Dear everybody,
I am so utterly and completely intoxicated can hardly remember my own name, never mind write a sensible diary entry.
I have had the happiest and most lovely of beautiful holiday days, finishing up with an enormous quantity of wine drunk in the company of people whom I like very much and who make me laugh, as I am sure you can see from the picture.
I have laughed until my face hurts.
I have eaten until my trousers are uncomfortable.
I have drunk so much wine that everything is blurred and I have got to hope that autocorrect is functioning sufficiently to make this properly comprehensible.
I am so proud of all my children that I could completely burst.
I cannot see how it is possible for a sentient being to be more pleased with their lot in life,
The day started brilliantly with melon and Danish pastries, brie, bacon, sausages, mushrooms, scrambled egg, fresh orange juice and bitter black coffee, hurrah for hotel breakfast.
I am quite sure that you can understand that we didn’t need any lunch.
After breakfast and some thoughtful contemplation of the day ahead we all buzzed off in different directions.
Lucy went to Selfridges with Number One Daughter for a lesson in how to put make up on properly. Oliver and Ritalin Boy went off with Number One Son-In-Law to find the helter-skelter. My friend Kate and her lovely gentleman friend went off to visit somebody in hospital. Ritalin Boy’s Other Grandma went to see about purchasing a new coat in the sales. Kate’s children went to see about buying Christmas presents, and Mark and I went round the Christmas markets.
Obviously I can’t tell you about anybody else’s adventure, although we all caught up later on in the hotel lounge and exchanged happy stories. I can tell you about the Christmas markets, which is what I did, and they were brilliant.
There were more stalls than I can remember, and they were absolutely splendid. We walked in to the market place to a glorious cacophony of different aromas, frying pork and incense and mulled wine and garlic and scented candles and chocolate and wood smoke: the combination was utterly intoxicating and I had to stop for a few moments and breathe it all in, like taking in a little part of a thousand different lives.
I don’t have the words for the wonderful confusion of differences. There were people everywhere, wandering about and chattering in half a dozen different languages, laughing and spluttering and poking one another, the glorious thing about it was that everybody was so cheerful. We watched and listened and didn’t see a single outburst of bad feeling or irritation. Obviously I know these things happen, but today we didn’t see any. Everybody laughed and was kindly to one another.
Mark bought a new hat on a stall in front of the town hall, and the man whose stall it was said that just being with us whilst we tried caps on made him feel happy. Mark said afterwards that really the man was happy anyway, and that he just enjoyed talking to other happy people: but it made me feel especially proud, as if somehow our own nice time had rubbed off.
Ws bought mulled wine and liquorice and smoked sausages and some chocolate caramel flavoured vodka. After that we bought more mulled wine. This made us begin to be intoxicated.
We had to go back to the hotel for a little snooze after that. The boys went for a swim with Number One Daughter. Kate went to the bar and we went to bed.
We got up when the alarm went off to a happy telephone call with Number Two Daughter, who is having an ace time in Canada. It was really brilliant to talk to her, she is doing so very well.
After that we went downstairs to rejoin everybody else and go out for dinner. This turned out to be an uncivilised riot in a splendid buffet restaurant where you could eat absolutely as much as you felt like of anything, most of which was being cooked in front of us by Thai chefs in pristine white overalls.
We ate and ate.
When we were completely full we ate a little bit more. The photograph is my friend Kate, included because I am too intoxicated to be kindly and because it is funny. We had a Granny-eats-jellyfish-in-one-mouthful entertainment during dinner, which was mostly bad behaviour on the part of Ritalin Boy’s Other Grandma and me. Kate is not anybody’s grandmother but joined in with great good spirits anyway. This sort of thing is what happens after the third bottle. Be warned.
I am going to bed. Actually I am in bed and am going to sleep. After we got back to the lovely hotel we had several more bottles.
This would be written with more charm and elegance if I wasn’t so completely and utterly drunk.
I feel a headache coming on.
