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It was Father’s Day and I enjoyed joining in with the dad joke of claiming that I had won the contest to be the number one dad. Comic originality is good, but sometimes it’s fun to hammer away at an obvious gag and join in with the fun. It’s the dad way.
My own dad got a card proclaiming him the second best dad in the world. After me. You can’t accept the plaudits and then pretend that never happened.
My daughter had bought us matching monster socks - but had she? I mean she is scarcely able to express herself let alone have the wherewithal to go to the shops and pick out the right size socks and then pay for them, I suspect a cover-up. She has big feet for a two year old and I have small ones for a 49 year old and in some of the photos it was hard to tell whose feet were who. Thank God she hadn’t bought gloves.
I was looking forward to my day of being pampered and resting up, but somehow I ended up making in breakfast in bed for my wife and daughter AND cooking a roast lunch. WHAT!?
I liked it though. This is what being a dad is all about. That and being blamed for anything that goes wrong. I mean, usually correctly, but that’s hardly the point.
Still next year there will be double presents (though another mouth to feed), so it all pays off eventually. I’ve already got a couple of pairs of socks and a mug out of being a dad and all I’ve had to shell out is thousands of pounds, sleepless nights and the constant stress of worrying that something terrible is about to happen.
I am fooling no one. I love it all. I am going to have 100 kids. I hope my wife doesn’t mind. I mean there’s no way she can do them all. I am on a very limited time span here. Apply here if you wish to carry one of my progeny.
Foolishly I ate a lot of roast garlic at lunch. I love roast garlic and no one else does. So I ate all of it. Sorry to the people who came to see me in a hot room above a pub in Spitalfields tonight. I was sweaty and garlicky and when I got home my wife, pregnancy having given her the super power of enhanced sense of smell thought I had been somehow sprayed with chemicals when I came home. But I refuse to apologise. The new show totters slowly to life, though I have had no time to do any work on it between gigs, so it’s all down to what I manage to create on stage. I don’t think anyone paid to see the show tonight, so they got excellent value for money and paid exactly what my portion was worth. I am feeling OK about it. There is time and many more previews to go and as much as I need a solid show at the start of the Fringe, it will continue to develop until next June when I finish doing it.
I liked looking at the buildings old and new around Liverpool Street. The signage for Verde and Co, a fruit importers was still above their shop, though it was now a chocolate emporium and next door a shop that was once a French Milliners, but wasn’t any more, had not had its former use over written either. Things change, it’s the nature of the world and probably Verde and Company replaced some former business in the same premises, but I am glad that the little finger hole to the past remains for us to peep through. So much of Liverpool Street is modern and high rise, but this is why London is remarkable: every now and again you find some vestige of what it was before.
Walking to the tube in Shepherd’s Bush was more depressing. Photocopied sheets showing the faces of those missing are sellotape everywhere, with hopeful phone numbers in case those that are lost are miraculously found again. Some of these home made adverts appeal for supplies or furniture, but mostly the smiling faces of children stare out at you and make your heart feel heavier. The mood on the streets is sombre and bitter with an undercurrent of brooding resentment. The community is strong, but the leaders are weak and I am fearful of where this will all lead. Londoners have been brought closer in some ways of course, but the divisions have been exposed. This shit is Dickensian. I don’t think anyone can plead ignorance any more. The people must come first.
