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It's been a while, but we dumped the kids on the grandparents and had a date day! Absolutely necessary. We've had a tough month of parenting and it was nice to be just people again, albeit ones that spend 48% of their time away from their kids still talking about their kids.
We went out for lunch in St Albans and then out to the cinema to see the Mean Girls musical (which I enjoyed more than I thought I would), even though I want to see the Holdovers, just like the me in the adverts on RHLSTP.
Catie put on some music as we drove from place to place - including the album of Girls 5 Eva, which is class. Catie said she'd know what I'd like to listen to and put on Simon and Garfunkel. It's true that as a young man I was a fan of this duo (though more so the solo music of Simon - up to Graceland), but I haven't deliberately sat down and listened to S and G for two to three decades. I found some of it a bit adolescent and pretentious on this listen, but started getting back into it. I used to listen to these albums a lot, but was still surprised how many of the lyrics I remembered, even of the more obscure tracks, even if I didn't immediately recognise them. The lyrics came pouring out of my brain, in real time. Every line coming to me milliseconds before the young Simon and Garfunkel sang them.
I have lately found my memory is pretty bad, in terms of remembering stuff that's happened in the last twenty years and yet my brain retains all of these lyrics somewhere, just in case I am called upon to sing them again at a random moment.
Coincidentally I got a facebook message from my friend Ange, who I shared a house with at University when I was into this music. It's me and my best friend (and future Best man - and I his) Mike "Devon" Cosgrave. I think she might have sent me one of these before and I might even have blogged about it, but again it's so odd to see the (probably) 21 year old me. I am much more handsome than I realised and much thinner than I thought I was (though I do seem to understand that my lower leg is sexy. I must have had a terrible personality because women were largely not interested in me despite my film star good looks ( I could almost be the handsome guy in Saltburn if I wasn't 5 ft 6 and uncool and all right not good looking enough. I wish I could give this boy a quick phone call and give him some advice, but he'll make his own mistakes and turn out OK in the end. Well that's what I am banking on. So far, not.
What was more remarkable is though is how much the pic of me with the Triv Pursuits box looks like my son. It's exactly his little face and expression plonked on to a slightly bigger head. So he's going to look just like me (but hopefully a bit taller) and as long as I can survive long enough to be there to see it, maybe I can give him the advice that I'd like to have given myself. Also it means that given Stew's son looks exactly like him too that at some point the two boys can hire themselves out as Lee and Herring lookalikes. I expect that in 15 years time there will be a lot of call for that.
He doesn't just look like me, but he's sensitive like I was (am) and scared of life like I was (am) and thinks he can joke his way out of everything, but mainly isn't funny...
You're so much, like me. I'm sorry.
