Would anyone listern? No. So as a result the van is well and truelly stuck along the side of the drive.
It all started with the fact that we have been flooded so flood precuations are taking place in the normal parking area so we had parked in front of the greenhouse but then Barbara was having a tea party and her guestys needed to park so the van had to go otherwise the guests would have to park on the grass which obviously wasn't on so the van had to park on the grass. I said it wouold get stuck and was assured that parking along the gradient would mean it wouldn't get stuck.
We got stuck.
We where therefore late for cubs becuase even though we had left extra time for towing out etc... the towing rope snaped and after a bit of a hoohar we transfered our stuff to Barbaras car and headed off. All was then fine until my scouts arrived - we were supposed to go to the village pound to float new year lanterns but alas I had left the reflective jackets in the van along with torches etc... on top of that lots of the kids failed to turn up in outdoor clothing and I was already concerned about the fact it had rained so much - I was waiting for Al to finish cubs properlly in order to send him out on a recky of the area when one of the perants told me it was so bad down there that she wouldnt be happy for her kid to go - it was at this point I realised I'd left the jackets and that behind anyway.
I was very annoyed with myself but I think the lanterns still worked well inside in bowls of water - fortunatly I'd planned for incase we had bad weather.
Still the van is stuck and we are now hoping that the builders are going to help us get it unstuck - SIGH. Still it turns out we have a Roman Urinal 🙂 but more on that later!
Sunday was the day of our departure from Highgate back to the rural sticks of Gloucestershire and what happens? Al becomes ill - he is headachy and cant think that straight and felt a bit feverish. A few paracetamol sorted most of it out so that about 5 hours late we could actually set out for our trip to Essex to pick up the Jeany who had been visiting mum and dad as this week mum starts her radiotherapy so Jean has spent most of christmas etc... with them.
Once Jean was picked up we headed out onto the road once more and all was going well until....
We discovered M25 south to M4 west interchange was closed - arg! Never fear we thought there'll be some sort of way to loop back on ourselves so that we could go via Reading instead of Oxford or there'll be diversion signs and we'll be fine.... hahahahahahaha. Well there where diversion signs and they took us to a round about where it was obvious that we had to go round and double back on ourselves - easy right? Well it would have been except that it was one of those major ones that has lanes that spiral outwards and you have to pick the correct lane for your destination - except there is no such lane for doubling back on yourself so that we where having to guess and suddenly we where one lane too far over and before we could correct it a barrier divided us off and we had no choice other than to follow the route - to Heathrow Airport :/
We thought there must be some round abouts where we can turn around surely? Right? There's always round abouts - this is England.... no round abouts - we thought we'd found one with lots of glittering lights on short polls around it but no this turned out not to be a round about and took us into a one way system which lead us to a carpart - with barriers that had a minimium charge of £2.30 for half an hour. No way to reverse, no where to turn around - nothing so we paid our £2.30 and left.
This then took a turn towards the strange (especially as the previous night we had watched a Stephen King film) we where directed into a tunnel that looked like was too small for cars and was father long and square in cross section with a green circle lane right down the middle of it and signs sayng the cyclists had priority. Once in this system we had no coice of where to go so we entered this tunnel in the van and too our relief exited without any creepy horror movie antiiques!
We then resumed our journy on wards towards Gloucestershire only now Al was starting to feel sick again - combine this with our windscreen washer deciding to die and random greasy dirt appearing on the windscreen and we where stopping more than we normally would 🙁
We got home about 3 ish and pretty much fell into bed. I awoke in time for us to get Jean to nursery and for me to go to Cheltenham to do the mirade of things that needed to be done today but... it never happened becuase it turned out that I had slept through Al being sick and he was doubled uo with stomache cramps and weak and pasty looking. Not good. After some thought over why he was sick and I wasnt seeing as I am the one who gets sick not him we worked out that he had typed out the contence of the left over non-alchoholic mulled wine I had made on saturday. He had drunk a mug of the stuff with the dregs of the spices and CLOVES that I had used - and becuase time was short he'd downed the stuff including the sluge that contianed all the CLOVES I had put a brew for about 15 people :/
Can anyone else see where this is going?
Yes - I have managed to poison my husband with CLOVES - he says its not my fualt but mew :'( It took until about 4 this afternoon before he could contemplate eating anything at all and he still hurts. Of course this has put us realy teally behind for the week and doesn't feel like a particually good start to the new year :/
Christmas day begian for us in Highgate - Al had got me a bueatiful black highheel stocking with feathers and pearls all over it and purple glittery highheel shoe christmas decorations. Then to ungirlyfy things abit I recieved loads of dinosuar themed stuff which made me really happy - of course I'd managed to leave most of his presants in Gloucester so he only got a few old techniqual books and a cat money box!
We then packed the pie and christmas cake up and headed for Essex.
There we found what is possibly the most scariest santa clues ever!
For the meal itself I had made six glittery napkin rings - one for each of us - Jeans was the christmas tree, Davids the bualbal, mums the bell, mine the star, Alarics the holly and dads the santa hat (well he is the Hat Man after all!). Mum had made some snowmen christmas napkins for said rings to go onto.
The p0ie was baked and did Alaric proud - it contians fennel, quill pasta, spinache, pin nuts, red pepper, feta cheese, cream and marmite.
Probably Jeans favourite presant of the day was this puppet theatre that David had picked up in a charity shop - I got into trouble for playing with it too much though, apparently the wizard isn't dumbledore its merlin and apperantly Hermine is sleeping buety and Luna is goldelocks etc... I think they were all being very mean especial as I was singing the sing and every thing - snape snape severus snape - Dumbledore etc... (ok if I can find the link I'll post it later it was really funny at the time.
Alaric had bought her back some little planes with - Pretty lights mummy! - on them, from Dublin.
The night of mums operation I went and helped dad clean (him being a cleaner) and Jean came with us and fell in love with Henry the hoover of which there was fortunatly multiple ones so that we could still actually hoover! Anyway mum and dad got her this little henry which came with a dustpan and brush and all sorts of fun excessories - she loved it 🙂 I'm wondering if it would be seen as child labour to get her hoovering the house (once we have one again) 😉 Of course Alaric and David had to open the poor little henry up to see how it worked and if there were any brains in there!
As you can see the meal and excitement of christmas day resulted in Mum going for a sleep and Dad - well... Jean thinks sleeping people need teddys to hug 🙂
Christmas Eve was spent making mulled wine both alcoholic and non-alcoholic even though it did mean sending someone to the shops on an emergancy tour! I also decorated the christmas cake I'd got dad to bake back at the Mill. I went for christmas trees on the snowy tundra (it would have been spikey but this was my first time using the instant royal icing mix rather than making it up myself). Becuase I am me and was thus unprepared I ended up having to improvise an icing bag out of greese proof paper and everything. You may have noticed from the picture that I have some little creatures that should not be there - my little family of marzipan hedghogs - these are special hedghogs who have awoken for the Snow Ball and it has nother NOTHING to do with the fact my brother loves marzipan and hedghogs - I didnt then refused to let anyone else have a hedghog honest!
Cooking wise we also roped peeps who'd come for mulled wine - namely Clair into helping us prepare the leopard pie which is Alarics traditional veggi christmas dinner as we where going to be spending christmas day at my perants we where preparing the pie to take with us and cook once there. I have only one thing to say at this juncture - 'Mmmmm Pie!'
Of corse the Christmas clock made an earlier appearance and after about three hours had everybody wanting to kill me or the clock or both - I still think its cute with its flashing lights and five minutes of tinny out of tune christmas carols, Jean loves it too with its riendeer going rouw rouw - tick tock rouw rouw mummy! Snowman! Snowman! Daddy lookit Snowman!
As the day progressed there where lightsaber fights with bits of cardboard!
Mucho mucho playing with the remote control darleck I got Al an eon or three ago!
There might also have been some dancing but I have acidently forgotton to upload the photos with this one being the least embaressing 🙂
We finished the day off by watching Jack's (whos office we're currently in) friend doing the christmas lectures which included inflatible real lungs on a resirator etc... It was fun 🙂
I thought that as Al had been doing his own luandary here in London that it would be safe to entrust basically all the cloths I have with me to him to wash - there is an inbuilt washer dryer and I wanted nice fresh cloths for tonight.
As a pair of my cords where in there I asked that the tumble dryer be put on for a bit longer as they have a nasty tendency to stay damp. Several hours later I notice that the cloths are still tumbling. They are baked they are screwed - he also put tooo much stuff in so they all wrapped around each other baking the creases in.
So I now have no cloths to wear tonight - great start to the new year - I'm not sure if at least one pair of the trousers is actually salvagable.
Sigh - haven't decided if this is more of a disastor than last time he did something similiar :/
Not really sure what I am going to do about to night now at all :'( Oh and in writting this post I have just found another bug thing in the blog - so bare with us whilst it all resumes back to normal.
Building Maintenance, Cranham Scout Group, The Family, Vehicles | sarah | 
Wed 9th Jan 2008 10:26 pm | 
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