Do A Job You Love And You'll Never Relax A Day In Your Life.

Warming Up Holiday Catch Up

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Fucking Hell. I think I like Center Parcs. After feeling like I was in Hell on Monday, I actually got to a state of being quite blissed out today. I was having fun.

If I am honest, usually when I am on holiday there's a pretty annoying part of me counting down the nights and wanting to get back home to work. I hate that part of myself. He's the reason I can afford to go to Center Parcs, but he's also the reason that I find it hard to let my hair down, relax and have fun. I've missed out on so many experiences because he's told me to go home to bed on a night out or that I should be trying to write rather than skiving off and doing something fun or just doing nothing. He's an absolute prick who is shifty and uneasy when sitting on beaches in paradise and resistant to taking part in drug fuelled orgies (would have been if ever been offered) because he has to be clear-headed to write a sketch for Radio 4 the next morning.

Who would have thought that Center Parcs would be the place where he finally shut up and gave in and let me enjoy the moment? Perhaps he has realised that my work-based ambitions were never going to be worth the effort, just as my body was unable to enjoy many of the benefits of not giving a fuck.

I played soft tennis with Phoebe first thing and had a slight Center Parcs win as we turned up 15 minutes early and there was no one on court so we got an hour for the price of 45 minutes (you've got to take your wins where you can here). That's my CP hack - book for early sessions and turn up early. Also always carry table tennis bats and ping pong balls with you, so you can play for free (there's always empty tables and no one is checking - and you don't even have to buy the equipment, just pay for one session and don't give the stuff back until the end).

In the afternoon I got my first couple of hours off from looking after one or both kids and got to sit on a picnic table and read "I See Buildings Fall Like Lightning" which I am very much enjoying. After about five days of being with the family all the time, two hours on my own felt like paradise. Then Catie went for a massage and the kids and me went for our last pool session, with more plummeting out of a pipe like an even chubbier Mario or a slippery turd and I even persuaded Ernie to have another go on the Rapid River, which he suddenly LOVED, so we had to do it three times. The pool is less busy in the evening which definitely made this ride less irksome- also it felt like the water flowed faster too.

I suppose part of the reason that his holiday is such fun is that the kids are now old enough to properly take part in stuff and to be approaching self-sufficiency. At dinner tonight Ernie went off for 25 minutes and played on the soft play without our supervision. Even a year ago I couldn't imagine a time when I'd be happy to have either one of the kids out of sight - how do you even get to the point where you're not fretting if you lose track of them for three seconds? It's not like that's totally gone away, but again, I can relax a little bit and let them do their own thing. Even Ernie, who has an 80% chance of getting into some kind of trouble when left to his own devices.

Anyway, it was a good day. Can't believe that it's over tomorrow. But really can't believe that I wish it wasn't over yet.

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Apparently it's 30 years ago tonight that Fist of Fun first aired. And I've been a bit sick in my mouth. No way. Come on. It can't be more than a decade ago. Shit.

What's most remarkable is that a man said "Moon on a Stick" to me in the queue for coffee yesterday. That's a long memory.

Although we slept in a little bit, we had a strong plan for getting packed and out of Center Parcs and it seemed to work well. I got lots packed away whilst making breakfast and then we took the bikes back to the cycle hub and picked up the car and then had a full hour to load up and make sure we hadn't forgotten any chargers etc.

We were on our way to my great-niece's first birthday party in Cheddar and Catie had said she'd do a pass the parcel, so she was trying to get that done in the last fifteen minutes before we had to leave our lodge, but I had dealt with the rubbish, got the car parked, made sure the kids had their ipads. And we were out of the door at 9.59am, a full minute early.

Something was niggling at the back of my mind and once everyone was in the car I went back for a safety wee and to make one final sweep of the rooms. I'd done it four times. There was no way I could have forgotten anything important. I had my phone, my wallet, I was almost certain my laptop was in my back pack (yes I remembered putting it in), so I ignored the niggles and off we went.

It was only once we'd arrived in Cheddar an hour or so later and I checked my phone that I saw there was a notification saying my house keys were no longer with me. I realised that I'd left my fucking coat hung up on the coat rack by the door of the lodge. It was doubly annoying as my keys had been on the kitchen table for a couple of days, before I'd put them in the coat so I wouldn't forget them. What a fucking chump. Look, this could have been a lot worse. When we'd left home Catie had said "I don't need to bring my keys do I?" and I'd agreed it wasn't necessary. So if we'd been heading straight home we'd have been at the door before we realised my mistake and not be able to get in (Catie's mum has a set of keys but she lives half an hour away).

I rang Center Parcs and they had already found my coat and I asked if it was OK for me to pick it up on our way back on Sunday. So aside from the inconvenience of going a long way round (and whatever Sliding Doors consequences that might have) it isn't the disaster it could have been. But still, I was pretty annoyed with my stupid self.

Usually we say "Phone, wallet. keys" before going anywhere. Why had I not put keys on my mental list today?

Anyway, we got to have a fun first birthday party in the garden in the hot spring sunshine. My baby whisperer skills abandoned me though as my Great-Niece cried when she first saw me and then pretty much every time we interacted throughout they day. Ernie tried to comfort me later on saying "She's just crying because of your ugly face, but it's what you're like on the inside that counts." He is a very funny 7 year old. But the joke's on him as he has my face as well.

Because of touring we haven't always had time to record a Book Club podcast, so decided to put up the bonus pods I recorded for Acast Plussers on weeks where we don't have a book club. I don't know why Chris Evans (not that one) decided to put one of these up today, as we actually had a Book Club recorded, but he is a maverick genius and so decided to go with me talking to a ventriloquist dummy instead. Hope you enjoy it.

Book Club will return next week! Thank goodness.

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We went to Wells to have lunch with the family and have a look at the market (where some of Hot Fuzz was filmed) and the Cathedral. As we looked at the front of the Cathedral we speculated as to what the weird starfish to the side of Jesus might be. The boy Jesus was a bit of a prankster, turning his classmates into goats (in the Apocrypha), so did he turn a couple of lads into sea creatures too? I definitely would do stuff like that if I had magic powers. Sure you'd want to cure 12 people of leprosy (but not everyone- that would be going too far) and dick around on water, but you'd also want to punk people too. Otherwise what's the point?

A man in a blue gilet approached us to answer our questions. He was in some official or semi-official role from the Cathedral (well, he had a gilet, with Wells Ambassador or something written on the back and a pile of leaflets, but to be fair, anyone could do that). He explained that the human-headed starfish were actually seraphim, so it was a much bigger deal than a childhood prank. This was God's work. He'd made angels that looked like starfish and made those angels think that was a good thing. You can tell from a lot of his work, but that guy definitely has a dark side. He did a lot of good stuff too, but the bad stuff is something else. He's like a celestial Jimmy Savile.

The man talked us through lots of the other statues - the Jesus and seraphim were only added in 1985 and the then Prince Charles turned up for the unveiling. I was in the area at the time. How did I miss that?

The 12 figures beneath Jesus are the disciples (nice of them to give Judas a place) and then beneath that the nine types of angels, though most of them have become weather-beaten or actively chiselled off. Having rattled them off quickly he asked the kids if they could list the nine types and I have to say, I'd never heard of most of them and he might have been making it up as he went along (He wasn't of course. As any foole know they are Seraphim, Cherubim, Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, Archangels, and Angels. And no, I didn't just copy and paste that from wikipedia) Rather than answer the kids ran off to chase each other around the green and who can blame them.

We got more info on the statues and I was very grateful to the old man for sharing his statue based wisdom, even though we hadn't asked him to. We called the kids back and told them they'd missed out on some good facts. Phoebe said 'It's the school holidays. It's illegal to learn stuff." Which is true. I asked her what the nine orders of angels were and we improvised our own list, Seraphim, Cherubim, Jeroboam, Magnum, Solero, Fruit Pastille, Simon, Dominos, Pizza Express.

Lovely to be back in Wells and the market was fun. We went into the Bishops Palace, which I am not sure I've done before, though I remember going to see the swans in the moat back in the seventies. Those were probably different ones than were there today though. We went into a little corner room which had served as a defensive position and later a place for prayer and contemplation and then later a potato store and then went up on the battlements. The Cathedral looked huge from this angle. If you thought that the history of Wells started and ended with Hot Fuzz you were wrong. It's an amazing place.

What’s Bobby Robson doing up there?

Still a few tickets left for RHLSTP with Timkey and Chloe Radcliffe on Monday.

And the Kickstarter for the filming of Can I Have My Ball Back? is getting very close to the target. Back it here.