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I was a podcast widower today with my wife disappearing off to Liverpool for a gig - this may have happened the other way round on occasion. But in any case I was looking forward to a day with the kids, which is definitely not the exhausting and terrifying hardship that it once was. They might have got a bit more TV and iPad time than they would have done if their mum was here, but we also went up to the rec to play football and cricket and then after lunch went on an expedition to the supermarket. And when it came to bedtime they both did pretty much everything I told them. Sometimes when there are two of us they can play us off against each other, but I think I might also have successfully exhausted them (and myself into the process).
I even had a bit of time, if not exactly to myself, then where I could do stuff for myself. I cooked their meals, but also managed to knock together an aduki bean based shepherd’s pie that I used to make in my student (and beyond) vegetarian days. After an emotional time of overeating and ingesting chocolate like it’s oxygen I am making another effort to restrict calories again (successfully today) and was delighted to work out that the whole dish came in at under 1000 calories and there was no way I could eat it all in one go. It was very delicious though and I had about half of it, but that was a very filling and not very calorific evening meal. Earlier this week I’d made the black-eyed bean feast that was another fixture of my 1980s cooking (though I only had the ingredients written down in the back of a cook book, I think I pretty much nailed it) and so it might be a good thing for Catie that she is out of the house. She said that once your body gets used to that kind of diet then the flatulence subsides, but that is not my experience from a decade of vegetarianism. Those bean dishes created the biggest and stinkiest farts of all time (and still do) and now that I am married, none of that matters any more. She’s stuck with me.
I once did a fart so dense and pervasive on the staircase of the Burton-Taylor theatre as the audience queued to get in, that it filled that entire space and though no one knew I was guilty I had to rush into the toilet in embarrassment at what I had wrought.
It’s amazing that I had sex at all in my twenties.
I also made a little headway on the three books that I have to finish in the next 8 days for Book Club records, finishing off To Be Someone by Ian Stone (it’s highly enjoyable, especially if you grew up in the 70s and a great social document of how bad things were back then in so many ways. I also arrogantly listened to an audiobook whilst I cooked that I am not even definitely doing on the Book Club.
But reading, though it is for work, does not feel like work and the cooking was very relaxing and satisfying (I also did meals for the kids and a different lunch for myself) and the family times was brilliant - my kids seem very coordinated when it comes to sport and neither of their parents were, so that’s a turn up. I also scored a couple of cracking goals (but I think it won’t belong before I can’t get past my daughter or outrun her).
I spoiled them a bit for sure and they loaded up the supermarket trolley with stuff that they shouldn’t have and I let them keep some of it. We still have most of tomorrow to get through before Catie returns, but it was really cool to be in a position where I couldn’t do any work (even though I sort of did, but I don’t think reading really counts as it’s what I would do if I didn’t have any work) and as usual I discovered that not working makes me feel relaxed and happy. Which maybe helped me not only keep away from sugary treats but not snaffle up any of my kids’ leftovers either.
The fact that we will have to move out of the house because it is full of swamp gas is a small price to pay.
