7708/20647
Hopefully the story of our back garden patio/decking area will soon be over. In the search for the hole in which mice were getting into our kitchen roof we ended up taking the decking up as well as filling various holes with expanding foam (which got everywhere) and getting in someone to lay poison. It cost a fair bit to take up the decking and it's costing a lot more to get the area properly paved, so these mice have ended up costing me. Especially annoying as after doing all this we realised there was a redundant air vent at the side of the house that was clearly the entry point and which was sealed up basically for free with some bricks. I did at least have a load of decking to burn in the fireplace which has kept us warm during the winter, but it tends to spit a bit and the other day set fire to a box of cardboard (It was only smouldering and luckily I noticed the smoke early enough) so those fucking mice nearly brought down the whole house. It's like some kind of morality tale. But the joke would have been on them if that had happened as then they would have nowhere to live (the joke is really on them because they probably all died after eating poison, but that's a bit of a darker joke). Anyway I may have spent thousands of pounds, but the situation is almost resolved, unless something goes wrong with this stage, which it very well might as the guys doing the job had already found more mystery pipes etc under the concrete which we have to work around.
It's actually for the best that the decking came up as it had been put in
I felt bad for the guys having to work out in the cold whilst I sat by my decking filled fire reading books and writing blogs, but Darren said that it was much worse working in the summer heat. Though to be fair it all sounds pretty bad to me. But they get to work with drills and can smash stuff up before rebuilding it. Their work will (hopefully) last for decades, whilst my knob jokes... well to be fair I will probably use them for decades too, if my career so far is anything to go by. And my patio will probably make no one laugh. Unless my son poos on it.
https://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/03/08/2021/index.htmlFeeling a lot better this week and in spite of a couple of slips am back on my healthy diet and almost back to the pre Christmas weight. I did a long dog walk today and think I am probably ready to get back into exercising and I have my first 2024 stand up gig on Tuesday (a few tickets released today - only £8 and I am giving away free Emergency Questions books to everyone who comes as I have about 80 boxes of them in my garage).
https://www.angelcomedy.co.uk/event-detail/richard-herring-can-i-have-my-ball-back-wip-16th-jan-the-bill-murray-london-tickets-202401161800/. We also downloaded the Sports game on the Switch and so this evening I played tennis against my daughter (which counts as exercise) and hardly made her cry at all. She was pretty good at it to be fair, though she sucked at golf and as hard as I tried I couldn't lose to her. Ernie is a bit more frustrated by the games, so we definitely made the right choice to only buy one system, but again playing video games with your kids is not only a great way to bond (and smash those bonds by accidentally chipping in from 31 metres) but to get some payback for all the work you've put in this far by getting to play video games for an hour, albeit against someone who is very quickly going to be way better than you at them. Amusingly I couldn't find a way to make my avatar male, so I had a female one that I put a beard on. Which is very modern.
Booking in guests for the rest of the run right now. Phil Ellis is going to be one of the guests in Leicester and Charlotte Church will be joining me in Cardiff (not many tickets left for that one) http://richardherring.com/rhlstp
