Warming Up

The good thing about lockdown is that it’s made us all appreciate the things that we took for granted. In that sense it’s like an extreme version of parenthood. You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s no long available to you. So having kids makes a night out seem like the most wonderful adventure and being locked down for five months makes you feel like a king when you’re allowed out for a pizza for lunch.

After a swim with the family - imagine that! - which was only slightly spoiled by Ernie freaking out and refusing to stay in the pool so me and him had to get out almost immediately, we went to Wagamamas. But they were opening half an hour later than advertised, so we drove to a Pizza Express instead. To be fair to me I’ve always been pretty excited about going to Pizza Express because there is pizza there. It felt even better today though and with the kids half a year older, they were a bit better behaved than usual. It was pleasant.

On top of this I managed to get my broken reading glasses fixed and get a key that no other locksmiths have been able to copy, copied (not at Pizza Express) so it felt like we’d achieved an awful lot by the end of lunch.

Life is so full of annoying little chores so to tick two off my long list felt like a major achievement.

I dashed home to record an episode of Nathan Caton’s “Give Me The Good News”. Not sure when it’s up, but I guess it’s pretty soon.

I love the idea of trying to look on the bright side during these difficult times. There is good stuff out there, some of it emerging from the truckload of bad news. And I am hopeful that the bad stuff being highlighted will lead to changes that will benefit us all. The A Level nonsense certainly demonstrates how unfair our education system even on years when an algorithm doesn’t choose the results.  Will it force changes? Maybe not, but there’s a chance.

I talked about a mushroom that had grown in the destroyed reactors at Chernobyl that might help protect astronauts from the radiation in space. Positives can come out of the absolute worst things that happen. It doesn’t make up for the disasters of course, but it’s interesting nonetheless and gives us hope if we are in the midst of disaster. 

Episode 5 of series 3 of Relativity went out this morning- we were in the car and we listened to a little bit of it. I particularly enjoyed the exchange I had with Phil Davis about whether he shod me. It’s a bottle episode - taking part in one location with limited characters - something done in TV to save money on the budget if there’s been a particularly expensive episode, but not really necessary in radio where one scene usually costs no more than another.  Fun to do though and slightly less complicated to write maybe. 

You can currently catch all 5 episodes of this series on BBC Sounds (though ep 1 drops off the platform on Sunday morning).

In a continued attempt to release more content than there are hours in the day, here’s another retro AIOTM from almost a decade ago. Marmalade for lunch anyone? 

The Kickstarter is ticking along, though my gut feeling is that the target is going to be too high for such a niche podcast and we might not make it this time. We’ll be using the money to make other online content (not stone clearing which is free and which I do for the love of stones), so if you’ve enjoyed any of the podcasts and have the price of a coffee to spare (and haven’t donated anywhere else) then please consider backing us.