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I was mildly annoyed when the kids didn't get into any of the primary schools within ten minutes walk of our house, but it turns out that our 30 minute walk to school is my favourite part of the day. Well as long as the kids aren't scrapping.
Most days though we have a funny chat, with them asking questions or telling jokes or (in Ernie's case) making up stories about usually fairly banal things he claim have happened, which haven't.
Today we tried a different route to school, down an out of the way long road with various businesses on it and passed a few new places. Phoebe saw a sign saying "Hand Car Wash" and said (not sure if she was joking or genuinely curious) "Who wants to wash their hand on a car?" We then all enjoyed a fun riff where we imagined a business where people with a dirty hand (it wasn't a Hands Car Wash) could pay to wash it on a car. Would people travel to this slightly isolated part of town to wash one hand on a car? And was the service just a dry car that you had to try to use to clean yourself or would there be some water and soap on it? It felt like the business was doomed to fail, but then I realised that if the owner was genius he could make this a Hand Car Wash where you washed your hand on a soapy car, but in the process also cleaned the car. Thus they would have people paying to wash their hand and paying to wash their car and the owner would have to do nothing. He'd solved two problems at once and made double bubble (in every sense).
Having kids has made my car wash based stand up routines much more charming. Look where my mind went in 2004.
We also passed a nursery called "Toad Hall". Ernie's reading skills have come on in leaps and bounds, but he misread the name as "Toad Hell" and wondered what kind of place we were passing. We had found the Hell that bad toads went to once they were dead. What had the toads done to deserve this fate? Is it possible to be an immoral or evil toad? And what punishments would await these amphibians? Toad Hell is other toads. That's what I've heard. Though in reality a toad hell might well be a building full of 0-5 year old children. If you knew that was coming you'd do your best to be a well-behaved toad.
RHLSTP has moved to a studio (at least for now) and the first guest (aside from the Book Club we did with Johnny Ball) is the hilarious Nick Helm.
Check it out here. 
