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My turn to do the tough parenting day of getting both the kids from school to the swimming pool, which might be easy if they had lessons at the same time, but one is at 12.30pm and the other is at 4.15pm. The school is ten minutes drive from home, the pool is 20 minutes drive from the school, home is a 20 minute drive from the pool. And then you have to do the whole thing again. Today was further complicated by our milkman not arriving so I had to pop to the supermarket on the way home from swimming trip one. Will the kids appreciate one day that I was prepared to give up my life to be a chaffeur for them? I doubt it. I certainly don't appreciate my parents for anything they might have done for me. And I never will.
Ernie is in love with his swimming teacher and cries the minute they are parted. “But I love her†he wailed as I told him we'd see her again soon. “Plus you've literally just seen her.†He was inconsolable, so deep were his feelings. At least for two minutes until he forgot about it. He is his father's son.
He was in a unicorn onesie and when we left school after picking up Phoebe he started undoing it. Then as he entered the main playground he let it drop to the floor showing his pants. He waddled along, loving the fact that everyone was laughing at him. Some of the older kids said “Who IS that?†They weren't all laughing in an admiring way, it has to be said, though there was a certain degree of awe at his bravery. He just loved the attention and the laughter. It was very funny.
“I just want to be funny like you,†he told me as I dressed him.
What makes him think that that's the kind of thing I do for laughs?
I mean, he's got lucky and is correct. I just spent most of a week making a film with my top off. But there's no way he can know that. Why does he assume I'd go for lowest common denominator stuff like this?
He is exactly like me. He feels things strongly and then forgets them, falls in and out of love at the drop of a hat, he craves attention and laughter, he doesn't care if his antics might make him look uncool (because he knows it is cooler to be free than to be caught up in a system where you have to behave in a certain way to be cool), life will beat him down as a result, but I hope he never changes. To be fair, leaving school dressed in a unicorn onesie was ballsy enough on its own.
I don't know if my kids are as great as I think they are (because all parents think that) but I do know that neither of them are like the others. They're exceptional in some way. It might be that they're exceptional idiots, but at least they're exceptional. They are very different from each other, but I hope they don't lose sight of who they are or conform too much.
I remain wrapped around their little fingers. With Catie away, Phoebe was more or less in charge of bath time and dictated what happened next and there wasn't much I could do about it, though I did occasionally stamp my authority on things. She still more or less got her way. Luckily they were both tired from swimming so fell asleep pretty easily. I too was tired, but I had to play myself at snooker before I could go to sleep. It was a crucial frame in the contest. Up on audio and video on Wednesday.
I had been thinking of booking Terry Christian to go alongside Charley Boorman on the 7th March RHLSTP, partly because I thought he'd be a great guest, but partly because it would be funny to have a whole night of Lee and Herring lookalikes. Terry got in touch with me today to ask if I could get his friend into the March 7th gig and I told him that I'd like to book him for the show and it all worked out. It will be a night of delightful visual puns, but both men have a lot of stories to tell, so don't miss that one
