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My hip still hurts, though I am now more convinced that it’s a pulled muscle rather than it being time for a new hip. The lady at the Post Office suggested arthritis as a possibility. It’s so jolly getting old.
Ernie is very resistant to going to school right now. I basically had to squeeze him through the door today. I am sympathetic and keep telling him that I don’t want to go to work and that I’d like to stay home and watch TV all day too. The problem is that I can absolutely do that and sometimes do, but he doesn’t need to know that.
I thought about going home and watching Pokemon just to spite him.
I booked us in for our first foreign holiday since 2018 this morning. We’re going away for a week in Easter. I’ve liked holidaying in the UK for the last five years and avoiding flying in an effort to save the world. But equally I’d like my kids to see a bit of the world before it is destroyed by people travelling the world. So we’re dipping out toe in the water (the hopefully warm waters of the Mediterranean) and going away for a week at Easter. It feels like something from another life time. Once the kids have left home we will be able to spend half the year travelling the world. I’ll be in an urn then, but it will still count.
Anyway, it felt weird to be booking a holiday outside of the UK - but we have to test out these new blue passports and all the many benefits they will bring us. Like really getting to know airports properly by queuing for ages in them. Our last foreign holiday got lost in a mist of tiredness from looking after baby Ernie and wine at lunch, but this one should be more fun for everyone (and YES there’s a kids’ club). It will be strange to be on a foreign holiday and not drinking. Will that tempt me back? I doubt it, but never say never. It feels cool to have something to look forward to. The last 3 years have been so strange and insular and this is our chance to get out into the world (and then stay in a hotel the whole time). But hooray for the idea. Let’s not worry about the reality. You’ll get to find out about that in April.
I did lots of chores and finished off Tom Crewe’s A New Life, which is a very thought provoking novel and is written by the nephew of the women from the book launch (of this book) who hated my grandad. I am pretty sure my grandad would like Tom: a very clever and erudite man whose book is certainly not “a waste of a good education” like my 1990s radio show. Can’t wait to talk to Tom about his book - and my grandad - on the book club.
Another frame of snooker tonight. I hoped the cats might invade as they were climbing all over the beams in the attic five minutes before the match began. But there was no pitch invasion. Just boring snooker.
Watch here. 
