Warming Up

The hilliest run yet for the Sunday morning km half marathon (actually did 12.5km, but close enough) and I won’t say it was easy, but it was definitely easier than usual and I’d go as far as saying that I almost enjoyed the experience. The justgiving page keeps moving upwards (now over £14,000 plus gift aid). Steve Harris kindly decided to give a pound each for every RHLSTP (and RHEFP) I had done and donated £500. I’m not saying you should all do that, but you should all do that. And remember the proceeds of the live stream for the new series of RHLSTP will also go to the same charity (and also the Museum of Comedy) so you can donate and get something for yourself if you prefer.

I was delighted to have 980 extra calories to play with today and decided to risk about 100 of them on eating a KitKat. I haven’t really eaten chocolate for over two and a half years and the risk was that this might open up the floodgates and mean I ate all the chocolate in the world. It certainly gave me a buzz and the craving for me, but the truth is that I didn’t really enjoy it. Healthy eating has ruined everything for me.

Having shifted the kids’ car seats to the big car ahead of the holiday, I thought I’d get my car properly cleaned by the nice Eastern European men at the garden centre. It has been a little while since the inside of the car was cleaned by anyone and kids have been sick in there and dogs have sat in the boot and there was actually somehow quite a lot of gravel in the footwells. 

But that’s why you take it to get cleaned right?

Last time I’d been in with this car I’d just had the outside cleaned and the man who ran it had disapprovingly told me that I had to pay £5 more because the car was very dirty. I agreed. I was going to give them £5 more anyway because the car was very dirty.

This time the same man again apologised in a slightly passive aggressive way saying I’d have to pay £25 for the clean because of the dog hair in the boot. I’d been expecting that and said that was fine. But he wasn’t going to leave it. Even though his job depends on cars getting dirty and the owners being too lazy to clean them themselves he asked me when the last time I got it cleaned was. I told him it had been a while, but he was definitely car-shaming me. I didn’t mind. I knew my car was dirty. That’s why I was here. 

It’s like he was annoyed that I’d let my car get dirty. Like he expected to come to him when my car was easy to clean or better still, still clean from the last time. 

I decided to carwash shame the man who was dirty car-shaming me and gave him £5 more than he was asking me to pay for. That’s right £10 more than I would have paid if my car had been only slightly dirty.

The joke’s on him. If I got my car cleaned as regularly as he clearly thinks I should, then I would have paid a lot more than if I do it once every blue moon.

Having said all of this the East European men do an absolutely fantastic job of the cleaning and given how many of them there are it’s ridiculously cheap, especially when you have a really dirty car. It just amuses me that he is unable to keep his mouth shut about how disgusted he is with me for letting my car get in such a state. I respect it and I enjoy being admonished and I will take my car back to him again next time. Though next time will, of course, be about four months later than he would ideally like and only when the car is in such a state that I am ashamed to drive it around. And as I enjoy his opprobrium I will leave it as long as possible. This guy is really shooting himself in the foot.

More RHLSTP guest news. The brilliant Phil Wang will be joining me at the Leicester Square Theatre on 11th October. Book now.