7050/19570
Of course I am now ill. The first draft of the book done and my body relaxes and allows itself to succumb to whatever virus is going around. I was poorly last week too, but fought through it but the fight is lost and the virus has won. Post RHLSTP days are tough enough already for an old man like me, but today I felt hungover for the first time in 15 months, even though I hadn't had any booze.
Because I am an idiot I had another podcast to do, talking by Zoom to Ed Patrick about his book
“Catch Your Breath†for the RHLSTP Book Club. I finished listening to the audio book in the morning and it's a fascinating, funny and not funny look behind the scenes of how Covid hit the NHS (and much more) which is well worth your time. That will be out a week on Friday. I am enjoying this new initiative which is a bit of a straighter podcast than RHLSTP, but in which we're able to explore the contents and creation of books in a bit more detail. And it's a bit of an easier job for me too as all I need to do is read (or listen to) a book and I don't have to do in depth research. There's a few parallels with my own book in this one in that mine is also partially an account of an unusual experience of lockdown and I was the recipient rather than administrator of anaesthetics. Maybe it was the morphine, but I still look back at being under anaesthetic as one of the calmest and most illuminating experiences of my life. Even though I wasn't really there. It's made me much more relaxed about the notion of dying. But also more determined not to die just yet.
I'd watched half of Encanto the other day with the kids, but then they'd had to go to bed. They've seen it loads of times already, but this was my first proper go (I've caught a few bits here and there and listened to the album a lot). I decided to spend the hour I had before they returned from drama club with their mum watching the rest. So I was an adult man watching a children's film on my own. It's good though and the songs are great and there's even stuff about chrysalises in it, so I am very much its audience. We are living in a weird time where mainstream kids' films are more inventive and philosophical than mainstream adult ones and this has some great stuff to say about family, it's expectations, rivalries and how we view each other. Also there should be banging songs in every film. I rewound the film back to where we left it, in case the kids ended up wanting to watch it and I never told any of them what I had done. It is a family secret that I will take to my grave.
