7073/19593
About 100 more pages of the book to wade through before it’s “finished”. It’s going well.
I did a stone clearing podcast in the morning and was really on fire. I love it when it becomes a proper stream of consciousness, but is also full of properly funny/mad stuff. The dew on the crops prompted me to come up with a lot of funny stuff about moisture and how water was the enemy of stones and I suspected that the Stone Stasi were setting up some honey traps.
Sadly when I tried to upload it I discovered that the headphones had not connected to the phone and it was, once again, all recorded (well not really) from inside my pocket. This time I won’t put it up regardless. I may try to repeat some of it, though I don’t think that will work as I don’t remember much of it and this stuff only “works” through spontaneity. In a sense, in this great art project, a successful lost podcast is of more value than a properly released one.
Illness continues to pour down on us, sometimes literally. It was the dog’s turn to join the fun today and my morning started with clearing up diarrhea from the kitchen floor. Everything is really going great for me.
In the afternoon we went to Harpenden to see Zog and the Flying Doctors, which I found to have a rather unrealistic narrative about that I found quite childish. But the kids seemed to like it. It had a fabulous young cast and some banging songs (I later found out written by Joe Stilgoe from the Horne Section who also wrote that catchy pretend 80s song that Daisy and I had to sing and dance to on Taskmaster). I thought the only possible misstep in it was that the Unicorn with two horns was (spoiler alert) cured by having one of its horns removed. I think it would have been better for the unicorn to realise that it didn’t need to fit in and change (though later the excised horn would have a part to play in the plot). It’s a small quibble and comes from the original text, so I will blame Julia Donaldson, who I otherwise have to admire for coming up with such an imaginative tale, which shows kids that you don’t have to be a princess, you can be a doctor if that’s what you want. Which is very empowering for princesses.
It had the kids dancing in the aisles and Ernie in particular swept up by the whole thing. He tried to climb off the balcony, but we stopped him (and luckily it wasn’t a high balcony so he’d probably have been ok.
So it might drive your children to a dangerous level of excitement, but I still recommend it.
It’s on tour so check it out if it comes near to you (you probably need to take at least one kid with you though).
