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Sunday, October 30, 2011

The thing about putting the clocks back is that it makes a bad night seem so much longer. It was barely still summertime when Lisa and I made it to bed last night, but within an hour, Amelie had woken up in tears, claiming that a Mummy spider and a girl spider had come into her bedroom and frightened her. There was an encouraging moment when she mentioned that they both had eight legs, thereby proving that our educational efforts haven't been in vain, but other than that it was a pretty bad experience. She promptly refused to stay in her bedroom in case the arachnid single mother came back, and within five minutes she was installed on my side of the bed, while I slept in the living room.

To be honest though, I think I had the better deal. I might have been woken up by Chloe howling in my ear at 6am, but Lisa's been awake since four, listening to Amelie chatting incessantly and kneeing her in the back. She could have done with a good night's sleep too, because as of last night, Lisa's going down with a cold.

So in terms of mood, we're currently putting the mean back into Greenwich Mean Time, but prior to that, we'd actually had a very nice evening. We kindly invited Lisa's mother over to spend an evening of fun and relaxation on our sofa... while we went out for a few hours without Amelie. We'd been invited over to Worthing by the lovebirds in this photo. I described them last November as looking like Taylor Swift and Minty from EastEnders, a comment which went down a lot better with her than with him.

But a year on, all has been forgiven, and we were duly invited over for a game of Scrabble at their new love nest in the upper reaches of High Salvington. Despite preparing for the event by downloading Scrabble for the iPad a month ago, I've failed to wrestle it away from Amelie long enough to actually have a game, meaning that it's about ten years since I last played. Unlike Lisa, who's never played. To be honest, I don't know why we accepted this challenge.

But fortunately, Scrabble's like riding a bike. Lisa can't do it, and I've never forgotten it. I successfully positioned myself to Lisa's left at the table, meaning that every time she innocently built towards the edge of the board, I was right there to get on the triple word score. It was a tactic which worked wonders, and despite some stiff opposition (and mild cheating) from our opponents, I managed to scrape home in front. They've assured me I won't be invited over again.

With the Scrabble challenge completed, we settled down for meal of pizza and pasta, which was slightly delayed when the chef had a Gordon Ramsey moment, looked at her home-made pasta dish, and said "I'm not serving that", meaning we had to wait while she whipped up another one. By the time the dessert came out, it was almost 11pm and our hosts were considering putting the clocks back just to make it less embarrassing.

But despite that, we had a lovely evening with two lovely people, and returned home shortly before midnight to relieve Lisa's mother from baby-sitting duties. Her evening had apparently gone smoothly, with just one notable exception: she couldn't find Amelie's toothbrush. Needless to say, most children would be only too pleased to go to bed without having to clean their teeth, but not Amelie. She went to bed telling her Nanny that her teeth will go rotten and fall out. Like I say, our educational efforts haven't been in vain.

1 comments:

Phil's Mum said...

Now we know how to entertain you next time you're round here.