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Devastated today to be looking through Instagram and discovering that Annabel Giles had died. I had no idea she’d been unwell and the horrible cancer she had had progressed very quickly, so it was a real shock. She was a wonderful and caring person and somehow we had persuaded her to appear on our radio shows in the 90s and then to make a cameo or two in Fist of Fun. So she was sort of our first celebrity friend, but very down to earth and funny. And she was terrifically kind and caring and we looked after each other a bit in the late 90s when she’d just had a baby and her partner had left her and I was struggling to write my Edinburgh play that year, which I ended up mainly doing in the shed in her garden. My problems were lesser than hers, but I think she looked after me more than I looked after her. But it was a special time.
And it had been great to catch up with her on my 2019 tour of RHLSTP https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/rhlstp-with-richard-herring/id520831548?i=1000458612546, with her baby now a man, but her still beautiful and funny and it was impossible to believe she was in her early sixties. Just as it’s impossible to believe that she’s been taken so early. What a life though and what a woman. Absolutely gutted, Annie.
Ernie’s class were going to the fire station today and somehow I volunteered (and was I volunteered?) to drive him and a couple of classmates there. I don’t remember this being how school trips were done in the old days - a teacher slightly dangerously driving a minibus is my memory of how things were done- but I am a man of leisure (though I probably should be working) and I could sit in a cafe and write my blog on my rickety ipad while I waited. I wasn’t even allowed to go and look at the fire engine (though a fireman did squirt my car with the hose as we left - probably making a statement about how dirty it was).
Ernie had a great time though, but I found the responsibility of being in charge of two other children a little daunting. It’s OK to harm your own kid in an accident, but someone else’s? That’s embarrassing.
It all went fine though, until I was dropping them off at school. My kids always get out of the pavement side of the car and I sort of assumed these kids would do the same. I had put Ernie in the front seat, because again, if I had an accident it would be less embarrassing to harm my own child, so he got out OK and the kid on the back seat passenger side got out on to the pavement. The other kid started opening the door on the road side though, without really looking and it was a busy road. I saw him doing it and shouted for him to stop, thank goodness (and he would have been OK - there were cars, but not near enough to cause an accident) but it did make me think about what might have happened if he’d been quicker and I’d been looking the other way. I didn’t even want this responsibility and I don’t remember volunteering to do it. Get a teacher in a minibus, you monsters. Glad I didn’t kill anyone though. Also I am glad I took my own kid there and back. I can’t trust any of the other parents to look after my child and I guess the ones who trusted me are insane too.
