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We were off to see my parents today. The trip to Cheddar has been arduous the last few times and taken five or six hours due to roadworks or accidents and M4 closure, but today the journey took the proscribed amount of time and was unstressful. We had to stop at one point because one of us urgently needed a poo (even though we'd stopped at a service station 20 minutes before). I will not embarrass Ernie by saying which one of us it was.
There is a new baby girl coming to the family in the imminent future and we wondered what she might be called. Ernie had some suggestions. His first thought was to name her after his Minecraft handle - Duckquack39 (name changed to protect his identity), which I think would be a brilliant name for a child - go on Elon Musk, name your next kid that, you coward. And then he suggested Ernie2, which was also genius, but probably a good indication of why 6 year olds don't name babies. People would ask about Ernie1 and if he was particularly important to this girl or her family and they'd have to say " Not really, we just let him choose the name for some reason". Then in true comedy writer stylt he just started saying things he could see like Bridge, Road and Tree and finally Phoebeispoop, which again would be a perfect mad name. I am going to insist they use one of these. But happy for it just to be a middle name.
A Supertramp song came on the radio. I haven't thought about them for a while. It was funny hearing them as I headed back to Cheddar as my brother had been a fan as a teenager and one of my memories of the house we were heading to was Supertramp's "You're right, you're right, you're bloody well right" coming out of his bedroom when he was in a teenage mood and me being thrilled by the swearing. Supertramp had been a huge band, but I haven't heard too much of them lately and I realised I didn't know who was in the band or if they were alive or dead - you'd assume the latter for 70s rockers, but a cursory google suggests the main players at least are still with us.
Later I'd listen to a few Supertramp hits upstairs at my parents -probably the first time their music has been in the house since the early 80s, now coming out of a phone rather than mmy brother's tiny speakers - pretty sure he'd have been working with vinyl then. It didn't transport me back to those strange and eerie days, but it was a nice tribute to lost childhoods and would have been much more poignant if my brother or Supertramp were dead, but they all seem to be alive, so it was just a bit of fun. No tears.
