Horse Suicide Bombers and Exploding Chickens

Warming Ups

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Driving in this kind of sunshine can be a bit of a nightmare. Without being able to park in the shade the car is like a furnace and the steering wheel almost too hot to touch.

So we made an earlyish start today and I left the engine going so I could get the air conditioning up and running. Would some Somerset chancer make off with the car as I gathered our stuff together inside? Not this time. But in some Universe out there, surely. The cooling experiment pretty much worked and meant we were on course to get home before midday.

As always life hangs by a thread and your destiny is largely not in your own hands. On the M4 the driver of a horsebox started to change lanes without bothering to look in his mirror or indicate. Luckily I am an awesome driver and am very keen not to see all my family and a horse killed by an idiot and I was able to avoid the collision and warn him with a blast of my horn and he pulled back into this correct lane.

For some of us there is an idiot out there who will one day be responsible for our deaths. Might be quite a lot of us if that idiot is Donald Trump. As much as Sliding Doors and films of its ilk will make us think that decisions we make might change our futures, nearly all of us are far more likely to be affected in some way by the decisions of others.

Knowing my luck there was a famous horse on that vehicle and if we’d all been killed it would be the horse that would get all the headlines.

The me in the Universe who got his car stolen doesn’t know how lucky he was. He avoided the horse suicide bombing of his entire brood.

Sometimes bad luck prevents worse luck. Sometimes you get both. In an infinite Universe everything happens and nothing has any meaning. Just hope you don't get your car nicked or your car crushed by a dying equine in this one.

Anyway it’s slightly hard to enjoy all this sunshine, partly because it’s much too hot and makes everything unpleasant and sweaty, so you can’t even sleep at night, but mainly because having weather like this in May feels like the result of unstoppable global warming and environmental disaster. And it feels like that because that is what it is.

So even though some people might get pleasure from basking in the cancerous rays of a star that is just way too close to us - get back in the night sky with all the other stars, you stupid idiot - anyone with a brain must surely be thinking what is life going to be like for my kids. Or for me if I am unlucky enough to get old. The generation that had the chance to stop this will no doubt be pretty much dead already by the time the chickens come home to roost. Or more likely the chickens begin to spontaneously combust. Not saying that won’t be fun to watch and someone will make some good money from self-cooking chickens. But I’d rather live back in the old days where scorching hot days and ladybird invasions were the exception, rather than the rule.

Are we all just hoping some scientist will come up with a solution before it goes too fucking crazy? That’s what I am hoping. But if everyone else is hoping that too then why are they being so dismissive of science all the time and ignoring all the amazing things science has done and instead pointing out that the earth is flat and the covid vaccine was the real killer and that all scientists are pricks.

The reaction to the Covid vaccine and it’s amazing rapid turn around would have been enough to make me say “Right, fuck you. If that’s your reaction to me saving your fucking life then I am not going to do any more science any more. You can do it from now on, with your drinking battery acid or wrestling with snakes or whatever shit you’re up to now.”

Once again. Apologies to the people and chickens of the future (delete as applicable or if you are around to delete). We really screwed things up for you. But for everyone born between 1946 and 1970, we had a fucking whale of a time ensuring the extinction of the whales (and all other life).

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I’d tried to avoid the choking heat of the night by sleeping downstairs on the sofa in the slightly less stultifying lounge, but I carried on sweating and hoped that at least this would mean I finally shifted some weight (no luck).

Tough to get much done and Ally was not up for a Newsround, so we had family time. The girls went off to watch The Devil Wears Prada 2 which they both thought was ace and I watched the first Percy Jackson film with Ernie, who is really into the books.

After lunch we tried to navigate a dog walk in the shade and got to the park. Ernie asked me if he could come to the park on his own some time. There are a couple of tricky roads to cross and then the park is full of weird perverts, so it is probably not time to let him loose on his own. He’s a bit of a law unto himself and until he gets punched in the face by a teenager, he is unlikely to learn boundaries. And I’d prefer he didn’t get punched in the face yet. His dad has somehow largely avoided this fate, so maybe there is hope for him.

He insisted he could do it and wanted to prove it by going home on his own.

With some reluctance I let him set off a couple of minutes ahead of me. It was a big adventure for him and six months ago he wouldn’t come downstairs in the house on his own, so it’s great that he wants to. But it’s not good for my fretting brain.

Would he get across the roads OK? Would one of the perverts who has managed to get a car and doesn’t have to rely on the pickings at the park, scoop him into their vehicle and make off with him?

When I got to the bottom of our road I couldn’t see him and started working out what I was going to say to Catie about losing a child. “I suppose the good news is, that we have one left....” How does anyone cope with the fact that their children gain autonomy and the constant dangers they are in? I think the answer is that they don’t.

I rounded the curve a bit and saw him patiently waiting to cross our road. Once across he turned and saw me and waved with such glee that it was all worth the ten years this had taken off my life.

He waited for me and we walked home together. He told me how easy it had been to cross the first road (which is tricky cos traffic comes from three different directions) and how hard it was to cross the other one. But it had been the right call to let him have a go.

Later Instagram would throw up a reel about an American boy who convinced his parents that he should be allowed to go the bus stop alone (for the first time) and then was never seen again. Like it knew what I had been thinking about. I suppose it’s a fair bet that anyone with kids would be thinking about something like that. And what is social media for if not to stoke up paranoia and statistically unlikely possibilities.

Played a few rounds of ping pong with Phoebe later. She can not only beat her grandad at chess but can (sometimes) beat her dad at table tennis, even if he is trying his hardest. Also she can take the disappointment on the rarer occasions when I now win so I don’t have to throw it at the last minute.

She thinks she’s better than me, well the joke’s on her. I have helped destroy the planet so she will have a horrible future. Also it’s good to be able to have a proper game against her. I have promised her £100 if she ever beats me 21-0 and I think I might have to pay up in the next year or so.

As she improves, I decline.

Catie may be right

I found a moment or two for a little more drawing today. I have done a couple of stinkers that I won’t share with you, but I quite like the energy of this one of my dad playing my daughter at chess. I think it really looks like Phoebe, but my wife (who is actually good at art) disagrees. But Van Gogh had to put up with a lot of people saying he was shit and he only sold one picture in his lifetime. I’ve sold fuck all, so look forward to this stuff making millions and Dr Who doing an episode about my huge impact on the world.

I prefer drawing buildings to people generally, but it’s nice when I get it approximately close. Phoebe won the chess match incidentally much to my dad’s chagrin.

RHLSTP with the extraordinary Natasha Hodgson from Operation Mincemeat (in which for some reason you are treated to a lot of me singing and barely any singing from her).