After a fun game of squash this morning I realise that I feel reasonably fit for the first time in weeks. My dizziness has almost completely subsided and my achey hip is much better and my rib no longer even twinges. A couple of weeks ago I was wondering if the slide into old age had begun and I would just have to get used to suffering with some malady or other. So it was nice to have a spring in my step and for the world to have stopped spinning. It's the day the earth stood still.
At lunchtime I popped up to Paddington to see my friend Lisa who has just had a baby. It's a lovely privilege to meet someone who is only one day old, though my new god daughter (third time I've taken on this duty - not entirely sure God would approve of the choice, but I suspect secretly He respects me for realising that He obviously doesn't exist. He must hate the gullible fools who insist on believing in Him) slept through most of our time together.
What must we be making of the world just 36 hours after arriving here? You've just got used to being in that comfy bubble with all your food coming in and all your poop going out automatically, kicking around and enjoying the reaction that you get from whatever this strange warm cave you're living in. Then POP and your horizons broaden and a whole new world of stimulus and light and unmuffled sound is thrust upon you. I'd just try and get to sleep and hope that I wake up to find it's all some kind of horrible nightmare.
It's humbling and calming to be in the presence of this tiny newcomer. I was quite glad that she didn't wake up properly because I didn't want the responsibility of having to pick up this fragile tiny fingered person. Her eyes flickered a little as she stirred, with big, blue, unfocused eyes tried to take in the hairy bearded apparition in front of her. I suppose I am one of the first dozen or so human beings she has seen. Oh brave new world.
And it's only her second day on the planet. Your life really is a blank page at this point. Who knows what is to come? But how full of hope and potential can you be? What other sights will those innocent eyes behold? Will she see the start of the 22nd Century? What will she do with her time? She could be the new Jesus, she could be the new Hitler. Or possibly somewhere between those two extremes. She could find a cure for cancer or walk into a hotel with a machine gun and open fire on some total strangers. We all start here. Slate clean. Unfucked up by all the indoctrination and crap that will soon be filling her senses.
It's an awe inspiring happening and it's happening all the time, all over the world. Here comes another one now! I don't know if you can call it a miracle when it happens so often and it's so easy to make it happen again and the manner of creation is so damn filthy and shameful. But it lifted my heart and made me feel even better than I had when I arrived. Then again I don't have to look after her and get up in the middle of the night to tend to her or clear up her shit, piss and puke (again not something that I really associate with other miracles). I think the real miracle might be that I've managed to get this far without accidentally creating one of these things. That's the kind of thing that can make me believe there might be a God. Or at least that all the computer keyboards I rested on my lap when I was a teenager destroyed my reproductive powers.
Anyway, welcome to the planet. Hope it's still inhabitable when you're my age.
Then I came home for some afternoon delight with the similarly childless Andrew Collings. Podcasts are our babies. And now we've done 40 of them. 41 if you count the radio academy one. 42 if you count the video podcast that will be one of the extras on my next DVD.
The photo today magically captured our thoughts. Perhaps we shall indeed one day have a baby together. God knows what the spawn of such an unholy union would turn out to be. Even though He doesn't exist, He knows. If we all pray hard enough then surely it will come to pass.
Anyway, the podcast is, as always,
here.
