Categories: uncategorized
Date: 05 December 2005 12:19:12
I had just had one of the worst weekends of my life. It was appalling on Saturday, picked up slightly on Sunday afternoon, then went disastrously wrong in the evening before finally recovering at the eleventh hour (literally). Much of the trouble doesn't bear speaking about, so here are the edited lowlights.
Things started to go wrong when I had to buy four presents for three different children in the company of another child, Cambuslang, who wasn't getting any presents (and was consequently grumpy). In one shop I drove myself to distraction scouring the shelves for suitable things (while pulling a grumpy child away from extortionate things that he thinks he wants) and finally found two suitable presents.
Great!
Except that when I got to the counter the cashier cheerfully pointed out that there was a three-for-two offer on.
I did appreciate the funny side as I trogged suicidally back to the shelves to find item number three, but then Cambuslang announced that he had a pain in a place which, as a fellow male, I am guaranteed to feel particularly sympathetic about.
This led us to the emergency GP clinic at the local hospital (within 2 hours of first phoning any part of the NHS - I was impressed) at the time when we should have been at birthday part number 1 (of 3 of the weekend). Still, we got out quickly and rushed to the church whose church hall was said to be housing the party.
There was no sign of a church hall attached to the church.
We circumnavigated the church without finding a hall, or a sign to where the hall might be, or any hint of a children's party in the vicinity, or indeed any sign that anyone had been anywhere near the church in the last 200 years. Result: I had to drag a sad deprived child back home with no good answer to the repeated question of why aren't we going to the party?
I then found that our oven was not working, causing big problems for the birthday cake that needed to be made for the Sunday. I also discovered that: along with the four presents I was supposed to buy four cards (I knew that bit), but the four cards were not "from" the same people as the four presents. So buying a card "to our favourite Granddaughter" was not helpful when said card is supposed to be "from" the parents not the Grandparents. <Anglo-saxon omitted>. Still, if we keep it for, ooh, about 30 years, it'll come in handy.
Despite all that, we managed to get Cambuslang to birthday party number 2, and even managed to organize birthday party number 3, thanks to a lot of help from nearby friends. And the kids even seemed to enjoy it. At the time I knew that that should have been more important than all the negatives, but it didn't feel like it. A week later it does.