Warming Up

My daughter is only four, but has always had the measure of me and sees me very much as a lower status character who she can be mean to. To be fair, usually for a joke, which I encourage and only occasionally out of genuine antipathy. This morning at breakfast she sang along to the Frozen soundtrack and got annoyed at me (as usual) when I tried to sing along.

But when it's just the two of us, she's usually my friend. I drove her to school today and on the way she asked if we could play the Sesame Street album that her mum puts on in the car. I said that I didn't have it on my phone, but that I knew the songs by now and I started singing the ones I remembered. She sang along too. She didn't tell me to shut up. As we approached school I started singing Elmo's song, which has been a long term favourite ever since she was little. We sang together and she only got upset if I changed the words or tried to make it Phoebe's song instead of Big Bird's. But we got out of the car belting out this song together and it was genuinely one of the happiest moments of my life. By denying me this pleasure at almost every other opportunity, she made it mean all the more when she let her self-consciousness and embarrassment of her father of and just “let it go”.

I know this little island of pleasure won't last for long. I know that as she gets older she'll just be more embarrassed by me. But this was an even better start to the day then running wild horses. 

I was off to Winchester today to do a RHLSTP with Ahir Shah and John Kearns. For the first time in a while I was driving myself, which cut down on my research time and also led to a tired and tricky journey home in driving rain, with diversions for work on the motorway, so I wasn't home til 1am. 

I had some time to write a few jokes and questions once I was there and it was great to be back at the Theatre Royal, one of the first professional theatres I ever played, back in 1988 before my first guest was born. I enjoyed both shows (this week's and the one I am doing next week), but got increasingly tired and giddy during the evening, so the second show was particularly giddy and self-indulgent. Both these young comedians are excellent but from our two recent meetings it does feel like John Kearns and I have a special comedy connection which is somehow both sympathetic and aggravating at the same time. I haven't laughed so much during a podcast for a very long time. Sometimes I crossed a line, not really into offensiveness, but just into not particularly funniness. It was awkward and stilted, but also soared like a strange comedy eagle. One of the ushers asked me how it was possible for two men to get paid for just going on stage and behaving so idiotically and he meant it as a compliment. 

As annoying as the booking process and the driving and the tiredness can be, the shows themselves are a delight.