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What do you know? A fun and trouble free day out as a family! We were pretty much organised enough to leave on time and there was no traffic or lost phones or accusations of flushing nappies down the toilet or missed connections. I didn't feel stupidly tired either. Might we finally have got back into a workable rhythm?
Of course not, but let's just enjoy the win.
I still can't believe that I have a baby, which should probably have sunk in after five and a half months (though I've only actually forgotten about her once in that time). She's here for keeps isn't she? And I am glad about that because Phoebe is the best person ever and we're having lots of fun. But I want her to stay being a baby forever. I can't even imagine her as a toddler, let alone a stroppy teenager. We get on really well at the moment and spend most of our time making each other laugh and I know that won't always be the case. But I'd like to keep that going as long as possible.
We are considering moving house, so were out looking at potential new homes today. It's a big decision for many reasons, though at the front of my mind was the fact that wherever we go will, in all likelihood be the first home that Phoebe remembers. There's also a possibility that it might be my last home (unless Phoebe puts me in a home) so we want to get it right.
It's an enormous ball ache moving house, much more difficult than I remember it being 12 years ago (and we haven't even started yet), so I am quite glad that it's been taking a fair amount of time as I had worried that I might be doing my 12 shows at the same time as we moved. As it is we might still be in Shepherd's Bush for a while, but if the right offer comes in for our house and we find a place we like, who knows?
But we spent the day nosing around other people's homes, wondering if one day this would be our home, wondering if my daughter would one day play on that tyre swing or run face first into that kitchen worktop.
It's a crazy throw of the dice for fate, based on one or two visits we map out the events of the rest of our lives. When I moved into my current house I was torn between this one and one a few streets away. How different my life would be if I'd gone for the other one. Somewhere in an alternate Universe there is a Sliding Doors version of me who went to that house and for whom things turned out totally differently. Once you take into account all the variables of how my life would go (and unless you believe there's one person in the world made just for us) then I wouldn't be with my wife and Phoebe would not exist. Then again I might be married to someone else and have different children, who I essentially murdered by my decision to come here. Sorry about that kids. I am a terrible child murderer. But so are we all. Some literally of course. Every decision we make pinballs our life and everyone else's life down a different hole.
So we have to think carefully about which house we get for the sake of children born and unborn and of events that have not as yet occurred. If only there was some way to check in advance the repercussions of your actions. But maybe that would make it harder. There's a Sliding Doors/Goodnight Sweetheart/Sophie's Choice sci fi film to be made about this.
I don't know that we found our home. The place we'd seen before that we'd both really liked and wanted to move to, seemed less appealing on a second viewing. And we'd nearly not bothered to go and check it out a second time and had been keen to buy it. But now we're not so keen. What if the same thing happens with the house we end up buying? What a responsibility we have.
And how many different futures there might be.
Watch me balls up and choose the wrong one.
RHLSTP with Roisin Conaty on video here -
youtube
vimeo
(won't be up on video on iTunes until Chris Evans, not that one, is back from holiday)
And on audio here and on iTunes.
