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Some nostalgia. Not all good, but mostly.

My wife is away for the weekend.

This could be the prelude to some humorous meanderings about how I, a hapless male, have spent the weekend having rings run round me by my winningly cheeky progeny, what with their rosy cheeks and amazing banter and what have you. Some of that may have occurred. They do seem to be quite bright. But, bar the baby, I haven't seen a huge amount of them, what with children having infinitely more interesting social lives than their parents. But one of the things we did was a pizza and film night. This may not impress you, but I should point out that as a professional chef I am rarely at home of an evening, so the prospect of a night on the sofa with my kids is a rare and relishable treat. So out we went, we bought the stuff to make the dinner and then we went to go and hunt for a DVD to watch. The boys picked a film and I, in a fit of nostalgia, picked up a DVD of The Mighty Boosh

Ah, the pre children days. I remember watching this series on the nascent iPlayer, when it was a tiny window in the corner of your monitor. I wasn't married, there were no children, but the short gap in technology makes it seem surprisingly recent. For all of the advances in technology in the interim I watched this much as I did then, slightly shoddily on a laptop. It hadn't dated as badly as I feared, there were genuine LOLs, but the fit of nostalgia it induced was nothing to do with getting old, and nothing to do with a misplaced love for a time long gone. There were pangs for what I recognised as a mid-noughties ish sense of optimism and absurdity (and drugs, ah well, no more of that til the kids move out) but what nailed me was the episode entitled "Nanageddon".

You see, years ago, when we started Source, there was a group of ladies of a certainish age who adopted us and, in the dark times when no fucker came through the door, they could be relied upon to rock up and neck a few coffees, it wasn't much, but it was better than nothing, a small flicker of hope in the wilderness. They were named Nanageddon by the staff (whether it was me or my second chef is a matter of some debate) after this episode. Then, as time moved on, we got busier, they still came in, but there was a rate of what we shall politely refer to as natural attrition. But, to the bitter end, we weren't busy, but there were still a couple who popped in from time to time, and to my intense delight one of them's booked in for lunch a couple of times in my new gaff. All those ladies. All those years. All that polite acknowledgement in passing. It's not intense. It's not Hollywood. But it's a certain fucking something. And a half joke from an old DVD which came out before my children were born and any of this happened well, that's something too.

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