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Tuesday is sort of my day off, but it was non-stop action today as I worked my way through various bits of admin, wrote my blog and blurbs for the podcast, took my car in for an MOT, went to the gym, read books for the book club and then took the kids to their new football training session. Then we had to get them to bed and both Catie and I then had “work", in my case the important task of playing myself at snooker - and for added jeopardy a computer update meant all our settings were wrong with less than five minutes to air. I don’t suppose it would really have mattered if we hadn’t been able to do it.
It was fun to watch the kids play football. There are loads of sessions running at the same time for different age groups and Ernie is the youngest in the youngest one, but he held his own and enjoyed himself with hardly any tears. Despite the success of the Lionesses Phoebe was the only girl that I saw playing in any of the six or so sessions. Hopefully more will join her. She held her own and was made welcome, but equally some of the boys had clearly been playing football regularly for a good few years and were pretty good. She’s got some natural ability, but little experience and it’s tough playing a game where people don’t really hold their positions and everyone is going for the ball. She seemed happy afterwards though. They both want to go again. The 5 or 7 year old Richard Herring would have been intimidated and probably not that interested (though I did play football with a tennis ball pretty much every break time at middle school when I was a bit older than Phoebe, so maybe I am being unfair on my tiny self). I wasn’t very coordinated though (but my job was to goal hang and slot in the long ball, so I can’t have been totally useless) and didn’t really get OK at sport until I was about 14, when I was finally promoted to the top set (of two) for football.
Anyway it’s another thing to take them to - they already do swimming after school on Tuesday, but that’s only tough on the adults who supervise them. They weren’t tired at all and were just cross that they didn’t get their usual iPad Time before bed.
The Leicester Square Theatre has also made the decision that the theatre should be closed on the day of the Queen’s funeral so next week’s RHLSTP has been cancelled. I will attempt to rebook the guests, but it’s unlikely to be on a double bill and might not even be this series, but if you had tickets then you can either move them to another date or get a refund. Luckily we had so many dates in for the run that we can afford to lose a couple. I think that (assuming no other old women die) we will still have enough podcasts to go out weekly and still take us to February 1st, at which point, no doubt, we will be starting a new series. I am always slightly reluctant to cancel gigs, but I think it will probably be mayhem in London that day, so even if you are someone who doesn’t care about the Queen’s funeral (for God’s sake don’t mention that to anyone or you will end up in prison) it’s probably best to stay at home. So maybe the day of the funeral it’s just about apt, just like, as much as I think we shouldn’t have a monarchy, or at least one that we pay for, I am not going to go to where the old lady’s coffin is to hold up a sign because I wouldn’t want to feel like a member of the Westboro Baptist Church and I think you have to choose your moments (like in a blog - He’s not my king), but I feel it’s a bit wrong to be stopping so many forms of entertainment. Why isn’t printing a newspaper on the day of the funeral inappropriate? Why are some people allowed to go to work and others can’t and have to suck up the cost of that themselves? Why isn’t all this just a personal choice? If you want to show your respects by not going to work and making a marmalade sandwich to leave to rot, then great. Knock yourself out. I think the Queen would prefer that rather than you gave something to a food back. She fucking loved Paddington and was associated with her all through her reign. I think he was there at the coronation. It wasn’t like she just did one comedy sketch which he’d later be dropped into in animated form a few months ago. Which makes it sound like he could have turned up if he’d wanted, but elected to just use a cartoon. But to be honest, everyone in the country is so crazy right now that me believing Paddington is real doesn’t even scratch the surface.
They’d better put Relativity out this week is all I am saying.
And as I said I was back to the old green board tonight as I tried to remind my tired self how Me1 Vs Me2 snooker works. There were a lot of 8.04pm football scores, but the frame is a thriller.
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