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Saturday, June 02, 2012

I've spent most of today trying to persuade Lisa to pose for a photo like this...


... but sadly she's having none of it. I blame her bad back. As of yesterday morning, the baby's been giving her such terrible backache, she can barely get out of bed. At least that's her excuse. It could just be laziness.

Either way, Lisa's struggled to wave any union jacks today, and has been forced to remain under the duvet like some kind of republican sourpuss. It means that Amelie and I have been left to celebrate the jubilee alone. And as luck would have it, there was a community street party in our road this afternoon. Frankly we couldn't wait to get out there. And into the car, so that we could drive as far away as possible.

Unfortunately, the organisers did their best to stop us. Amelie and I had already been out once, when we decided to walk to Queens Park for some jubilee fun in the sun, but we were forced to turn back after two minutes, when Amelie tripped and fell, scuffing her hand on some gravel. It resulted in just a minor puncture wound on her palm, but she clearly has the kind of circulation rarely seen since the News of the World, because the blood starting pumping out like a power shower. Walking the two hundred yards back home felt like a scene from an Eli Roth film.

So having returned home, rubbed Savlon into her wound, and wondered if I could pass it off as stigmata, I decided we'd be better off driving to the park. So we tumbled into the car, and drove to the end of our cul-de-sac. Where we found that the road had been closed with six traffic cones and a table.

Now, as it happens, one of my colleagues told me yesterday that our street was appearing in The Argus on a list of roads that were due to be closed this weekend for jubilee parties - and that fact was confirmed to us last night by Lisa's Mum. But no date was given, and there have been no signs, posters, leaflets or warnings of any kind. Even as we drove up the road, there were no indications of anything happening, other than bunting on a few lamp posts. I knew nothing until I reached the T-junction, and nearly crashed into an item of furniture.

There wasn't even any reason to close the road. The party was taking place in the community room and on the grass outside. I think they'd only blocked the entrance to the cul-de-sac to stop the residents escaping. It was the best way of ensuring some level of attendance.

But it didn't work on us. There was no one around, so I stopped the car at the roadblock, got out, and dragged the table out of the street, before moving all the cones to the kerb. Nobody gets between Am and that playground...


She's a social climber and she's going up in the world.

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