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Budget day and @realpetevincent spotted me hiding in the bushes on the BBC coverage.
That's my obituary photo/gif right there.
At breakfast it struck me that it's good that I met my wife before she'd had a chance to be introduced to my dad and my son. Because Ernie would have shown her what I was before and dad would have shown her what I would become and I think maybe with that information she wouldn't have been so impressed with that briefly handsome and sophisticated 40 year old.
Luckily it was impossible for her to meet her own son at that point and I tried to keep my insane family away from her for as long as possible and as she wasn't very good at maths she didn't realise that although I was 40 now, by the time she was in her 40s I'd be nudging 60 and my looks would fade and my jokes wouldn't be as funny. I think it was only this morning, as I pointed out my past on one side of the table and my future at the end that she realised what she'd got into. But it's too late to do anything about it now. She just has to keep her head down and pray that my unhealthy lifestyle will take me away before I get to 88. She'll still be stuck with the mini-Me clone, who won't reach his own window of briefly seeming like a viable human being for another 33 years, when Catie will be nudging 80 herself.
It's like an episode of the Twilight Zone. But then probably most marriages are. A minute on the lips, a lifetime on the hips.
There's a photo of Catie and me up in my parents' kitchen from right near the start of our relationship and she looks as gorgeous as she looks now, but I am captured just in those few moments where I was a radiant and handsome brown-haired man and I can see how she fell into this trap. I'd definitely marry that. But not if I'd seen the ghosts of Richmas past and future.
If there were any ghosts worth their salt they would have taken her to meet her son and his grandad on the eve of the day we met and she could have escaped this whole nightmare. Thanks for having my back ghosts of future and past me. Of course you're on my side.
We had a packed theatre (thanks to Bob) and it was incredible to give this man the ovation he deserved. Don't miss this one
