Richard Herring's Blog

8317/21236Been home from holiday for just over a week and I have managed to shift the 3+kg that I put on in the 10 days of holiday. Now I am essentially back to the weight I was after Edinburgh. Another couple of weeks and I might be back to my pre-Edinburgh weight and then I can start on the diet. Can September pay for August?

8316/21235 I went to the funeral of an extraordinary man today, Pathmanathan Mylvaganam, who we knew as Uncle Pat, who had an enormously positive impact on my wife's family and as became clear during the service, an awful lot of other people too. Generous, passionate, fighting for what he believed in and slightly off his rocker, I only knew him for the last 15 or so years of his 93, but the general feeling was that he had been taken too young. He remained mentally sharp and full of future to the...

8315/21234It seems like I am being inspired to do some actual work done(puppets, snooker, stones and talking shit with comedians doesn't count) and today I not only got round to putting up light shades and pictures in our living room (we've only been living here 11 months) but I sat down at my desk and got working on an idea I had a few years ago "Impossible Questions from Kids". The genesis of this idea can be explained in the introduction I wrote (for a book, but I also want to do this as a po...

8314/21233My plan to write 30 books a year by cracking on and doing 4000 words a day slightly floundered today as I got distracted by admin and online poker and aside from some amusing blog about faeces and jigsaws I did NOTHING. Unless I decide to write books about faeces and jigsaws, in which case I am on my way!I hope I made you think about how trusting we all are about sending faeces through the post though.

8313/21232Doing a bit of tidying up I found a bag from my birthday (12th July) with a couple of forgotten presents in it. Both were from Phoebe. One was a jar saying "Dad's nuts" which I think she mainly got me because she never tires of joking about my lost testicle (as well as the implication of madness). It's a good gift because I like nuts. And also I don't want people messing with my nuts. Also if I have both testicles removed it would be funny to store them in a jar. 
Also there was a thous...

8312/21231Much to the amusement of my son I sent someone some of my poo in the post today. I even let Ernie post it in the post box which he was delighted about. I was posting it to the NHS and they had asked me do it, not for any worrying reason, just because they're asking all men over a certain age to send them poo. Presumably to test it to make sure there's nothing wrong, but if the NHS want to have fun with loads of tiny bits of old men's poo then I don't begrudge them that. I will send the...

8311/21230I ran up the hill again today, without my tiny pacemaker. It was a little bit easier, though still not as easy as it should be. The downhill and flat bits felt good though. Maybe I should be building up to the hill. I will be back at Park Run before you know it. But not tomorrow though. So a bit after you know it. 
My holiday has (at least in the short term) injected me with renewed vigour for my job.

8310/21229Who says AI would never work? Thanks to John Roughton for the find. I checked my bank balance and that's not me in the picture. And I am pretty sure I've never said anything like the attributed quote. Also why have I quoted myself in the quote that I never said? "I once said"Still as I once said, all publicity is good publicity. And you can quote me on that. But only if you include the "Still as I once said" In fact you can include this whole paragraph in the quote. And furthermore, ga...

8309/21228Back in the UKKK!Funnily enough it turns out that BBC Sounds have been repeating the St George's Flag episode of Richard Herring's Objective this weekIf you want to listen to an upbeat and positive view about the state of English Nationalism from 15 years ago, when the rise of the far right seemed impossible and JK Rowling was one of my potential candidates for a statue in Trafalgar Square, then knock yourself out. It's a lot funnier than I thought it would be, but also, in hindsight a...

8308/21227Kids are an equal mixture of delight on holiday as you can imagine. They are mainly the source of many laughs. Just today Ernie said "I don't like omelette or strangled eggs" which gave us a good five minutes of riffing as a family as we imagined how you'd strangle an egg. He also said to his mum, who had moved in his sleep because he is snoring, "When you turned me over last night it made my dream go upside down and I fell into the sky." Which is one of the greatest sentences I've eve...