Guests

One of our neighbours has very kindly left a bag of small-boy jerseys on the doorstep which their boy has outgrown and into which Oliver will very quickly grow. I am very pleased about this as they are all very nice indeed, some of them look almost unworn, and consider it a tribute to the power of the written word.

It has been a difficult day, mostly on account of our poor quality self control at our next-door neighbour’s house last night. Mark was better than I had expected this morning but rather worse than I think he would have liked to be. We had to get up early because we had got an awful lot of things to do, and he was a bit pale and weary looking.

His sister and her family are coming for dinner this evening, which has necessitated a fairly serious tidy and clean up. We would have done this anyway today, because it has all been sadly neglected over the last week or two, and dust and sticky patches abounded. However expecting imminent visitors added a certain spice to the activity, and we were obliged to corral the children into assisting us.

First we went to Booths for the shopping. As you know, it is not very far away, and traffic is very heavy in the Lake District at the moment: so we walked, and obliged the children to come with us because of the carrying things back problem. There was a very great deal to carry back, because I have had an unexpected burst of gregariousness, and we have got visitors coming tomorrow night as well. We took some money with us but it wasn’t nearly enough, so we had to put it on Mark’s credit card, so it was a good job that he was there. The children enjoyed it every bit as much as we had expected, and amused themselves by running off and hiding at crucial moments,  and then falling about laughing and telling everybody else who was shopping that we just had a low tolerance threshold today because we had horrible hangovers because we went off on yet another drunken binge last night. I almost sent them home at one point, but fortunately Mark remembered in time about having to carry it all home, so they stayed, and we heaved it all over the wall and down the steep bank for the short cut to get it all over and done with quickly.

After that, and the putting things away, and then going to Morrisons for everything we had forgotten, came the tidying up. Oliver’s room was particularly awful, it looked as though he had been having picnics on the carpet all week, which Mark thought he probably had. Lucy complained terribly that she couldn’t see why we had to do it, because it wasn’t a competition for having the tidiest house, and Mark told her that no, it wasn’t, but we weren’t going to lose.

Then there was the getting dinner ready. I made a pasta bake, from a recipe I have just made up this afternoon, which is some pasta and bacon and a creamy sort of sauce and some cheese shoved in a tray in the oven with some tomatoes. I meant to put pesto in but forgot due to the anxiety and the hangover, so we will just have to hope that it is okay, or at the very least that they are too polite to tell us if it is not. I made a lemon cake which was beautiful until I put it on the plate which was the wrong sort of shape so it looks as though it has sagged terribly in the middle. I expect it will taste all right but it looks a bit misfortunate.

Then we had a crisis where we realised that we didn’t have enough bowls to give everybody a starter in a bowl and a pudding as well. Actually what we had was two bowls with Winnie The Pooh on them, a yellow one with a crack in it, and a brown one that came free with some pate at Christmas once. This made me flap terribly, and we had a dash round Windermere’s charity shops to see if anybody was selling any bowls, and Age Concern had a lovely complete set of china, with twelve bowls and plates and side plates and some ace tureen dishes and a gravy jug, so we bought it, and then Mark and Lucy spent ages washing it all up so that we could use it. Lucy wasn’t keen on doing this either and promised a horrible revenge some day, which we ignored. Anyway, the table looked lovely, which inspired us so much that Mark made a special trip up to Lakeland as well so that we could have four wine glasses which were all the same as each other, which meant we were absolutely and completely broke, so I am going to try the power of the written word again.

If anybody feels like leaving a bag of money on the doorstep later, that would be just fine.

LATER NOTE: I think what I need is a sort of inverse of the stork, the one who comes and brings you babies. Lucy was revenged all right. When our guests arrived she said to them: “I hope you enjoy your dinner. They’ve been out and bought a whole new dinner service because you were coming, because they didn’t want you to see the usual crap they use. They were ages shopping. It took a long time because they were so drunk last night and Daddy had a terrible hangover. I’m not surprised. He could hardly walk last night because he was so drunk. They left us alone and went out, you know. They’re always doing that”