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Very nice to be home with my family again. I spent a lot of the day looking after Phoebe and on two occasions started crying just looking at her, for no real reason other than she’s amazing and fragile and I can’t believe she’s here. Maybe becoming a dad has softened me up after all. I put together a Lord of the Dance Settee podcast in Phoebe’s down times and it did seem like I have been doing more “dad jokes†at the start of the shows. Oh dear. You can listen to
the podcast here and on iTunes.
I wanted to give my wife as much of a break as possible so I took Phoebe out to the shops and did some admin in a cafe as she had her afternoon nap. I found that once again Phoebe was not the magnet for ladies that I had hoped for and am beginning to suspect that that kind of thing only works if the dad is cute as well. And given how cute Phoebe is I must look pretty hideous to repel all these strangers. It is good to spend a significant amount of the day with my daughter, mainly for bonding reasons, but also because it gives a real indication of how draining it is to be in charge of a tiny human who can make you cry for no reason (and I can’t even blame hormones or the fact that I’ve had to squeeze her out of my Herring’s eye). It’s cool that if you have a baby you can essentially walk around talking to yourself and no one cares.
I went into the Apple store and drifted around by the iWatch counter, just having a look, not wanting to engage with it. This is the second time I’ve done this and part of a familiar pattern that builds up over weeks and usually ends with me buying something. I wonder if Apple have studied this behaviour, as a nerd like me gradually manages to convince himself that he needs the shiny thing. I really don’t think I need this (though think it might help me keep track of exercise and calories) and I really don’t want to buy one. But it’s probably inevitable that I will gradually decide this self-indulgent frippery is a necessity. I hope I stay strong. I really do.
And this evening, Catie went out to be pampered (which she more than deserves) and I was charged with bathing Phoebe on my own for the first time. I thought I’d be able to remember the routine that my wife has been building up over months. I’ve helped a few times, but not very many, mainly because I am terrified the baby will slip from my tiny hands and drown.
It’s really hard washing a baby on your own, but somehow I kept her oxygen holes above the water. I nearly forgot to give her a baby massage with oil (I know, I never thought I would be one of those perverts, but Amazon knew years before I did), and did forget to apply bum cream and put her in the wrong kind of nappy. I’d also done the whole process about 10 times faster than my wife does and knew that I wasn’t meant to put Phoebe to bed until 7.30, but wasn’t clear as to how we were meant to spend the 70 minutes we now had.
So we went and played a bit and I sang some songs, which was of course, all wrong, as I was meant to be calming her down in preparation for sleep. But somehow, after Catie had got home and I’d fed Phoebe and put her in the right kind of nappy and put on some bum cream, she did fall asleep at the right time.
I still remained calm and didn’t get stressed by any of it, but was tired and forgetful and really needed a couple of glasses of red wine. I like this kind of stress and I loved having so much time with my daughter, but looking after a baby is tough and my wife has to do this for days at a time on her own when I am on tour. It’s easy to forget that that’s difficult or to assume it’s just hanging around with a lovely baby. But even though I am a patient man and can put up with crying and grizzling, I think four days of this would break me.
Luckily we’re able to share a lot of it, but the fact that we’ve got to 14 weeks and I’ve only bathed Phoebe on my own once gives you some indication that there might not be equal balance.
So we did it! We got our kickstarter total and a further 10% which will pay half of the VAT that we forgot about. It still leaves us about £3000 to find (or to cut from the budget), but I think we can achieve that one way or the other. If anyone wants to sponsor an episode for their small business/podcast/Edinburgh show we still have 15 opportunities to do so. The audio episodes all end up getting over 100,000 downloads, with the more popular ones exceeding 150,000 and the videos have been getting up to 50,000 views on youtube alone (and they’re also on vimeo and iTunes which I don’t have figures for) -
check out the ones that debuted on youtube, rather than the repeat retro ones which have been viewed by many before. So there’s a big audience there to see me bigging you up for 30 seconds before a podcast. It’s £500 to have that happen in video only and £1500 for both audio and video, which seems pretty reasonable to me. And we’re open to negotiation on this, so if you fancy “owning†an episode of the podcast and you’re not an evil fat cat then let us know.
If you are an evil fat cat and you have enough money to give us we might eventually succumb. We’re only human and everyone has his price. But the important thing is that we retain complete control of the content of the podcast and I will say something that you don’t like almost certainly.
Anyway, it’s great news, thanks so much for helping us and if you didn’t contribute please consider giving a bit to the next one we try - or, you could
just pay a pound a more a month here (you get access to a secret channel of extras. Recently added a video of the “winner†of the Slytherin notebook realising that his bid intended to get the total higher was actually on course to win). I really love that this stuff is being paid for in (relatively) small increments by the people who listen to it. It belongs to you, unless it gets snapped up by a TV company in which case it very much belongs to me.
Don’t worry. It won’t be.
