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Tonight I was going to a friend’s birthday party in Knutsford, so I’d been dropped off at a local hotel after last night’s gig. I spent an enjoyable morning prepping for tomorrow’s RHLSTP with Bob Mortimer and Lou Sanders. It mainly involved watching loads of Reeves and Mortimer clips. I had almost forgotten how inventive and enjoyably childish and insane these guys were. My favourite thing about the brilliant Stars in Their Eyes sketch as that that door the contestants came through was much too low and they had to bend to make their entrance. The detail in this stuff is astonishing.
I walked from the hotel on the outskirts of Knutsford to go into town to meet my wife at the train station. I passed the sign welcoming me to Knutsford and shamefully did not do a selfie next to it and tweet it with the tag “Knutsford City Limitsâ€.
The party was in posho Tatton Park, which was about 4 miles away but we’d failed to book a cab and all the taxi firms were busy. So we had to walk to the house across the park as the sun went down. I had my suitcase with me and the park officially closed at 7, so as we’d arrived just before that time we were more or less the only people there (and certainly the only party guests who had taken this route). It’s a beautiful park with stags (or were they reindeers) and a flock of black creatures swooping around the trees - I thought they might be bats, but they were some kind of crazy birds. It felt a bit American werewolf, especially when we tried to take a short cut away from the road. It was a long walk and it was taking ages and it was a typically insane Herring family thing to be doing. We always seem to arrive late or sweaty or coming from the wrong direction. As we got close to the house we encountered a fence and I worried that we’d have to go all the way back round again, or worse that we’d be trapped in the park and have to survive like Bear Grylls with a suitcase. But luckily we found the road again and weren’t attacked by a werewolf or a bat or a reindeer, though we were probably the last guests to arrive. And the only ones who had not arrived by car. The wheels of my suitcase were encrusted with mud. Why can’t we be like the norms?
It was a joyful birthday party, with a much loved and popular birthday girl and a lot of comedians (and all the really nice ones too) and even after all my walking I managed to eat until I was stuffed and then eat some more and then the Cannibal came to pick us up and drive us all the way back to London, so that I could be home in time for the podcasts. It meant my wife still hasn’t spent a night away from our baby. Most remarkably neither of us needed a wee on the long journey home. Perhaps our bodies were storing liquids in case we went on another insane trek before breakfast.
