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Child care today, with a brief window where I could have got some work done in the middle of the day, but was mainly too tired from the child care bit. Child care is definitely harder than working.
And I definitely prefer child care to working.
But I only had to deal with one at a time, dropping my daughter off at school, while my wife corralled the baby one and then taking him off her hands for three hours, before she took him into London for the afternoon and I then picked up the big one from school and took her to her swimming lesson.
I had decided to take Ernie to soft play for the morning and though I don’t think I had had a bath or shower yesterday (these things sometimes happen when you’re self-employed or a parent. So always happen when you’re both) I decided not to waste my wife’s working time by having a wash. No one was going to smell me. Also I didn’t smell.
I was just in my sweat pants and top (not that I was sweaty) and was not looking to win any beauty pageants, just to keep my son occupied for an eighth of a day.
I was relieved to see that the other parents at soft play had also taken a somewhat lackadaisical attitude to they morning routines. Most parents have given up on themselves and the other mums (it was all mums, though one man, possibly a grandad, but he may have felt the same about me, turned up towards the end) were as slovenly as I was. Though they may at least have washed within the last 48 hours. I didn’t smell them if they hadn’t. Because you don’t go around smelling each other.
There was one mum who’d let us down, by being all fashionably dressed and made up and glamorous. We all hated her. I suspected she might be a nanny rather than a mum. No parent can keep up that level of grooming. I was certain she had washed. Even though I didn’t smell her. Why are you so obsessed with people smelling each other.
It’s bad when someone breaks parental ranks and doesn’t look like a sack of potatoes that hasn’t had a proper sleep for four years. But who dresses up for soft play? We are no longer sexual objects, having learned the punishment for sex is children.
Glam mum was at least game and clamboured up the soft play with her daughter and chucked herself down the slide. I was doing the same with Ernie, but slowly I began to smell something. It was me. I was in an enclosed space and exerting myself a bit and realised that of course it was me that was smelly. My plan to hide my smelliness in baggy clothes and keeping my distance from everyone else had been thwarted. I couldn’t soil the glam mum’s plucked nostrils with my funk. I took one more go on the frankly terrifying slide and escaped to a table where my Pigpen cloud could hang around me without upsetting anyone else.
It was nearly time to go anyway, so it was nice to leave a part of myself behind, even if it was just in gas form.
It did mean that once I’d done my shift I got straight into the bath and lay there for an hour (doing a bit of work on tomorrow’s RHLSTP)
Still managed to record an anniversary edition of
Stone Clearing - not that stone clearers celebrate birthdays. We are like the Jehovah’s Witnesses in that regard.
43 chapters? It’s scary how few weeks off I’ve had from this thing isn't it?
And second guest is confirmed for Hull RHLSTP. It's the creator of John Shuttleworth, Jilted John and more, Graham Fellows.
Buy your tickets here. 
