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The character is now out of our hands, if it was ever in them. But Paul Putner is a safe custodian for my citric son. If anything an insane orange megalomaniac is more suited to this century than the last.
Phoebe (who is usually very keen to go to school) was feeling poorly this morning and we decided to let her have the day off. Ernie says he feels every day and is not such a fan of school (at least until he's there) and thus hardly ever gets a day off. Hopefully he won't actually get ill because we won't believe him and will cart him off to school even if we have to drag him. There's a lesson in there somewhere for my many 7-year-old readers.
She rallied quite quickly once she'd secured the day off. So maybe there's a lesson there for my 10-year-old readers. Catie was busy with a podcast record and a stand up preview in town so I was in charge of the skiver. But she's pretty self-sufficient now. I stayed with her to watch Futurama just in case though. If she's skiving, then I am too.
I actually managed to get quite a lot of house work down. We've got some cleaners coming in tomorrow, mainly to sort out my work annexe which hasn't been cleaned since we got here and is frankly disgusting. But of course that meant tidying up to make the place cleanable. Ah the delicious paradox of employing people to clean for you.
I don't really have any work to do at the moment (I could have a go at writing something, but pretend sick kids and other displacement activities get in the way. I did an amazing job of sorting out our utility room. Do they give a British Comedy Award for that?
Ernie was meant to go to a street dance class tonight (I know). He had started off very enthusiastically a few weeks ago, but his interest has waned and tonight he was in near hysteria about the idea of having to go. Perhaps he was jealous that Phoebe had played a better game of skivers' chess than he could ever manage or maybe street dance isn't for him. He was in meltdown.
I mainly laughed, even though I tried not to, partly because someone being this upset about the prospect of going to street dance is properly hilarious and partly because I was riding a time machine to my own past, where a 7-year-old Richard Herring, who looked very much the same as the boy in front of me, was going nuclear over some similarly trivial request from his parents. Possibly he'd been asked to eat steak and kidney pie or a Yorkshire pudding with no golden syrup on it. This tantrum from Ernest was the payback that I deserved. And I have to say that I would have had this reaction to the idea of doing anything that involved dance at all, so Ernie had done much better than me, having done three or four actual classes before deciding he'd rather implode than go.
Ironically Ernie had had some nose bleeds at school, so was actually more ill than his sister who was now asking if we could practise football in the garden.
But actual blood does nothing when you have claimed to be ill every day for three years. He could easily have faked that.
He begged, he screamed, he did the classic Herring move of lying on the floor pounding his fists (I invented that and loved to do it in supermarkets), but I could not give into terrorism.
I am sure that when I was a kid and was made to do something I didn't want to do I would have said to my parents "When I have kids I am not going to force them to do things they don't like." (Ernie didn't think of this, the useless idiot) And part of me felt like it wasn't great to force a very reluctant child to partake of an activity he didn't like.
But a) we'd paid for this and b) he always says he doesn't want to do things and then when he gets to the thing always has the time of his life. So I was in a tricky position.
His Nana was taking him and I didn't like to lumber her with this tricky situation. But also Catie wasn't there and I didn't want to get into trouble for being too lenient and wanting to make my child happy.
So it was decided that Ernie would at least have to walk to street dance, but that if he felt unwell or had a nose bleed (or his Nana couldn't be arsed with this) he could come back home.
I could hear his cries of protest for minutes after he'd left. For so long that I think it must have been another child protesting about doing something else. He got to street dance, luckily for him he had a nosebleed, he came home.
I had done a fine job of parenting and achieved nothing.
Will he go to street dance next week? It's that kind of jeopardy that keeps you hooked to this blog (but no, I don't think he will).
This week it's a very fun interview with Samir Ahmed who if she'd played her cards right could have been my wife. You can see how disappointed she is.
Audio here.
Another great guest announced for the Edinburgh Fringe RHLSTPs. On 6th August I am joined by David O' Doherty.
Tickets here.
