Home On the Range

As the chiropractor’s waiting room poster said, “It’s good to be back”.

The annual cattle drive that is the Coia family holiday is over, the kids corralled back at school, and Debbie’s come down from her high horse’s saddle with her conversation at last expanding beyond “are you sure you’ve got your passport?” and “we’ll miss the plane”.

Debbie is not the most relaxing of people to be around when anything is being planned as she panics. In fact when she’s not panicking she panics at not being panicked. She’s the kind of person who has sleepless nights and cold sweats if her Christmas shopping isn’t done by July – the year before – and if she thought she’d get a reply she would argue with the speaking clock telling it that it’s a few minutes slow. As I come from a very much more relaxed relationship with Time she gets angry, wants to kill me, and throws things. Fortunately, like me with deadlines, she misses a lot.

I will reluctantly confess that her nagging would have been useful one day last year when I was flying to Switzerland to record a video. She was away for a couple of days when I took my cab to the airport at the last minute and rushed to the check in desk with seconds to go. As the bored ticket collector asked for my passport I just knew I didn’t even have to bother making a show of looking through my case. I’d forgotten it.

I called my cab driver on his mobile, had him turn back, went home and retrieved the little red book with the photo taken by Mr Magoo, and then set off again hopelessly late. I’ve never admitted it to her so don’t you dare tell her. It would be enough to fuel hundreds of smug smiles.

Now I’ve settled back at work, sunburned perhaps but poorer for sure, and I’m finding the credit card bills have arrived before the holiday postcards. I wasn’t ready to leave the fresh, bracing, salty sea air of the seaside behind, a fact reinforced by my first day on the Tube where I inhaled our city’s distinctive aroma. If London were an air freshener then the marketing people would have their jobs cut out. A snappy tag line like “freshen your rooms with kebab and fumes” would please the advertising authorities with its honesty but probably wouldn’t shift many aerosols. If it were a perfume then perhaps “Enjoy love play with Sweaty Subway” might work. You just can’t beat home can you?

It’s been a tense summer for us as my oldest daughter has been waiting on the results of her GCSE Maths. Her school made her sit it a year early which surprised me as I would have problems sitting it a year late. A wise man once said that the rule for parents is that boys mess up your house but girls mess up your mind, but in our house I have to admit we’re lucky as our girls are good as gold, though twice as expensive. They also believe that boys have the right attitude to tidiness and spend the year treating their bedrooms as conceptual art inspired by Tracy Emin’s Unmade Bed.

Anyway, the results are in and the jury voted for an “A” in Maths so we can all get back to normal now, even if this is the time of year when my daughters remind me just how hopeless I am as a father. After all, they tell me, everyone else’s dad can cover their school books in clear sticky back plastic without getting air bubbles. I can fix their computer, assemble a study desk with no parts left over and even help with Maths, but sticky back plastic? A science too far.

I started back this week at Smooth Radio by interviewing hypnotist Paul McKenna and also that very funny, best selling, author Kathy Lette. Let me share two of their “off air” anecdotes that you won’t hear, and I pray they won’t mind me telling you.

Kathy told me that she uses real life experiences in her books which are very funny. They’re usually about how horrible men are, so I asked her to tell me the worst thing any man had said to her. “One boyfriend asked me to switch off the light whenever we kissed”, she said. “Eventually I asked why and he said it was because I felt much younger than I looked.” Ouch!

Let me finish by sharing a great comeback line from Paul McKenna. He and I were talking off air about illusionist Derren Brown and he said they’d had a minor disagreement recently, nothing terrible. Derren sent a few texts to Paul which went ignored so he followed up with a final one that simply said “Are we still friends?”.

Paul texted straight back. “Well, you’re the bloody mind reader”.

Now you don’t get to laugh like that too often on holiday do you? As I said earlier - It’s great to be back.