Eleven years ago, my wife and I had had a baby, so I didn't go to

In the ledger of competing loves, a modest confession shines like a lantern: “Eleven years ago, my wife and I had had a baby, so I didn’t go to the Edinburgh Fringe for the first time in years. Tim Key won the comedy award and I was sat at home with the child feeling very jealous, genuinely.” Hear the human music in it: the pull of the cradle against the call of the stage, the sweetness of new life braided with the sting of a missed triumph. This is not a scandal of the heart but its arithmetic; it tallies devotion and desire on the same page and refuses to lie about the remainder.

The ancients would have called this the battle of two altars. On one fire burns ambition—to journey north, to stand among peers, to test one’s voice against the laughter of midnight rooms. On the other burns belonging—to hold the baby, to water the small garden that has just been planted, to keep vigil where love has become flesh. The soul that speaks this quote honors both flames and admits, without ornament, the smoke of jealous ache. Such honesty is already wisdom: it names envy before envy ferments into bitterness; it confesses the cost without cursing the choice.

To invoke the Edinburgh Fringe is to summon a pilgrimage—a city turned into a labyrinth of stages, where a lifetime’s chance can fit into an hour above a pub. To skip it for the first time in years is no light matter for a comic; it is to step out of the river just as it might be carrying your name downstream on the lips of strangers. That Tim Key lifted the comedy award while the speaker sat at home crowns the tension: joy for a friend and rival, grief for the self, a double-edged blessing that draws honest blood.

Consider a tale from another theater: the story told of Salieri hearing Mozart, envy passing through him like a sword. In legend (and only partly in history), he wrestled the serpent and kept serving music—teaching, composing, tending the craft while another wore the laurel. Whatever the embellishments, the parable endures: envy acknowledged can be harnessed; envy denied corrodes. The father at home with the baby is not unlike the court composer in shadow—learning to transmute the sting into stewardship, to turn what he cannot win today into strength for tomorrow’s work.

The quote’s deeper marrow is this: seasons rule us, and no season yields its fruit to another’s clock. There is a time to tour and a time to swaddle, a time to chase spotlights and a time to become a lamp beside a small bed. The trick is not to pretend the relinquished path was worthless; the trick is to receive the chosen path as holy, while letting the pain of the unchosen sharpen gratitude instead of souring it. The bond formed in those homebound nights—milk-warm, story-soft—will one day underwrite the courage to take the road again.

Let the teaching be written for apprentices of any craft: when jealousy knocks, do not slam the door; sit it at the table and ask what it wants you to learn. Often it will point, like a severe tutor, to disciplines neglected or dreams deferred. Then bless the good in another’s win—say their name (Tim Key) with clear eyes—and return to your bench. In this way you keep the heart wide enough for both envy’s honesty and love’s duty, until envy withers into admiration and duty ripens into strength.

Rites for the road: set a seasonal ledger—what belongs to family now, what belongs to work later—so the mind stops calling obedience a failure. Keep a craft vigil even in the nursery: fifteen minutes of writing, a notebook in the pocket, a joke refined between lullabies, so the ember never dies. Practice celebratory speech when others win; praise trains the tongue away from poison. And when the next Edinburgh Fringe beckons, go with a heart enlarged by the nights you paid at home; carry the hidden wealth of those years onto the stage. Thus the confession becomes a blessing, and the missed award becomes a quiet crown laid on a sleeping child’s brow.