7463/20392
So pissed off that I missed my 20,000th day. It was 14th April 2022.
Last night at Operation Mincemeat I had bumped into Ben Willbond from off of Ghosts. I am never so gauche as to ask people to be on my podcast at things like this (well occasionally - I think I asked Les Dennis about it a film screening), and I didn’t ask Ben (as much as I’d like to have him on). Phoebe and I have been enjoying watching the series together and I thought it would freak her out if I got a picture of the two of us, so I did something that again I never do and asked Ben for a photo. He willingly and willbondingly obliged. Today I showed Phoebe who even at 8 years old tried to play it cool and pretend she wasn’t impressed. But she was a bit impressed, though she didn’t recognise him to begin with and asked me how I knew him. I told her that I hang out with famous people all the time.
I realised that I also had a picture of myself with Mat and Jim from when they were on RHLSTP. She immediately identified Jim as the arrow guy, but thought Mat played the headless ghost (and the head obvs).
I am not sure my uncool act was worth it in the end, but it was kind of Ben to oblige and I think Phoebs was a little bit excited.
I have been zealously trying to sort out various issues with the house, with varying degrees of success - yesterday a man came to look at my misfiring printer - it turned out that there wasn’t anything wrong with the printer, but the official cartridges that had cost me over £500 two years ago and which still had 40% of their ink in them, so I bought some knock off Del Boy cartridges for half the price from the printer servicing place and they seem to work. I am probably too late to claim money back on warranty and it’s probably my fault for not really doing a huge amount of printing (I care about the environment). At least I can print things again now. Even if I don’t want to. I wish I’d got into printer ink rather than comedy though.
I’ve also been trying to get our drains surveyed. I’ve rung the same local business twice and they’ve seemed very friendly and up for the job but said they needed to ring me back to sort out the visit, but have not rung me back either time. I’d rather got with a local small business, but do I try again or accept that they’re just not that into me.
A man came to service our Saniflo toilet that’s been making intermittent gurgling noises. He may have sorted out the problem, but said we might need a plumber to look at the cistern which might be leaking slightly. You’d think if you were a man specialising in Saniflo toilets that you would also be able to mend the regular parts of a toilet. But it’s a different job and I respect that. I was surprised to discover that he didn’t have a card machine or expect a bank transfer, he wanted to be paid in cash or by cheque. I didn’t have enough cash, because I don’t really work with cash any more, so I found my cheque book which I have not used for a very long time. To let you know how long, it still had Catie’s maiden name on it. We’ve been married for 11 years.
I could barely remember how to write a cheque and I put the year 2008 on it by mistake. I wondered how long he’d be able to resist coming into the modern age. He seemed to have sorted the issue and gave me some good Saniflo tips, so I liked him a lot. But cheques dude?!
I had a lovely Transatlantic call with Jon Ronson this afternoon. I was in my attic in Hertfordshire and he was in his wife’s wardrobe in New York. I think because that was the most sound proof place, but who knows. I am a huge fan of his podcasts and books and we were talking about his latest audiobook/podcast Debutante (free with Audible membership) for a future Book Club episode. Always a very enjoyable guest and hopefully we’ll get him on a live show when he’s back in the UK (he’s going to be doing some stuff in the next couple of weeks, but we couldn’t make the dates work).
I also had to read a book pretty quickly for a surprise book podcast with a guest whose identity is embargoed (very exciting - it’s none of your riff raff), and was a little under the weather, so I didn’t manage to get a Twitch of Fun done today. Henry Hippo was very disappointed.
