Sunday 15th February 2026
Sunday 15th February 2026
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Sunday 15th February 2026

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After forgetting Valentine's Day and leaving my wife in (metaphorical) tears, I committed an even greater sin today by forgetting St Skeletor's Day. It's one thing to forget a day based on an imaginary man with wings made up by a false religion than to forget a day, made up by yourself, celebrating the most evil person/skellington that ever existed.
And if you were just a skellington I think you'd have some problems with the world. It was easy for Valentine with his skin and blood and beating heart. Of course he was all lovey dovey and happy, until he was beaten to death and beheaded on February 14th 269. Which put a dampener on things. And then he found out what it was like to be a skellington and I bet he wasn't sending anyone flowers and chocolates then. When your cock has slowly disintegrated in front of your also disintegrating eyes, it puts you off the whole idea of dating. Hence Skeletor.
It wasn't like the world was trying to send me clues to remind me. The compiler of Wordle gave Skeletor a little nod by making today's word skull and the GB Skellington team slid down a frozen pipe on a tray to win double gold. It's cheating having a tray though. We used to do it on big plastic sacks. I set off too soon once, spun round and collided with my sister and hurt her a little bit. These Olympic guys all patiently wait their turn. Where's my gold medal?
Anyway, Happy St Skeletor's Day to all those who celebrate.
We had a lazy day, though it started quite badly, when the internet went down quite a way into a game of 99 Nights in the Forest. It turned out that a fuse had been tripped and we'd lost quite a lot of the downstairs lights and plugs and most crucially the internet, which I need for my work and also because I am addicted. Also, crucially for a day off with the kids, none of our TVs work without the internet as we have no aerial and everything is streamed. We might have to watch DVDs, like people from the 1900s.
I texted my electrician, feeling a bit bad that I was disturbing him on Sunday morning. It turned out that he was in Helsinki, but he very kindly facetimed me to help me isolate the problem. You turn off all the switches and then turn them back on one by one to see which one is causing the problem. Typically it turned out to be the sockets in the kitchen, where the wifi router is. So we got nearly everything back on, apart from the internet and the kitchen TV.
I let my electrician get back to his holiday as I tried to isolate what device or socket was causing the issue. I turned everything off and unplugged stuff, but nothing worked. We could maybe get through one day without the internet, but how would I do my work tomorrow? What about Newsround? We might have to get an emergency electrician out who wasn't in Helsinki.
In my search I discovered that the sockets in the kitchen island were still working, so like an electrical genius I realised that with an extension cord I could use that to plug the router and the little magic internet box on the wall in. Would it work?
Damn right it would. We had internet again. Though still no idea of what was tripping the fuses. Still we could wait a day or so at least to get someone out and we could watch TV and, if required, broadcast the news with a puppet.
Am I am hero? Yes, I think I am.
Though the mystery of what has made us lose those sockets remains.
It IS the kind of thing that Skeletor might do.





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