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My plan to attempt to get just two solid hours of writing a day done has not worked throughout November, but today I gave it a good shot and made a little progress with Chapter one of my bollock book. Overall I felt pleased with the balance today. I had dropped the kids off at school, then picked up a Christmas Tree, managed to do some prep work (ie chose some stories) for tonight’s Twitch of Fun and made lunch in the morning. Then I worked in the afternoon and came down to help put up the Christmas tree once the kids were home and got them to bed, before heading upstairs to broadcast to the nation (well the 500 people from the nation who tuned in to see a tired man talking to himself and unable to pronounce the name of the ex- Man United manager).
I want to get the balance right in my life and today came close, though I didn’t really get any down time or socialising time, which seems to be the thing I’ve given up.
My wife had told me about the theory that there are three separate entities in life: work, family and social life and that successful people can only manage to have two. I think that’s probably right. Having lived most of my adult life concentrating on social life and work, I have now moved into family life and work.
And though thirty years ago the prospect of staying in the house at night time made me feel unsettled, lonely and jittery and so I’d ring my friend Stefan and we’d go and sit in the pub in Balham, with me hoping some women would come and talk to us. Even though there were rarely any women in there. And why would they approach us anyway? Stefan was nice though, so it was better than staying at home.
I have no panic about staying in these days. If anything I have panic about going out. So that means I can concentrate on work and family and hopefully make that a success.
Only possible to do two out of the three. And I can’t see how we’d live for very long if one of those things wasn’t work. Maybe in another twenty years it will be family and socialising (though I doubt I will ever stop work). I’d quite like to get some world travel in once the kids have left home, but not sure I will live that long or whether the world will be open to travellers if I do.
If anything I have combined work and social life in RHLSTP, as that’s when I meet up with people to have a chat. But I’d rather be home with the tiny idiots I have created and the bigger idiot who wanted to create tiny idiots with me.
Over the last few weeks I’ve been listening to Killers of the King by Charles Spencer on audiobook, in an attempt to fill in the big gaps in my knowledge when it comes to the English Civil War. It’s very hard to believe that only 350 years ago that people were being brutally executed in this country. Being hanged, drawn and quartered is a seriously unpleasant and vindictive way to die. They hanged you until you were nearly dead, but then stopped to cut off your genitals and maybe stuff them in your mouth and then stick hot irons in you so your organs cooked in front of you and then ripped you into five bits.
It feels like the kind of thing that might come back in in post-Brexit Britain, so you can’t be entirely confident that it won’t happen to you. But fucking Hell, it happened recently enough as it is. I guess you’d have to hope that someone got some poison to you in prison, but it seems like that didn’t happen very much.
