Warming Up

I went on Twitter to say "My daughter says she knows why Homer is called Homer. Because there's a O that you can turn into a doughnut. Prove her wrong.”

Of course it being Twitter some people did attempt to prove her wrong. Some with more self awareness than others. @thecharismavoid said "It’s actually because it’s the name of Matt Groening’s dad, and he named them after his real family. The defence rests M’lud”

To which I replied “And can you prove his dad wasn’t called that because there was an O that you could turn into a doughnut?”

The Charismavoid retired to lick their wounds.

Someone else said, with a bit less humour "Even if I could, why would I spend time proving a child wrong online? I can't imagine anyone on here is wasting their time argueing with kids.”

I mean they had a point, cos some people did seem to go to some lengths to argue (were they joining in with the joke or genuinely trying to disprove this transparently erroneous hypothesis?), but my challenge to prove Phoebe wrong was not a genuine one. I didn’t really want them to prove her wrong. It was a charming thing to say.

It would have been embarrassing if I had revealed the full truth. That Phoebe is actually 28 years old. But I kept that to myself. 

We drove to Somerset today, combining my gigs in Wells tomorrow with a chance to spend a week in Cheddar and see the folks. I hadn’t really thought about how bad the traffic would be on a bank holiday weekend, but that’s OK as I had plenty of time to think about it on the five hour journey.

I’ve talked about this before, but on the drive I saw the sign, “Picking up litter puts road workers at risk” and once again my initial thought was why are they encouraging us not to pick up our litter and how does us picking up our litter put road workers at risk? Were they talking about getting out of your car to retrieve litter that you’d let fly out of your car window when you were driving? Then I realised what they thought they meant. I wasn’t sure if I’d written about it before, because if I had then surely the power of Warming Up would have made them change it, but I had and it hadn't. 

I wonder how many people have crashed trying to solve this riddle.

We were staying in lodge near to my family home. We’d come here last year for a couple of days and been very impressed with the accommodation, which had a nice sized lounge, a kitchen, two good bedrooms and a balcony with a hot tub. So we’d upgraded to the three bedroom version for a week’s stay. So it was quite a disappointment to find that this time our lodge was much smaller and the bedrooms smaller than prison cells and all down a single corridor that I might not have been able to fit through had I not done some exercise this week and where the doors to the rooms bump into each other if more than one is opened at a time. The rooms were just big enough to fit the beds into and claims that this place could house six people (even if four of them were kids) were hard to believe. I imagined how six adults turning up with a suitcase each would feel about encountering this space. It had also heated up like a greenhouse after being in direct sunlight for the whole day. And the toilet smelled of wee.

It was a blow after we’d been so looking forward to returning here, though I guess we’d been lucky last time. We enquired about finding a more suitable lodge but of course everything was booked up.

But never mind - it’s all part of the holiday fun and I am sure the inevitable lack of sleep that will come will just make things even more enjoyable.

We went for dinner at my mum and dad’s and they’re in very good form for a nearly 86 and nearly 87 year old. Mum played badminton with Phoebe and catch with Ernie and made us a lovely dinner and apple crumble. She is a marvel. Dad is a bit more sedate (as should be the right of an 86 year old), but I will grudgingly accept that he is a marvel too. 

The people in the next lodge sat on their balcony talking til well after 11pm. I thought about asking them to be quiet, but everyone else was asleep and I put on my noise cancelling headphones and slept in a bed which had a wardrobe protruding over the  bottom half. 

Happy holidays everyone!