At last my stair gates remain affixed to the wall.

A testament to mankind’s engineering prowess, and my ability to always shut them as carefully as possible, running over and moving the baby back to the centre of the room if she gets to close.

Sure the only reason we got it was so we wouldn’t have to keep moving her back to the centre of the room but… baby steps.

Oh God… she’s gonna be so much harder to stop when she can walk.

“The One With a Bit Too Much Honesty, If You Ask Me”

Joey’s giving out free stuff in the coffee shop to pretty ladies. Gunther’s not too happy about it, but I say you have to take free stuff from work where you can get it. I even got my sister a birthday present from work this year.

And who’s this knocking at the door?

It’s a pretty priceless reaction as the friends hear the knock and realise that all seven of us are already in the flat.

It’s Rachel’s sister, played by Reese Witherspoon!! Half way between Cruel Intentions and Legally Blonde. That girl’s gona be a star!!

Oh my, Rachel’s accidentally talked her sister into dating Ross! Who’s a little too eager to go along with it if you ask me.

Is Rachel’s sister going to become Ross’s eighth sexual partner?!? We’ll have to wait and see.

This is a bit of an insensitive time for her to show up however. As you’ll all know from slavishly reading the blog. Lockdown last year was precipitated by my wife’s musical theatre group being shut down right as they were about to put on a show. What show do you ask? Legally Blonde!!

And here we are exactly a year on from the Pandemic™ gracing our shores.

And, in bigger news, a year since we got our fence fixed! Mad props to me for managing to go the whole year without painting the new bits.

Monica’s refusing to acknowledge her illness after being sent home from work. Oh no! It hasn’t reached the Friends has it!? They’ve been so careful. Never breaking the rule of six.

Her protestations that she’s strong and never gets sick sounds a lot like me just over a year ago. I don’t think I’ve ever so swiftly been taught a lesson not to be so blasé. Immediately getting it and passing it to my pregnant wife.

We were a lot luckier than other people, we got through it. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say it impacted us both heavily. And in ways I wouldn’t have expected. This sudden reminder of the fragility of life, of my own mortality, and how I’m no longer just responsible for my own health played havoc with my mind for the last year.

And I only just feel I’m returning to a sense of normality, of control over my own thoughts. Not fearing anxious thoughts spiralling out of control. Panic attacks hitting me when driving my daughter somewhere. I don’t know. Was it the Covid, or was this something all new parents go through to a lesser or greater degree?

I’ve been helped in part by finally getting some professional help. Honestly, men will ring their GP three times to find there’s no appointments available rather than go to therapy.

Eventually my mum pointed me in the direction of our county’s wellbeing team, who were able to give me a couple of sessions. It definitely helped, although the therapist did somewhat undermine my recovery from anxiety over my health by casually pointing out in the last session my symptoms were the same as “Long Covid” ™. You mean I’ve got that as well?!?

Oh great…

I don’t think I do. One of the things I realised was that pretty much everything I got trapped in a spiral over was things I felt and experienced before the pandemic. I’d just lost my ways of coping with them. I’m sure many people have experienced the same.

But is this really why you’re here?? No, this is a Friends™ blog damn it. Back to Monica trying to get Chandler to sleep with her.

I don’t especially see a problem with sick sex, though it’s a bit like drunk sex. Great if you’re both in that state, but if only one of you’s sick or drunk it’s gross.

There certainly wasn’t any risk of us having sex this time last year. It’s a bit of a film cliché that people start furiously banging the second the world ends, but in reality there’s far too much to do. Like continually listening to your partners breathing/coughing to check for any signs of illness. Now you’d be far more likely to socially distance at a sign of illness rather than grabbing the vaporub for a bit of tingly sex.

I never thought when we got married I’d learn the exact time and reason for all of my wife’s daily coughs. But at least now I know they’re not because of anything out of the ordinary.

And, hey, before last year I never would have known we always cough after a cup of tea because we don’t have a water filter and the last sip always has all the scum in it. The things you learn when you take a break and really pay attention…

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

It’s amazing what you can get used to.

Only six months ago we were spooked by a man walking into our garden in the dark autumn evening.

Now we’ve got through winter, and I’ve lost count of the number of times it’s happened.

It seems the massive upshoot in home deliveries and takeaways lead to a great many people taking up a job they didn’t really have the sixth sense for. Or, an accurate enough version of Google Maps™.

We’ve regularly found people walking past our window of an evening, looking for a mystery house before realising they’re trespassing and performing a swift U-turn. What once made us fearful now makes us laugh as our TV watching is interrupted for the umpteenth time that evening.

Perhaps I should set a chair outside and sit there brandishing a shotgun. I’d love to drawl a southern “get of my land” at someone before hastily adding “oh no wait, is that a McDonalds™? I’ll take that please”.

Hopefully it won’t be long before the pandemic, too, becomes something to laugh about rather than be fearful of.

After all my difficulty putting up the stairgate last time or, more accurately, my wife’s difficulty in not pulling it off the wall, we’ve had to get ANOTHER one. It’s the only way we can stop our baby going into the kitchen and continuing her mission to explore strange new floors, to boldly pick up and eat anything, regardless of whether it’s food or not.

So, once again, I have a chance to show my DIY prowess! And this one went much better. Until a week later, when our now “learning to stand” baby leant on it and pulled it off the wall too. Who is selling stairgates that can’t withstand the weight of a baby?!?

And before you say it, YES, I followed the instructions perfectly.

It’s now re-attached in a much less aesthetically pleasing, but much more secure way.

Although I expect the cat will somehow barrel through it any second.

“The One With the Second Poorly Designed Stairgate”

Much like my pride in my ability to perform basic household improvement tasks, Janine is gone.

I can’t say I’ll miss her, her character mostly served as someone for Joey/Chandler/Ross to perve over. Joey, too, doesn’t seem that fussed. Mostly he’s concerned he can no longer afford cable, sneaking round to Chandler’s to watch their TV. For the young people, this was the olden days equivalent of stealing your mates Netflix™ password.

Perhaps he should spend less time watching TV and a bit more playing with his Chick and Duck? Where the hell are they??

I imagine “can you stop watching TV and spend some time with our daughter?” is something I’d be hearing a lot more of if there was anything else to do right now. But with Janine gone, I have no choice but to get a job in the coffee shop. Sorry, not me, Joey. Wait, what year is this? How long have we been inside again?

It’s a bit sad Joey feels the need to hide that he’s now working at the coffee shop. It’s easy to forget he was, briefly, quite a successful actor. But he now he finds himself in the position a lot of creative’s are struggling with. The work just isn’t there. And poor Joey can’t even retrain in cyber.

It’s a timely reminder of how, even in the best of times, forging a career in the arts can be a slog. Though I don’t think any of the wealth of talent being forced to take jobs in other sectors right now will take much comfort from Joey being in a similar position. At least he can take a job in a café!

Less depressingly, Phoebe’s foolishly answered the hypothetical question of whether she’d rather date Monica or Rachel.

I think Monica takes it a lot more to heart than you would. We’re quite used to our Real Live Friends telling us harsh truths, certainly by this age? I would at least expect Monica and Rachel to have more self-awareness by now. But, hey, they’ve got to get the jokes from somewhere! It’s a fun twist that, for once, Phoebe is the one in touch with how she’s seen by others (“I’m flaky I’ll say anything”).

Joke’s are the other source of consternation, this time among Chandler and Ross who can’t agree who wrote a joke printed in Playboy™. There’s not much to say here, as it’s the same thing over and over, and I don’t think I’ve ever been in a dispute over authorship of a joke.

You need to be able to write good jokes for that. (Ho Ho).

But it’s nice seeing Courtney Cox suppressing her laughter as Chandler and Ross attempt to sway Monica to decide who wrote the joke.

It’s fun to consider who you would pick to date out of the Friends™. Answers on a postcard please!!

I definitely wouldn’t pick Chandler, Joey, or Ross. Not because they’re men, they’d just all be awful to date. My wife told me she’d pick Monica, to which I responded “Because she’d clean up after you?”

“No." she replied coldly "Because she could cook nice meals for me.”

Oh… woops. Maybe I WOULD date Chandler. That way I wouldn’t be the only one putting my foot in my mouth.

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

Our support bubble has just got a bit more supportive, as they’ve now been vaccinated! So we went round again to catch up, and play with the kittens.

Unfortunately Marcel the Monkey (our baby) brought her desire to pick up and eat things from the floor with her. She was unable to catch the kittens but, after relaxing our guard for the faintest of seconds, we noticed she was chewing something.

The usual scrabble to stop her swallowing commenced, as we pleaded with her to open her mouth. Eventually my wife managed to prise it open and fished out what she was eating. Only to realise, with abject horror, it was a fingernail.

I’ve heard of people biting their fingernails but this is ridiculous.