Enchanted Rat

Warming Ups

8250/21169

I had the kids to myself this morning and in an attempt to keep them off their devices (obviously I am never on mine), I took them to the park for a runaround. Or in my case am aslittlemovementaspossiblearound - that's how you invent a word, Charles Dickens. (Following my podcast with Joz Norris there has been some discussion on social media- mainly between Joz and me- as to whether Dickens really invented the word "eggbox", which he obviously didn't as it didn't need inventing. I have realised too late that eggbox is actually a terrific euphemism for the scrotum and as such I have created the term eggbox, with that definition, so that's 2-0 to me Dickens and Norris).

Charles Dickens struggling to think what you might call a box that you keep eggs in.

Phoebe had brought her Frisbee or more accurately one of those newer flying rings with the hole in the middle, as opposed to the plate like thing I used as a kid. it's very much a Polo-Frisbee (3-0) and a bit harder to make fly than the traditional one. But Phoebe loved throwing it and Ernie loved chasing it and it was only after about 20 minutes that Phoebe found out that if you through it upwards at a 45 degree angle then it would fly pretty well.

I am glad to have reached the point where my kids are old enough to play properly and parenthood is really coming into its own. Though I am getting too old and and fucked to join in properly. After three months of having a bug that has just about, but not quite, fucked off, I am about as unfit as I've been for years. I tried to do Park Run yesterday but only managed a kilometre and a bit.

Ernie wanted to paddle in the "river" - a rather dubious seemingly man-made stream at the back of the park, where he moved stones around to create a dam (like father like son) and then we headed to the supermarket. As Ernie tried to show me a bit of the stream that he considers enchanted and where he has seen fairies (he claims), a rat ran across the pathway. Or maybe it was an elf. Just a hairy one with a fucking big tail.

Never had reality encroached on fantasy so quickly and comprehensively.

I was going to take them out for lunch, but in the end we just came home and had egg and chips (got the eggs out of the egg carton), which is my own happy meal from childhood (though my mum would always make the chips in a chip pan and today the chips were out the freezer). A decade or so ago my brother and I were both at my parents home at the same time and we insisted on mum making us fried egg and chips for lunch. Both of us having the same Proustian rush. I don't know if my kids will have quite the same association, but it's an effective and simple and lovely meal. My son drenched his chips in vinegar so there was a pool of the stuff left in his bowl. He is, again, his father's son. Poor little sod.

In the afternoon Catie was home and we sat on the patio drinking beer (mine non-alcoholic, still not slipped after four and a half years) and the kids larked about in the garden and the house and I wondered if we had enough savings to mean that I can spend the next ten years playing frisbee, eating egg and chips and doing nothing else. We definitely don't. But it was good to have another family day. Even with the rats our lives are good. For today at least. That's all you can hope for: a good day today.

Today Today, I love you today. Why did you have to turn into yesterday?

8251/21170

Into sweltering London town this evening to record two live podcasts at the Bill Murray pun in Angel. I was going to be chatting to one of the co-founders of Angel Comedy Barry Ferns and brilliantly funny stand up Chloe Petts. I was worried that the room might be a sweltering sauna, remembering that in Ball Back previews three or more guys passed out in the small room. It turns out though that they've for very efficient air conditioning and so those medical emergencies were more down to the material than the warmth of the room.

Apparently I had been the first comic to headline the Bill Murray and also headlined the club's other venue early on, though I have little memory of either of these gigs. Andy McH who was in the audience tonight and the audience at that first gig reminded me that I'd gone to the wrong venue for that Bill Murray gig, which vaguely rang a bell, but otherwise it's a blank. I thought my memory was my strong point, but it seems I have forgotten more than I recall. Maybe I was a ghost in Fort Bragg. Perhaps it was me that farted in the theatre.

Barry also recalled meeting me for the first time in Edinburgh in 1999 where I was in the flat he was sharing, possibly due to me begin romantically involved with one of people he was sharing with, eating a big plate of spaghetti bolognaise whilst everyone sat around me watching me and asking me questions. Again, no memory of this, though I was very drunk for most of the 1999 Fringe. Usually I'd remember some spaghetti.

Walking through Islington on the way to the gig I had been reminded of all sorts of past events (that I do recall), like playing the Meccano club in 1990 and occasionally crashing the Pizza Express dinner that the acts at the new material night (that I wasn't a part of, but Stew was) would have every fortnight. It would cost you thousands of pounds to watch the comics round that table now - Jo Brand, Alan Davies, Bill Bailey and many more. It was only a tenner to see me tonight (and the Pizza Express was closed for refurbishment).

Patrick Marber had a flat near to Angel tube at the time, which we sometimes congregated in to write and rehearse the dum show. It seemed pretty privileged and unfair at the time - we were sharing a studenty house in Acton for £60 each a week and Marber had a flat that he or his family owned. It's not a level playing field. I don't remember where Steve Coogan's flat was, but he was already wealthy (from his own hard work to be fair to him) and I remember that he had sizeable unpaid in cheques lying around the place, from his various ads and voice-overs. I was living off jacket potatoes and £2 bottles of wine from Rimpy's Fags, Foods, Non-Foods, Wines and Spirits....

Things were going our way. More for some of us than others. But none of us, even the least successful one, could complain.

Hey, we were all privileged. Imagine paying £60 a week rent in London (well Acton) and it being a reasonably OK house. I'd have liked to have had one of those cheques though. It would have kept me in baked potatoes for years.

The cheap wine was flowing, amazing and blowing my way.

And even more Steve Coogan's way.

Fair.

Both podcasts were fun and Chloe and I found a lot of common ground in farts, breasts and football. And vaginas with teeth in them. Both pods out before Edinburgh. I recommend both their shows.

Retro RHLSTP with Rosie Holt now up as full video on youtube for free.

Or listen here.