Every year we do a family Christmas jigsaw. Well, it’s not really a family jigsaw. Rich hates em. Owen, Tom and I have always been at the puzzle frontier. The others used to drift in towards the end when the bulk of the work had been done. The puzzle late-comers. After the glory.
I know this post will be hated by those (many) of you who hate Chris Moyles but anyway.. here’s what happened.
Richy and I spent two days in Central London combining Christmas shopping with a very good hotel deal. In the pub, after a fab meal at Busaba Eathai, I randomly commented that it would be funny if Chris Moyles came in for a drink.
“Why?” asked Richy.
“Cos I’d say hello,” I said.
“Why?” asked Richy.
“Well, he seems that sort of guy. You know, chatty, cheerful, man of the people?”
“You’re mad,” said Richy. “He’d just tell you to fuck off and leave him alone.”
“No way!” I said, “Not Moylesy.”
“Course he would,” said Richy. “Why would he want to be bothered by you?”
“Well if he comes in, we’ll see.”
The following afternoon, we were battling along Regent Street, in the sleet, with a billion or so other last minute shoppers, when Richy, who was ahead of me, made a bizarre, jabby gesture to the left.
“What?’ I said, catching up with him.
“Chris Moyles,” he said.
“Whaddayamean Chris Moyles????”
“Chris Moyles just walked past.”
“NO WAY! Quick, let’s find him. I can ask him if he’d have told me to fuck off in the pub.”
I turned back and looked down Regent Street. A sea of people. About a million people looked like Chris Moyles from the back. Man of the people and all that.
“Nah, we ain’t gonna find him,” I said, disappointed. “Next time you see him, let me know a bit sooner.”
“Ok,” said Richy.
Some years ago, we decided to hold a family forum. I don’t know why really. I think we had some romanticised notion (bit like the latest John Lewis Christmas ad offering) that it would be an opportunity to democratically discuss activities, mealtimes, different ways of spending time together.
2000 scooter riders driving round central London after the ceremony at the Cenotaph.
Richy Rich is the numero uno Halloween fan. He takes it very, very seriously. Each year decorations and false teeth are sourced, pumpkins stockpiled, horror films and books watched and read. When the kids were younger, there would be parties with snot and vomit party food and ‘scary’ games like The Box of Horrors… Now they’re older, the focus has gone more on decorating the house, carving fancier pumpkins and overfilling the bowl of treats for the trick or treaters.
Last year was the year of the smoke machine. A surprise purchase from some dodgy internet site. The afternoon was spent testing it and angling it so the smoke would go down the path to spook the treaters. By early evening, after a strong smell of burning, it stopped working. But that year we had no trick or treaters anyway.
This year I was away for the day but before I left on Sunday, the flashing skeleton, masks and cobwebs were already being brought down from the loft, pumpkins were piled up and the bowl of treats was by the front door.
I got off the bus at midnight last night and saw someone walking jerkily along the road towards me. It was zombie Richy. Wearing a ripped jacket covered in blood and mud. Very authentic face paint and fangs.
“How you doing?” I asked, cream crackered after a long old trip.
“Fine,” he replied, taking my bag.
“Any trick or treaters?”
“Only little Hannah, with her mum.”
“Blimey. She must have been scared. Did you give her some sweets?”
“Well she didn’t hang around to be honest.”
Oh boy. Where to begin with this one. Just when I thought things were ticking along unblogfully for once, I went and did something beyond madness today.
What.the.hell.was.I.thinking?
I’ve got no idea. Blogging this is a technique to distract me from the horror on my head right now*. I’m also hoping that a swarm of people will come forward saying “I DID THAT TOO!!!”
A year or so after we moved into our gaffe, a delivery man knocked on the door. I signed for the parcel while he looked wistfully at the house across the street.
“Ah, those were the days…,” he said, shaking his head. “Pussy Parlour. I used to deliver there every few weeks.”
Last night I met up with a group of friends for a bucket full of fizz, tasty nosh and a lot of fun. We all meet up a few times a year and have done for years now. They are a bunch of five very different, but each remarkable, women. We became friends as our kids were enrolled in the same academy for crazy little dudes pretty much from the get go.
Over the years, an awful lot of crap stuff has come and gone, often to do with our little dudes, but other stuff too. Real crap. These evenings are a space to vent, moan, rant but mostly laugh. And drink huge amounts of cava. I fell into bed in the early hours of this morning, chuckling and remembering the summer of 2006, when we surprised Clare.
Had a trippet down memory lane yesterday when I checked into a shabby hotel in Canterbury for a work meeting. I’d wrongly thought that booking a room on laterooms.com, two hours before arrival, meant a fab room hugely discounted.
My job involves a fair amount of experiencing mid to low range UK hotel fare but, as usual, there is always room for fresh lows. “This hotel”, said one Tripadvisor reviewer, “made Fawlty Towers look like the Ritz”. “Do not stay here”, cautioned another.
Anyway, cooped up in my stuffy, second floor garrett, on my plank of wood, grubby bed, avoiding the bathroom shared with “a 60 year old man who shouldn’t be any trouble” (according to the man on reception), I was transported back to my experiences as a chambermaid in a local, shabby hotel on the seafront in Southend.
“Hi, return to the railway station, please.”
“That’s £2.90”….
….
“Hey Missus! Missus! Missus! At the back of the bus!”
“Wha? Me? Sorry?”
“You’ve got to get off the bus!”
“Sorry?”
“You’ve got to get off the bus. I forgot I don’t go to the railway station.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I only go this far and then head back. But don’t worry, I haven’t over-charged you or anything. It costs £2.90 to get this far anyway.”
“Oh, OK.”
“Have a nice day.”
“Yes, you too.”
mydaftlife 