."

And Ernie was sharp enough to say that he could go on stage and tell that story from his point of view.

My curse is to have to be a father to the exact child that i was, his curse is to be the same as his father.

It's maybe the curse of all parents and kids. My additional curse is that both kids are definitely going to be funnier than me. Their curse is that they can only rebel against me by getting a proper job.