Another 9/11 passes by with barely anyone recognising it at all. It seems to be only me and
Harriet Harman who remember that fateful day at all (thanks to @BookHonest for the clip). I guess the world moves on, but I will remember them. The rest of you should be ashamed.
I was hoping to get to Park Run this morning, but Catie took the early shift with the kids (I am usually the one who gets up to do this, as I generally wake up before the children) and I slept in til after 9am. I don't remember the last time this happened. I probably blogged about it as it's such an unusual thing to occur, certainly if the kids aren't away on a sleepover. I'd think it's less than a dozen times in the last ten years.
Obviously one sleep in til 9am is not enough to undo a decade's worth of sleep deprivation, but I had unprecedented energy (at least for the first hour or so) and got stuff done and felt alive. Then after a couple of hours of parenting the battery was empty again, but what a 120 minutes it had been.
They tell you before you become a parent to enjoy your lie-ins and your sleep, but out of all the things they tell you nothing is more true. I guess when these little fuckers are teenagers I might get to lie-in again, but I am so programmed to wake up at 6am now that I am not sure it will make any difference.
Still a rest is as good as a change.
You're not really allowed to change any more.
I like walking the dog in Hitchin as opposed to the countryside. I thought I'd miss the long country walks the most, but it's really nice to go on a walk where there are plenty of benches. Also bins. I don't have to carry a bag of dog shit for more than about 2 minutes now. Back at our other house I'd sometimes find a forgotten bag of dog shit in my pocket 8 hours later.
There's a nice park that overlooks Hitchin and I like to go up there and sit on a bench and look at my new home town for a while. This afternoon I was able to listen to York City win 5-3 in a crazy match versus Hartlepool. I sat on a bench dedicated to a man who had also enjoyed the view from this bench. He's now dead and can't see the view any more and one day I will be too. But for now I can look down on the residents of Hitchin both literally and figuratively (I am better than all of them).
Actually I am one of the worst people here. It's Harpenden that is full of cunts. Who ironically all look down on everyone else, not realising they are at the bottom of a valley of cuntdom. I have brought the average down in Hitchin to be fair, but hopefully soon the nice people will be displaced by arseholes like me.
For some reason I've ended up watching a good chunk of series 1 of 1990s sitcom
"As Time Goes By". I didn't like it in the 1990s and I am not much more enamoured of it now, even though I am the age of the protagonists now. It's mainly very gentle, though occasionally surprisingly racy. Geoffrey Palmer and Judi Dench are unsurprisingly very watchable and I like the way each episode ends with a bit of subtle poignancy with no regard for humour or drama. It is largely about the difficultiesa nd complexities of dating in your fifties and sixties and I like the fact that it turns out Palmer is in another casual relationship early on (fair enough as he is single) but the thing that jars the most is that there seems to be little judgement for men in their sixties and older attempting to seduce younger women. Palmer goes on a tentative date with Dench's daughter and a very gnarly University don makes a play for her in another episode. And it's more charming than seedy. That wouldn't play now, though a younger man is also interested in Judi, which is seen as flattering though faintly ridiculous (from her POV). I mean I am all for adults dating whoever they want to date and am aware that this gnarly old writer has a younger wife, but there would be a lot more pushback to those storylines nowadays (though maybe not to an older woman with a younger man?).
It's pretty dated, but in some ways the datedness works in its favour, as it's now a piece of social history and writing sitcoms was maybe an easier job back then
but I can't look away. I don't think I have LOLed but I think it's mainly meant to be charming and I like the little bit of bite. I guess I tried with Relativity to write a sitcom that might seem regular Radio 4 fodder if you didn't pay too much attention, but that had some surprising depths and talking points. I think maybe Bob Larbey was doing something similar here.
There's no denying the strength of his CV. And this sitcom ran and ran.
I also watched the Holdovers, which got Oscar noms and best supporting actor win and was good, but I'd rather write about As Time Goes By.
