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Monday, April 05, 2010

The problem with letting Amelie spend all weekend with people who love rubbish like this...

Gleeful
... is that she starts to pick up bad habits...

Mind you, it could be worse. She could be into High School Musical.

But putting aside the fact that my daughter's been gleefully led astray by her aunt and cousin, it's actually been a very nice Easter weekend. And I'm not just saying that because Lisa wasn't there for half of it. I've eaten enough chocolate to keep a small South American child exploited for at least another year, and consumed so much cake that not only do I never want to speak of it again (or scrape it off the bottom of my oven), but I'm not sure I can face the thought of eating another piece either. Which is probably good news if I'm ever going to lose the stone I've undoubtedly put on in the past three days.

Anyhoo, this time last year (give or take a couple of weeks), I was filming videos like this...


That's Big Sis coming back down to earth with a bump last March. Her career's taken off since then, but she manages to keep her feet on the ground. Although she still prefers a left-hand drive vehicle. So if you've ever wondered what it feels like to ride shotgun with a kangaroo-killing veteran of Wiltshire Constabulary's finest 'Speed Awareness' course, then wonder no more...


This time the role of instructor is played by my niece, but I'm not sure I'm in any less danger. I checked behind me after about a minute, to make sure we weren't being tailed by the police. I also honked out the real names of those involved, in an effort to preserve anonymity. Let's face it, Big Sis gets arrested often enough, without me revealing her identity on this blog.

I shot that video on Saturday afternoon during the short drive between my parents' house and St Leonards' finest purveyor of second-hand junk. Since speeding into town on Wednesday night, Big Sis had been keeping her eye on an objet d'art in the window of a nearly-new furniture shop on the seafront. It's some kind of abstract sculpture (until you work out what it is) and every time she passed it on her early morning run, it remained there, unsold and calling to her. To be honest, it's not surprising the shop couldn't sell it. The only type of artistic sculpture which is popular in St Leonards is a candlestick you could use as a murder weapon.

So when we arrived on Saturday afternoon, Big Sis asked me if I'd accompany her to the junk yard and act as her art investment advisor. And heavy lifter. Fortunately, spending other people's money comes quite naturally to me, so I agreed, and with our niece in tow, we headed straight down there.

An hour later, we returned with two candle holders, a picture, a birthday card, some Japanese mats and a plaster cast of a nose (Sis picked it herself). I told her to haggle on the price of the nose, but she blew it, and paid an amount not to be sniffed at. Most importantly of all though, we bought the sculpture. Which you probably knew if you read yesterday's blog post. They don't tend to let you pose for photos with the merchandise in the back of your car unless you've bought it.

Sis thought it was a pregnant lady; so did my Dad; whilst my niece just described it as "really bad". But as the only true art connoisseur in the family, it was left to me to identify what the sculpture was really meant to be...

Junk in Your Tree Trunk
It's someone with fat thighs and a small head doing the yoga 'Tree Pose'. And to the left of that is the sculpture.

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