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It's been a social weekend at the Herring house as we've had friends round both days and I ate so much bread and chocolate that I can now report I've now fully put back on the 5kg I lost through not eating after treatment. But what a fortnight of being relatively thin I had!
Today there were what felt like about one hundred eight-year olds and younger around (though it was maybe seven in total) with eleven-year-old Phoebe somewhat isolated and sitting on the kitchen island with the grown-ups.
The amount of noise that a hundred or seven children can make is insane. Ernie was, of course, at the centre of it, improvising songs with silly lyrics and making the others howl with laughter. He reminds me of someone.
Here is an example of one of his songs that had them rolling in the aisles.
"Happy happy happy
Your birthday gift is slappy
You're wearing a giant nappy"
Children are fucking idiots. This isn't the kind of sophisticated comedy that I do.
Though this week I am heading to the one place in the world louder than a kitchen full of laughing children, the Edinburgh Fringe. So I will miss the kids and it's hard to be going away when Wolfie is unwell. She had a very bad day yesterday where she wouldn't eat or move or look you in the eye, but was a bit happier today.
Stage 3 cancer has been confirmed so she maybe has two or three months left. We can extend that a bit by giving her chemo, but then she will get a bit longer, but be feeling crap for most of it. So it's palliative care and I am hoping in a month she might be well enough to play and go on walks.
But I leave home on Tuesday knowing that there's a chance that something might happen while I am away. That was certainly my worry yesterday.
We're trying to stay positive but obviously it's tough to see one of our family looking so sorry for herself. It's confusing for her and for the kids. Ernie was really sad at bedtime and I said that was OK, but when I told him he could talk about anything that was worrying him he said he was scared that him and Wolfie might swap bodies in the night. Which was not what I expected.
Weirdly it was a scenario that me and my tennis partner had briefly riffed on as a potential body swap movie on Friday. But I had forgotten that and not mentioned it to anyone. I sometimes wonder if Ernie has an exact copy of my brain.
I was able to say that that was very unlikely to happen, but it is a terrifying time when you first realise what death is and that it might happen to you. I've been obsessed with that thought since I was Ernie's age, sure I would die young. But I am really going to have to hurry up if I am going to fulfil that ambition. Some would argue that it's already too late.
Maybe the real film idea is about a man who spends his whole life worrying about death, but lives to 100 and forgets to actually live. Like that prick who is trying to be immortal.
