The one thing I have not had enough of this weekend is far too much food. So I made sure that I had Boxing Day lunch at my parents before heading down the M4 for Boxing Day dinner at my girlfriend's parents. Mmmmm, too much food. All part of my plan to lose weight. Just like parents stop their kids from smoking again by making them smoke a whole packet, I was going to stop myself eating food again by eating anything edible that chanced across my path. It has to work. Evenso I couldn't resist taking a pocket full of Quality Street along for the journey, though they were gone by the time I had reached the top of Shipham Hill. Imagine if I had driven over a cliff as I attempted to unwrap one. That would have been an ironic death. Killed by Quality Street, on a suicide mission to protect the millions of their brothers that I would consume if I was allowed to live.
I had a passenger too. It seemed wrong to deflate my inflatable second wife, Ian Norman, even if he would never be a patch on Boono. So I put him on the back seat of my car. I suppose it would have only been worrying if I had put him in the passenger seat and seat-belted him in. But I just casually tossed him on to the back seats and left him face down, not even able to look out the window on the journey. I am not mentally ill, after all.
My dad was surprised. He thought it would be embarrassing for me if anyone saw an inflated space hopper in my car. But I didn't care what the people thought. Maybe I should show the world that I didn't follow their rules and every time I stopped at the services I should take Ian Norman in with me for a cup of coffee. Better still, I should ride him proudly from my car, up through the doors and bounce on him to the toilet and then to the cafe and then to the newsagent. How would people respond to that? A 43 year old man in a suit riding a space hopper everywhere he goes.
I think they would probably think I was an idiot, or more likely mentally ill. And though I have on gigantic orange ball, I still didn't have the balls to do it. If I could turn back time....
I almost embarrassed myself a different way though, as one of the prizes in the cracker at lunch has been some plastic hair clips in the shape of red flowers. I had put them in my hair to make my nephews and nieces laugh (I failed - they are all grown ups now), but then totally forgotten about them. I just happened to see myself in the bathroom mirror as I got ready to leave. I didn't even have the rebellious spirit to leave them in, which meant I didn't walk around the service station or indeed arrive at my inlaws with the hair decorations of a tiny girl in my hair. They luckily didn't see Ian Norman either. Though maybe I should have hopped around the house with him and asked for a bowl of water for him to drink. I am not sure that I am enough of a part of the family yet to pull that one off.
Later when we were playing a quiz game, my girlfriend's dad was asked what building the BBC had first broadcast from in 1936 and I chanced my arm enough to joke that he must have been around to see that at the time (he is a good deal too young for that), which I think might have been a cheeky step too far. So if I had said that whilst sitting on a space hopper, with red plastic flowers in my hair I think that might have been enough to make them ask me to leave.
I can reveal that I won the quiz by a clear 13 points, remarking as I did so that I had scored more points than the second and third places put together. Which should be enough to compensate for the lack of space hopper and hair clips. To find out if I fared as well in Celebrity Mastermind then make sure you tune into BBC1 at 8.30 on Monday. Where the final result will at last be revealed.
