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For second night running I was a podcast widower (Catie has done 3 nights of podcasting this week and I’m doing two) and had to entertain the kids solo after picking up Phoebe from school. I took them to Wagamamas like a dad who’d got weekend custody.
Even two months ago the prospect of a solo restaurant trip with the kids would have had me coming out in a cold sweat and involved me trusting the big one to sit still as I chased the little one all round the room. And whilst it wasn’t plain sailing, it was a lot easier than that. It was almost actually fun. Imagine that.
As Friday night began to get into the very early stages of preparation a few couples on a night out or pals preparing for whatever madness was to come were dotted around the tables around us. My kids looked through the grills separating the booths and said hello to some of them. Luckily they are cute and not too persistent and they got away with it. Was I in the cage with my kids looking out or were we visitors to the human zoo and lucky to be escaping?
Whichever it was these two idiot were really ruining my chances of pulling in Wagamama at 5pm on a Friday evening. Though I could perhaps have snared someone in by pretending my wife had died and I was raising these two kids alone and could have persuaded someone to come home with me. But it would have just been a trick to get them to put the kids to bed and babysit whilst I slept out of ear shot of the monitors. If my choice is a big bed full of writhing naked bodies or a big empty bed, then I know which one I am choosing. And it’s not the same one I would have chosen a decade and a half ago.
Which is fortunate as nobody is inviting me into beds full of writhing bodies. And why would they? I am 52. Who wants my writhing body in amongst all the other ones, spoiling it?
I am just saying that I was aware of how my life has changed since I turned 40 (or shortly after), but not only not unhappy, but positively pleased. The only really tricky bit is that when one of you needs to go to the toilet then you all have to go, but even that little jaunt is an adventure and no one stole the kids coats and nappy bag while we were gone. There was only minimal slapping and hair pulling and I stopped doing it once the waiter pointed out it was inappropriate. My son only made a couple of breaks for freedom. They ate their food, did colouring or scribbling and got an ice cream and I then bundled them safely into the car and got them home and to bed.
I had hoped that I might get some work done in the two or three hours I would have before I passed out, but I just played online poker badly whilst weirdly empty sitcom “How I Met Your Mother†played in the background and my wife got drunk in Soho.
Now that's a Friday night, my friends.
