As it transpires, it doesn't take that long to pop down to Asda for some chocolate and a pizza. No wonder they call it fast food. Lisa was back here last night before I'd even got the top off the glitter. I might have to change my plans and buy her a Next voucher out of Amelie's trust fund.
But despite failing to finish my Mother's Day gift, I decided I had time to get out and about today, so I headed to Uckfield for a bit of hospital bed rest. Whenever I'm there, I like to walk into town at lunchtime, and my route takes me past this shop...
I don't know if it's just me, but every time I have a butcher's at that sign, I find myself reading it as a film title. It's like 'Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man'. Although in Uckfield, it really ought to be Piltdown Man. Either way, I can't walk past the place without thinking it's a cinema. I spent the whole journey back to work this afternoon pondering a musical where Sally Field meets Elaine Paige over a bacon sandwich. I might write it at the weekend.
But anyway, if you're going to be a purveyor of finest quality meats, with the ability to heal fish, there's no better place to open a shop than Uckfield. The last four letters of the place spell 'Deli'. It's just a shame you can't use the first four.
It's a well known fact that if your toddler reins get a bit tangled at the park, the best course of action is to dress yourself entirely in purple, put on your bunny ears, and sit on the sofa until you've sorted them out...
I think the celebratory "Yeah!" at the end was a bit premature. She rabbited on there for a good twenty minutes after that, and I don't think the reins were any less tangled by the time she went to bed. I had to stop filming in the end because my leg went to sleep and I started getting cramp.
Interestingly, we dressed Amelie in that purple outfit when we went up to Sheffield the other week. The moment we walked through the doors of the Premier Inn, she disappeared, and all we could see was a disembodied head floating through the air as she ran off towards the lift.
But anyhoo, I've got no time to blog tonight. Amelie's planning a secret surprise for Mother's Day, and she's roped me in to help. Mainly because she's too busy working on the toddler reins. Lisa's just popped out to Asda for some high-calorie food, which means I have a golden opportunity to spend half an hour on Amelie's home-made gift. People worry about child labour, but frankly I've put more work into this than she has.
Breaking news from the sofa in front of me: Lisa has just described the latest footage of the Elk City tornado in Oklahoma as "a bit of old cloud". She followed that up by reaching for the remote control and adding "If I want to see grainy footage, I'll put on Channel Five". She's now watching a recording of 'House Guest in the Sun', which is a lot like a natural disaster, only more tragic.
And on the subject of tragedies, the first thing I saw when I left for work just after 8am this morning was an ambulance parked twenty yards from my front door, and a smashed up motorbike lying in the junction between Eastern Road and College Place. I don't know if the rider was in a similar condition or not, but let's hope the Yamaha was the only organ he damaged. Either way, it made me glad that I never leave for work on time. Five minutes earlier and I could have had Evel Knievel bouncing off my bonnet.
Ironically, having driven past the final scene from Easy Rider, I found myself following a white commercial van with a sign on the back which featured a bicycle in a red triangle, and the words "Warning: this vehicle turns left". I was tempted to bemoan the state of modern Britain, where it's apparently necessary to avoid litigation by warning cyclists that you might occasionally go round a corner, but having just seen a two-wheeled pile of wreckage at the junction of a left turn, it actually seemed quite sensible.
In other news, I was listening to the war stories of an elderly lady today (and I don't mean Lisa), and having told me about the time her husband was sunk by a U-boat, she happened to mention that she used to live in the Norfolk town of Sheringham. I told her that I have an internet stalker good friend who used to live there too, so she asked me his name.
Despite having just heard that careless talk costs lives, I immediately gave her the information she requested, and lo and behold, she said she knows him. "Not personally", she was quick to point out, but she was familiar with his work. Apparently he takes a good funeral. So I said I'd pass on her comments and try to get her a freebie.
I was in the kitchen yesterday when Amelie walked past with this label sticking out of her mouth...
I have absolutely no idea where she got it, but the fact that the makers feel the need to warn you against its removal in five different languages, two of them in capital letters, tends to indicate that she's done a bad thing. I expect it's like the pin on a hand grenade, and we're all about to go up in smoke.
But while I'm waiting for the big bang to occur, I've spent a lot of the weekend cleaning the flat. In fact I've done such a good job that I've successfully managed to remove all traces of Lisa and Amelie. They've fled to Lisa's Mum's for the day so that they don't get sprayed in the face with Mr Muscle.
As a reward for all my hard work, I treated myself to the DVD of District 9 whilst doing the weekly shop at Asda on Friday evening. Which showed amazing foresight as I hadn't actually done any hard work whatsoever at that point. Asda are currently selling it for only £7, which I see as a thinly veiled attempt to convince me that DVDs are history and I should buy a Blu-Ray player.
I wanted to go and see District 9 at the cinema last September, but Lisa insisted that anything featuring aliens is, by definition, rubbish, and despite my protestations that her unfounded extra-terrestrial prejudices are the whole point of the film, and that's precisely why we should go and see it, she persuaded me that our time would be much better spent watching 'Away We Go'. And we all remember what a roaring success that was.
Six months later, District 9 is up for four Oscars tonight, including Best Picture, which shows what Lisa knows about cinema. 'Away We Go' is strangely lacking in nominations, but I'm sure that's due to some kind of administrative error. So having cleaned the kitchen and walked into town yesterday afternoon to buy a Mother's Day gift, I tried to persuade Lisa to sit down with me last night and watch District 9. She refused, claiming that not only does the sight of aliens make her feel ill, but she doesn't like the sound they make either. Not that she's prejudiced. Some of her best friends are on another planet.
So while I sat on the sofa and spent the evening watching what turned out to be a very good film, Lisa took up residence on the computer and started slagging it off on Facebook. As she put it at 8:35pm, "There's only so much alien snorting you can take before a film becomes really tedious". Which is pretty much what I said about 'Away We Go'. The thing she particularly disliked was the guttural vocalisations of the prawns, which is interesting because the DVD extras include an interview with the sound effects guy, in which he says that he created that noise by running his fingernail down a butternut squash. And Lisa's never liked the sound of those either.
I was on the internet yesterday, ignoring my family while I read this news story on the BBC website. Apparently a couple in South Korea were so busy raising a virtual daughter in an online game, that they forgot to feed their real baby and she starved to death. It's not as unlikely as it might sound. If it wasn't for the fact that Amelie can point at the biscuit tin and shout "Bic-Bic" ad infinitum at the top of her voice, we'd never get Lisa off Facebook. But as it is, the only living things around here that are shrivelling up and dying are Lisa's crops in Farmville.
In other news, I was sitting here last night with my hand in my peripherals, having a good rummage around, when I came across a song I recorded more than three years ago. It dates back to 3rd March 2007, and had been missing in action, presumed dead, since my computer blew up a couple of years ago. I hadn't put it on CD because... well, because frankly I didn't think it was much cop, but it turns out there was a copy saved on an external hard drive in the corner of the living room, which Amelie enjoys pulling out from under the table and sticking in her mouth. It's a bit like discovering a lost track by The Beatles. Albeit one that was recorded by Ringo Starr. On an off-day. With low budget equipment.
Anyhoo, it's a Rob Thomas song called 'Ever the Same' and I recorded it two days after being turned down for a job as a fish feeder, which was something of a low point in my career. Lisa had also hit a couple of pot holes in life's road, which is all the more surprising as she can't drive. So it wasn't exactly what Dickens would have called the best of times.
But having rediscovered the recording, I've decided it wasn't quite as rubbish as I'd first thought back in the dark days of 2007, so I've brought it out into the light and set it to some previously unseen footage of Amelie pigletting around on the coffee table last month...
Three years after recording the song, the visuals prove that actually things aren't ever the same.
I'm not saying that I didn't appreciate meeting a Nobel Prize winner at the weekend, but if I'm honest, my real intention was to introduce Amelie to a future Prime Minister. Or failing that, David Cameron. At the time I thought I'd been unsuccessful in my mission, but as it transpires, Dave the Conservative had already met Amelie a full twenty-four hours before we headed down to the seafront on Sunday.
I received an e-mail at work this afternoon from the Chief Executive. To be honest, he sent it to everyone, but I'm probably the only one who read it. It turns out that whilst in Brighton for the weekend, David Cameron visited the hospital on Saturday afternoon and was given a guided tour. Obviously I already knew that, because I'm a regular reader of Gulf News. But what the biggest selling broadsheet in the United Arab Emirates failed to report is this key piece of information from today's e-mail:
"Mr Cameron made it very plain how impressed he was by what he had seen and heard. As he walked through the hospital he also particularly commented on the visual impact of our 'in the zone' hand hygiene posters and banners".
I think we all know which one he's talking about there. Let's face it, it's only a matter of time before Amelie starts playing a key role in the upcoming election campaign. I was always a big fan of Jennifer's Ear, so give it a few weeks and a bit of spin, and the biggest political hot potato in Britain will be Amelie's Smile.
I've just picked up my latest prescription for Tamsulosin, the wonder drug which is supposed to be keeping my prostate free of any unpleasantness. I've been taking it since September, and it does seem to be working. I'm only getting excruciating, crippling pain about once a month now. Or twice a month, if you include Lisa's PMT.
This is the fourth prescription I've had for the stuff, and I've been given a different brand every time. Mainly because I keep going to different pharmacies in the hope of avoiding conversations along the lines of "Hello Mr Gardner! Back again for your Tamsulosin? Prostate still the size of a lemon?". So I've enjoyed the same medication under a variety of names, such as Contiflo and Pamsvax (which sounds like my aunt's hoover).
But the latest incarnation is undoubtedly the best. I've just taken delivery of two boxes of 'Petyme'. Bearing in mind that the primary use of Tamsulosin is to enable men to urinate (which is not, I hasten to add, why I take it), what better name could there be for the drug than Pee-Time.
With a bit of luck I'll get haemorrhoids now, so I can ask for a tube of Anusol next time I'm picking up my Pee-Time, and really enjoy my trips to the chemist.
We've had nothing but good weather since March began, and frankly I'm beginning to get bored with it. We could do with a bit of snow around here to liven things up. It's at least a fortnight since we had any.
But in the meantime, the relentless sunshine has given me and Lisa the chance to take Amelie to the Queen's Park playground to soak up a few rays. Obviously by the time I left work at 5 o'clock, picked up my family and walked down the road, the sun wasn't so much shining as setting, and Amelie was less of a sunbeam and more of a dusky maiden, but that didn't stop us having fun.
In addition to attempting to ride the see-saw with two boys who were clearly far too old for her, Amelie proved her powers of observation by successfully managing to spot me hiding behind a small camera. But after that she went downhill very quickly...
To be honest, I don't think she'd have gone down if I hadn't pushed her.
If there's one thing people have always said about me, it's that I attract Nobel prize winners like a magnet. No, really. And yesterday was no exception. Over the weekend, Brighton played host to two of the most significant and newsworthy events of the year so far: the Conservative Party's Spring Forum and the X Factor Live Tour. And as luck would have it, they were held within a hundred yards of each other. So with Amelie keen to meet David Cameron, and me a big fan of Jedward, the two of us headed along the seafront yesterday morning to rub shoulders with the great and the good.
Well, we didn't head straight along the seafront. We actually went to Aldi first. If you're going to meet the Tories, you need to check the price of eggs first. Unfortunately all they had were chocolate ones, and I'd never throw one of those, so instead I took Amelie to the nearest sex shop. Sorry, I mean Cex shop. We often pop in to see what they've got on the top shelf. It's where they keep the PC games.
By the time we'd finished faffing about in town and started heading for the Hilton, it was gone twelve-thirty, but fortunately there's nothing politicians like more than a free lunch, and if there's one thing guaranteed to winkle them out of a conference, it's a plate of hot food. So we cunningly made our way to the seafront along Preston Street, the road of a thousand restaurants. We then cut through Regency Square, rounded the corner, and came face to face with...
... David Trimble! Yes, David Trimble! That's him on the left, pictured with the sentence he deserves for joining the Conservatives. Having signed the Good Friday Agreement and won the Nobel Peace Prize, there's obviously nowhere to go with your career but down, so he duly became a Tory peer in 2007. He's now known as Baron Trimble, just to prove that politics really is a pantomime.
Anyhoo, the only problem with finding yourself alone on a deserted stretch of pavement with the former leader of the Ulster Unionists, is that it makes it very difficult to pull out a camera without it looking like an assassination attempt by the Real IRA. I didn't want to startle the man and get myself arrested. I did want to say hello and ask him to pose for a photo with Amelie, but despite recognising him instantly, I couldn't for the life of me remember his name. And I was worried I'd get flustered and call him Ian Paisley.
So in the end I just smiled, Amelie miaowed, Trimble trembled, and we let him walk on by to the nearest tapas bar. But I like to think those two seconds of eye contact were the highlight of his day. He just had the kind of face that didn't show it.
Anyhoo, I know the press are reporting that it was a bad weekend for the Conservatives, but personally I disagree. Trimble might have scarpered like a greyhound out of the traps the moment the conference broke for lunch, but Cameron should be buoyed by the fact that the entire left wing protest outside the Hilton Metropole seemed to consist of one grey-haired old man with a placard...
... and when I got closer, it just read 'Jedward To Win X Factor'.
It's another perfect picture for the Gardner family album...
Goodness knows what's going on with my ears. I look like Charles Clarke after a stomach stapling. And those horizontal stripes are doing me no favours. People are going to think I'm wearing a rubber ring. But other than that, it's a lovely photo. I might frame it for Mother's Day.
Anyhoo, when I'm not modelling myself on Fungus the Bogeyman (left), I've been visiting various relatives in the far east. That's the far east of Sussex. Pictured above are Lisa (no relation), Big Sis and Niece M. Absent are Amelie and her two primary carers, my Mum and Dad. They were busy congregating around a nappy in another room, so we left them to it and got on with the photos.
We were all gathered in St Leonards yesterday to celebrate the fact that Big Sis has been spared jail yet again. At least that's what it felt like. As it happens, Sis has just been on a half-day 'Speed Awareness' course, after being caught doing 36mph in a 30mph limit. Which in Brown's broken Britain is as close as you can get to a hanging offence. She was offered the choice of either three points on her licence and a public flogging, or the chance to eat sandwiches all morning at a Hilton hotel with a bunch of fellow road-hogs. She chose the latter.
Anyway, I'm not saying Sis has come back a changed person - let's face it, if the road to Damascus has a speed limit, she'd probably break it - but she did seem quite evangelical about the whole thing. Frankly she could talk about nothing else all day. By teatime I felt like I'd done the course twice myself. In fact, she kept us talking for so long that I had to drive home at 80mph just to get back in time for All Star Mr & Mrs.
When I say that Sis could talk about nothing but Speed Awareness all day, I am of course joking. She also spent a lot of time raving about Glee. I even had to sit through a rendition of the show's latest single which Sis had downloaded onto her iPhone. Frankly I got more adult conversation from my ten-year-old niece. Or I would have done if she wasn't a massive Glee fan too. I ended up talking to Amelie.
But the best thing about family reunions is that they give you the chance to bond with your nearest and dearest. And sure enough, nothing brings a family closer together than taking a few photos in the bedroom, suggesting a quick game of volleyball, and then watching your sister smash a light bulb with an inflatable beach ball and short out half the lights in your parents' bungalow. As I said to Sis as we stumbled about in the dark, trying to pick up fragments of broken glass before the red-hot filament burnt a hole in the carpet: speed awareness or no speed awareness, we both need to make a quick getaway.
Lisa asked me to take a photo of her fat face last night. That was her description, not mine. When I did, she told me to put it on my blog...
Either she's trying to motivate herself to lose weight, or she's about to have plastic surgery and wants a 'before' photo. The other possibility is that she's leaving me and needs a profile picture for Match.com.
But whilst I ponder that mystery (Nik Kershaw would call it a riddle), we're heading over to St Leonards to pick up a talented animal impressionist. I spoke to Amelie on the phone yesterday morning, and it was like having a direct line to Old McDonald's Farm. All she said was miaow, quack and baa. I could barely get a woof in edgeways.
But the good news is that Big Sis has arrived at my parents' for the weekend. Which means Amelie is now communicating with us via iPhone and Facebook. The last we heard, her auntie was trying to teach her to be a kangeroo. So by the time we get there, Big Sis will have run her over.
But enough about him, let's talk about Martin Newnham. I must admit, when it comes to seeing support acts, Lisa and I don't have a great track record. By the time we've said miaow to Amelie, instructed the babysitter on how to use the remote control, and waited twenty minutes for a bus, we tend to arrive just in time to hear the words 'Thank you and goodnight'. But fortunately yesterday's gig was at Concorde 2, which is only about 300 metres away as the seagull flies. Although when Lisa saw the rain, she still asked if we could get a bus.
But with Amelie doing her animal impressions out of earshot in St Leonards, we took off early, made it to Concorde 2 in supersonic time, and checked-in at the perfect moment: just too late to get a seat, but so early that we had to stand around in an empty room for forty-five minutes before anything happened.
It was worth waiting for though. Mr Newnham turned out to be a worthy support act for the mulleted midget. You'd expect someone called Martin to do house music, but he actually performed some passionate folk on the acoustic guitar and harmonica. I thought he was very good, particularly the songs 'Whispers' and 'Bring You Sunshine' (which I expect was a tribute to the short fat hairy legs of Nik Kershaw), so as someone who's prepared to put his money where his mouth is, I got my wallet out from between my clenched teeth and paid eight quid for his album 'City Folk'.
It was Martin Newnham himself who served me on the merchandise stand during the interval, but tragically I didn't get his autograph or insist on posing for a cheesy photo, because Lisa somehow managed to convince me that it wasn't him. Despite repeatedly telling her that the chap selling CDs was the man we'd watched on stage half an hour earlier, she kept insisting that "he wasn't that ginger". Unfortunately for both me and him, he was. But I didn't discover that until I'd treated him like a simple shopkeeper, walked away, and looked at his picture on the CD cover. That'll teach him to be so unassuming.
As for the main event, here's Nik Kershaw performing his 1985 hit, 'Don Quixote'...
I bought that on 7" single when I was eleven. We've both lost a lot of hair since then.
But fortunately Nik hasn't lost his talent. You need to have a certain amount of ability to perform synth-pop hits from the 1980s on an acoustic guitar. I'd like to see Rick Astley try that. Compare and contrast that version of Don Quixote with the one Nik Kershaw performed in front of a worldwide audience of 400 million at Live Aid...
Personally I prefer the one I filmed.
Anyhoo, last night's audience was approximately 81,900 smaller than the one at Wembley Stadium in 1985, but it was no less appreciative. Nik played most of his 80s hits, plus a lot of his 90s misses, and they were all equally good. 'Billy' from his 1999 album '15 Minutes' (a reference to the time it would take to count how many copies it sold) was particularly good. And I greatly enjoyed Nik's sing-along version of the Chesney Hawkes classic, The One and Only. But here's another song that got me through my eleven-plus...
If you prefer it with big hair, the Live Aid version is here.
When I was bopping along to those songs in a Basildon bedroom in 1985, I had no idea that a quarter of a century later, I'd be using them to wish my fiancée a Happy Valentine's Day, whilst texting my Mum to ask how our daughter is. Unfortunately we're twenty-five years older now, and less able to stand for three hours without getting a bad back and sore feet, so instead of hanging around for an autograph, we staggered straight home for a nice cup of cocoa and a lie down. I think we've both aged more than the music.
I've sent her one of Bognor with similar sentiments.
The last time we heard from Big Sis, she was converting to Islam in Abu Dhabi. Since then, she's spent a week in St Lucia, but according to Facebook, she's now working in an Indian restaurant in Oxford. I have no idea why. But if my Christmas experience is anything to go by, she'll currently be standing in front of a family of eight, telling them she's run out of cutlery, and asking if they'd be willing to eat their desserts with a spatula. I'm not sure she'll get many tips.
Anyhoo, I said yesterday that my annual leave means I can take Amelie out every day. And sure enough, I took her out again yesterday afternoon. Out to my Mum's car. Where I waved goodbye to her for three days. Woo-hoo! I mean boo-hoo.
Lisa and I are heading out tonight to finally take delivery of Lisa's Valentine's gift. I've bought her Nik Kershaw. Though I still haven't wrapped him. I booked my Mum's babysitting services for tonight back in November (which is how organised I am), but being the naive fool trooper she is, she offered to have Amelie for an extra night either side, to give us a chance to go out somewhere else. Or to get some sleep.
So having weighed up our options (and had a nap), we went to Hangleton Manor last night with Lorraine and Andy. I haven't seen them since their wedding in October, so I wanted to find out what they bought with the vouchers we gave them. It turns out they've bought a new house. So I think a few other people must have given them vouchers too.
Anyway, I'm not saying they've done well for themselves, but frankly you could fit my entire flat in their kitchen and still have room to open the dishwasher. I didn't ask how much a five-bedroom detached house in Hove costs these days, but I think it's probably more than the average NHS salary. I might have to start investing in lottery tickets.
So having done my Loyd Grossman impression around their stunning dream home, we downsized a bit by going to Hangleton Manor for a slap-up meal without the kids. And very nice it was too. I always say that the hallmark of a good meal is when you eat so much that you have to open the car window on the way home and stick your head out like a labrador, just to avoid throwing up on the seat. Just ask Lisa. I still don't know how she hung onto that dessert.
I'm on annual leave all this week, which means I can take Amelie out every day...
I've never seen anyone so pleased to be wheeled down to Asda on a Wednesday morning. That girl's having the time of her life.
She was pretty happy yesterday afternoon too, when I took her along Western Road and we discovered that you can buy cuddly meerkats for less than a tenner. With the exception of Chloe, they're probably her favourite animal, and she spends many a happy minute watching their regular broadcasts on ITV. I've been trying to teach her what the meerkat says (the answer being 'Simples!') but so far, she's struggling to move on from miaow.
Interestingly, however, in the past week or so, the meerkats have been replaced at the top of Amelie's tree by a new advert, which she seems to like even more. As befits an experienced NHS poster girl, she's now become obsessed with the government's new anti-smoking campaign.
The moment this little film comes on, she rushes up to the TV with a mouth wider than Macauley Culkin in Home Alone, and laughs along to the song for a full thirty seconds...
I think it's because 'Quit Kit' sounds like 'quack cat', and they're two of her most frequently used words.
As the video above demonstrates, I discovered last night that the advert is on YouTube, so shortly before leaving for Asda this morning, I played it for her on the computer, in the hope of capturing her excitement as she laughed at the futility of the pro-smoking Forest chumps...
She didn't quite reach the peak of delirium that I was expecting, but I do like the way her face drops when it finishes. I was still sitting there ten minutes later, pressing 'Replay' for the twentieth time.
I can't believe I forgot to take my camera. Let's face it, I take the thing with me when I go to Asda, so how I managed to leave it behind on a trip halfway up the country, I have no idea. I packed the batteries for my camera, and the charger for my batteries, but the camera itself spent a relaxing weekend on a shelf in Brighton. We might be living in a world of CCTV surveillance, but I don't have a single picture of me steeling myself in Sheffield.
But despite that, we had a nice weekend. Our journey up to Chesterfield took almost five hours, which included the hour Amelie spent toddling around Toddington services on the M1. I'm proud to say that her walking skills are now so advanced that she prompted not one, but two announcements over the public address system to remind us that children are not allowed into the gambling arcade. Baby reins are all very well, but by the time I could drag her away, she'd had three of her five-a-day on those fruit machines.
Having jaywalked across the car park and discovered the high Costa coffee, we soon hit the road again, and eventually arrived at the Premier Inn in Chesterfield shortly before dusk. Admittedly the closest I normally get to five star is looking at my old 7" of System Addict, but I actually thought the place was very nice. On the downside, they forgot to put a cot in our room, and we had to wait for them to bring one up, but on the plus side, there was no sign of Lenny Henry.
Our room was spacious, with a spare bed for Amelie to bounce on, and a long corridor outside for her to run down. It was during her first escape attempt, as she disappeared into the distance towards room 28, that I realised I didn't have my camera. As a result, I have no footage of her trying to set off the fire extinguishers and head out through the emergency exit. That's the emergency exit with the loud alarm. You'll have to use your imagination.
Anyhoo, having toyed with the idea of buying a cheap camera from the neighbouring Tescos, we eventually went to bed, got a good night's sleep, and woke up to... six inches of snow, and no way of leaving. I'd show you a photo, but the weather was so bad, I couldn't make it the two hundred yards to Tesco to buy a camera. So here's an artist's impression...
Thank god I don't have a sunroof.
We'd arranged to visit Lisa's father in Sheffield at 2pm yesterday, so I'd been planning to spend the morning exploring Chesterfield. And I did. Sat in the hotel bar with my arm down the back of a sofa. Fortunately the staff were happy for Amelie for toddle around the restaurant for most of the morning while they apologised that the cleaners couldn't get in due to the snow, and attempted to work out how to use the vacuum cleaner.
By mid-afternoon the snow had cleared enough for us to get out of the car park, so a little later than planned, we gingerly made our way north to the outskirts of Sheffield, and the home of Lisa's father. It was quite a momentous occasion. As Lisa herself said, "it's the first time I've been to Sheffield sober". Which is a sobering thought in itself.
In the end we spent three hours with Lisa's father and his wife, and it was all very pleasant. Amelie spent most of the time playing with their cat, Buttons, before giving some thought to what a cat of that name would eat, and trying to feed her chocolate. Lisa spent most of the time talking. And I spent most of the time trying to wipe Amelie's hands before she ruined another piece of furniture. We eventually left shortly after she'd pulled a bulb out of a plant pot and spilt her drink on the carpet.
I was proud of Lisa. In the nine or ten times she's met her father since the age of four, it was the first time she's done so without a drink or a box of tissues. Although we needed a few for Amelie. So to celebrate, I treated my two girls to a family meal back at the hotel restaurant. Frankly I've never seen anyone eat so many chips. And Lisa had quite a few too.
After a relaxing evening (mainly because we shut Amelie's cot in the bathroom), we arose early this morning, and I finally got to see Chesterfield. I wheeled Amelie into town in the buggy while Lisa attempted to make our room look less like the Premier Inn in Haiti. Chesterfield turned out to be very nice. They've got a shopping area similar to Brighton's Lanes, but they call it 'The Shambles', which is one of the most honest descriptions I've ever read.
So we spent an interesting hour roaming around the marketplace, looking in shops, and enjoying the fact that everyone in that part of the world calls you 'darling' and 'sweetheart'. I was convinced the woman in Subway was in love with me until the next bloke came in and got exactly the same treatment. The woman in Greggs was no different. And as for the girl in KFC, frankly not even Lisa's that friendly to me. Oh, and if you're wondering, no, I haven't been sticking to my diet this weekend.
Having finally persuaded Amelie to put back the Gideon's Bible, we drove home this afternoon through another snow storm while she ran through her repertoire of animal noises in the back of the car. Her woof is coming along nicely, but the miaow starts to wear a little thin when you've heard it every three seconds for more than a hundred miles. Fortunately we arrived home at 4pm to a bit of peace and tranquility. Whereupon Amelie tagged her partner-in-crime. And let me tell you, having been left on her own for two days with nothing but a bowl of cat biscuits, Chloe had something to say.
In May & June 2007 my Big Sis travelled across the USA in an attempt to visit all 50 states before going to Australia for a year to fly with the quokkas. I foolishly agreed to give her space on this blog to update family & friends on her efforts to stay alive, so I'd just like to make it clear that posts written in red are by Big Sis, and I hereby distance myself from them. Unless they're good, obviously.
To view Big Sis's most recent posts, click here.
For posts covering May, click here.
For posts covering June, click here.
