It's about time Amelie featured on this blog again...


She's holding up one finger for every hour of sleep she let us have last night.

But anyhoo, when I'm not busy wondering who Amelie reminds me of, I'm taking the coast road to St Leonards for a bit of R&R with my family. We were slightly held up on the way over there yesterday afternoon by a minor traffic jam caused by two old dears in a Nissan Micra, who'd hit a fox and were standing in the road trying to wrap it in a blanket. As I said to Lisa at the time, if a wild fox is happily letting you give it a comfort blanket, it's probably not going to make it through the night, and you'd be kinder finishing it off with a Homer Simpson ice scraper to the back of the head before it gives you rabies. But that didn't stop me slowing down like everyone else to have a good look.

We eventually made it to my parents' bungalow before sundown, and were given the guided tour. We've been there a few times before, but not since they officially moved in. It was quite a novelty to sit on a sofa instead of a garden chair. I was also able to begin a sentence with the words "Have you got...", without getting the reply "No, it's in Chelmsford".

After twenty minutes, my brother and his family arrived. It's half-term next week, so my sister-in-law and niece are staying at my parents' for a few days. They were quite keen to know about the surrounding area, though I was slightly taken aback when my sister-in-law looked at me with a concerned expression on her face and asked if St Leonards has a big Asian population. I told her I hadn't seen many ethnic minorities when I visited the charity shops in November. At which point she informed me that she'd said 'ageing'. So she's not racist after all. She just hates old people.

Anyhoo, we spent an enjoyable few hours handing Amelie to anyone who'd take her, before going one stage further and abandoning her completely while we toured the newly opened Hastings branch of Tesco. It turned out to be very nice. It's a bit like an aircraft hangar filled with food. I won't tell you how much we spent, but suffice it to say that Chloe needs to sign another magazine deal ASAP.

We eventually made it home at 11:30pm. Amelie slept all the way home, so naturally she was up most of the night talking about her gums, and what she's going to wear today. We've been invited to have Sunday lunch with friends. Amelie's settled on her red party dress with matching cardigan and spotty tights, while I'm wearing jeans and a t-shirt. The difference is that no one's going to want to hold me and pose for photos. Unless they get very drunk.