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I elected not to keep the toothbrush moustache, by the way. Even though I could have got away with it by never taking off my mask.
My wife went out tonight and I think this might have been my first night in the house, without having some work to do, alone since the pandemic began. I had to get the kids bathed and to bed by myself, which isn’t easy as my son seems to get increasingly crazy the longer the day goes on. Due to my wife doing podcasts I’d had to do the same last night, but the boy had a melt down because he wanted a lullaby from his mum. Luckily, Catie had a hiatus between podcasts and was able to settle him. Tonight that wouldn’t be possible.
But they behaved pretty well on the whole and though Ernie was reluctant to go to sleep, he wasn’t crying his eyes out. I improvised two lullabies, said goodbye to each of his body parts and did his mantras (My wife tries to end the day positively by getting him to repeat affirming sentences about himself, though when I tried to get him to say “I am brave” he hid under the duvet and seemed to be laughing at the irony.
I was hungry and tired and really wanted my dinner and so when he started shouting out when I thought I’d settled him I was a bit annoyed. But Phoebe joined me in his bedroom and sang him a lullaby so sweet that it brought tears to my eyes. It was full of gentleness and love and the stars and the moon being up there for him. She did then add that if anyone tried to take him away she would hold on to him and stop them, which although admirable, brought a slightly darker tone to events which I thought might inspire nightmares. But she gave Ernie a kiss and let him have her little musical box from an old mobile to help calm him. These kids scrap and argue and annoy each other on purpose, but it’s all worth it to see them loving each other this much.
She regretted giving her musical box and wanted it back five minutes later, but still. That box is a nice connection between me and her as I used to sing her a lullaby every night as the music played and she feels like she remembers it. But I think she associates it with me and it’s about the closest she gets to admitting that she loves me that she holds it in such high esteem. I imagine her as an old lady occasionally winding it up and thinking of me. But I suspect it will break before then, or the attachment will fade. I hope I still drift into her thoughts in the 22nd Century though.
Phoebe is also very excited about her new ability to write and there is nothing as disarmingly charming as a 5 year old’s attempts to get words down on paper. Their spellings turn out to be sophisticated satires of the English language, which is unnecessarily complicated. This evening apropos of nothing she wrote out a four point instruction on how to make a fire. Point 1 was “paypu” which is a logical way to spell paper. It fills me with pride, because it’s crazy that that baby that turned up yesterday is doing something like this of their own volition, but the fact that you’re not allowed to laugh at what is undoubtedly sweetly comic, makes the whole thing even funnier.
As much as it was nice when they went to sleep, I had the best time with them when they were awake.
And then I wasted my evening and stayed up too late missing my chance to get some much needed sleep. But I was happy with that. It was a little return to normality.
If you just want to catch up on the exploits of Peter Dibdin (and we’re starting to get hints of a back story)
then here’s episode 2
