A bit of good news at last! I can confirm, after my wife’s shocking admission she thought I smelt good, that she is NOT pregnant again.

I really am just a god of smell.

It’s truly the greatest tragedy of 2020 that I can’t share my stench with other people.

 “The One With All the Coughing”

The winds of change are in the air. Blowing my smell all over the place. I really do need that shower…

It’s nearing the end of the year. And the end of an era, as it’s time for Rachel and Chandler to move out. No more Joey and Chan Chans…

And what better way to mark this occasion than for David Schwimmer to direct his first episode!

If you ask me he’s earned a break after all the Ross he’s had to deal with this year.

He does a decent enough job, but it’s an episode low on humour and high on pathos. Barely anything’s happening, and there’s a pervading sense of melancholy. And the same is true of this Friends™ episode.

Joey and Chan Chan plan to mark the occasion by doing nothing at all. But fall into the trap of telling Monica. No surprises, Rachel hasn’t packed yet and the boys are dangerously close to getting roped into helping. Guys, haven’t you learned you can’t plan to do nothing anymore? Particularly not with a baby. Ok, maybe I’m projecting a little…

I’m sure many other people have experienced this. Isolating with your partners, you reach a certain point where it starts to become difficult to do your own thing. You can have all the time in the world, yet the worst thing you can say is “I don’t want to do something with you this evening”.

As Joey and Chandler discover, if you want a bit of space, you’ve got to make PLANS. As long as they don’t involve doing nothing.

Someone who’s failed at making plans is my sister, who hasn’t had a great time this year. She’s started hoarding a bunch of stuff in her flat, which has put Rachel’s room to shame. My poor mother and father had to help clean it up. With none of the enthusiasm of Monica helping Rachel pack.

This goes some way to explaining my mother’s attitude in trying to get me to take the tumble dryer. The stress of dealing with my sister has made her mother her other children a bit too keenly. We still haven’t found any space for it. Maybe there’s some way I can connect it IN my car? I could offer a portable laundrette service to people.

Oo. I just got a weird pang of nostalgia. Remembering Rachel and Ross’s first kiss in the laundrette. Sometimes I forget how far we have come together.

It’s strange that when I started this idiotic project, one of the main goals was to encourage me to stay in touch with my Real Live Friends. It’s never been harder than this year.

Rachel is leaving, but only moving twenty blocks. Chandler’s only moving across the hall. What’s the big deal?? I’ve already lost Joey Number 1. It’s almost a year since I tried to re-establish contact and he’s just surreptitiously removed himself from our WhatsApp™ group.

And now David the Science Guy AND Monica Number 2 are about to emigrate for work for a few years. Not together, it should be said. Imagine the furore that would cause! Phoebe would be devastated…

Chandler Number 1 has already been abroad for a few years, though still joins our Zoom™ catchups. Maybe that’s a positive to take from this year? We’ve probably all been together MORE than we would have. Leaving aside any discussion about quantity over quality…

But it’s pretty devastating to have lost the last free year for a while with not one but two other couples. More so given David the Science Guy is about to embark on the same journey of parenthood as me. New parents can feel isolated and cut off from their friends, I’m not going to lie, doing it cut off from my non-New York based Friends™ has been hard.

Monica isn’t the only one who’s cut deep by Rachel pointing out she only gets calls from her partner and mother.

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

We did have some respite recently, we were able to leave baby with a grandparent and go out to a restaurant. Our second such evening since becoming parents. Our second date of 2020.

It was a jolly affair, and delicious, a needed reminder of what a good time we can have together. For a second we were able to forget all the difficulties the year has brought, and the world around us. Until a heavily spiced sizzling dish was brought to one of the tables opposite, and everyone in the room simultaneously started coughing.

Even with this reminder of the outside danger, it didn’t put a dampener on things. Quite the opposite, as we all fell about laughing.

Humour will get us through.

And we’re back like Phoebe’s triplets!

Strangely this is only their second of three appearances. You’d think they’d play a bigger part in the show. But this is FRIENDS™ not PARENTS™ so I suppose it’s to be expected.

Maybe it’s because the writers struggled to keep track of their age? By my reckoning they should be over a year old at this point, yet look about the same age as my five month old.

She’s similarly mobile, (my baby, not Phoebe) having developed a bizarre ability to crawl on her back using her head as an extra limb. Imagine a cross between a caterpillar and the girl from The Exorcist™.

It’s made it especially important to try and keep things clean, and simultaneously a lot harder to keep things clean. I can completely empathise with the state of Monica’s flat after Phoebe babysits the triplets.

It’s some measure of how the experience is changing me; that my first reaction upon seeing Chandler’s toy “Krog, Destroyer of Worlds” was to think “that things got way too many small parts to give to a baby” rather than “oh cool, I want that toy”.

And my parenting instincts are immediately vindicated! When Chandler swallows a piece.

With the business of taking care of the baby, it’s becoming harder to look after our bodies as well as the house.

I haven’t had a shower for the last few days, yet, worryingly, my wife just turned to me and told me I smell good. You might think that’s no cause for concern, but it’s worrying for two reasons. One: loss of sense of smell is a symptom of Covid, and two: the last time she thought I smelt good was when she was pregnant!! I’m not sure which I’d prefer…

We need some sort of test here, but which to choose?

 “The One With the Tumble Dryer”

Whilst my wife’s off to get a pregnancy test, Joey’s pretending to own a Porsche™ to attract the ladies. It strikes me I could have done the same with the BMW parked outside our house the past year which has finally being towed. If I’d wanted to attract the sort of women who date drivers that are arseholes.

I suppose I could still try it even with the BMW gone. My wife is certainly getting enough cardboard boxes delivered from Amazon™.

God I hope she’s not “nesting” again.

I really don’t get how Rachel and Ross are struggling to get their wedding annulled here. She finally gets some revenge on him by lying in the court papers, which results in the annulment being rejected. But surely they can still get it on the grounds of non-consummation?? Unless there was a super X-rated scene I’ve missed.

They decide to fulfil Ross’s destiny and opt for the full divorce. Ross’s third divorce is even worse when you consider he’s only on sexual partner number seven. Although I’m not sure if it’s worse he’s on three divorces or that sexual partner number seven was Janice.

Anyway, the divorce leads to a nice scene where they ruminate over how things may have been different were it not for the winds of fate, both regretting the past, but accepting that they’ve come to where they are with a hug (and a divorce).

It’s a fitting, real, and grown up way for things to end between them, bringing years of on-again, off-again hijinks to a close. Oh boy, I sure hope we can finally move on from Rachel and Ross…

Real Live Sitcom Moment:

I’m not the only one going a bit “Ross” at the moment. My mum has become completely obsessed with getting us a tumble dryer to help with the baby.

Obviously we’re very grateful for the offer, but we measured the space in the kitchen, it was too small, so we told her this and that there wasn’t space anywhere else.

Still she insisted, so she came round, measured the space herself, suggesting we could make the cupboard under the sink smaller, somehow? Handily ignoring that that would mean getting a new sink. And also that we’d already refused her kind offer.

She told us she’d order one anyway. So I calmly explained again we weren’t able to take one as we don’t have space.

But, mother knows best, and she showed up this week with a brand new tumble dryer, insisting we take it.

I refused to entertain this madness, and what followed was my frantic, sixty something year old mother, hauling a (sizeable) tumble dryer out of her car, and carrying it to my front door with all the strength of one of those adrenaline fuelled mums who’s child’s been trapped under a tractor tyre.

Despite my protestations she immediately drove off. And, long story short, I now have a tumble dryer in the back of my car.

I really wasn’t lying about the space. I guess it’ll just have to stay there till we move? In about two years time.