'Tis the Season to be Jolly

Five days of peace. She's off to Blackpool for a "Turkey & Tinsel" week from today until Friday. Bliss!

Anyway, as a parting shot she managed to get in a few events over the weekend.

Firstly, she was so taken with the Santa automaton that she's been out and bought another singing toy. This time it's a dog that sings christmas songs (as dogs often do of course). I'll get that one on film as well to share the experience with you.

Secondly, I was crying laughing when I heard my daughter's exasperated plea to The Current Mrs James "Mum, will you please come and explain to Nan that "Kate" is not a colour!" (See below for the story)

The background to this was that The Current Mrs James™ recently bought a couple of fluffy scarves, one white and one red. Our friend Kate also bought some scarves, including a purple one which she accidentally left in our kitchen at the end of last week. My daughter was in the kitchen when M-I-L ambled in. M-I-L spotted the purple scarf in the kitchen and stood staring at it for a few moments, mouth agape and clearly confiused about something as she often is.

She walked over and picked it up the conversation went as follows:
M-I-L: "I didn't think your mum had bought a purple scarf".
Daughter: "She didn't"
M-I-L: "Well what's this then?"
Daughter: "It's Kate's"
M-I-L: It's what?"
Daughter: "It's Kate's"
M-I-L: "What do you mean?"
Daughter: "I mean, it's Kate's"
M-I-L: "It looks purple to me"
Daughter: "I know, but it's Kate's"
M-I-L: "I've never heard of that before, I think it looks purple"
Daughter: "Mum, will you please come and explain to Nan that "Kate" is not a colour!"

I'm still chuckling about the last one!

Ho-Ho Bleedin' Ho

It has probably not escaped your attention that Christmas is coming soon, and thoughts turn toward the prospect of embellishing the house with a beautifully decorated tree, garlands, lights etc. M-I-L also gets these same tendencies, although her inate inclination towards "tat" goes into overdrive with the onset of the festive season.

She came home from shopping on Saturday and whisked through into the kitchen to proudly display her latest purchase. This turned out to be a battery operated doll, which purports to look like Santa, and sings "The Twelve Days of Christmas" when you push a button. (I should point out that I absolutely hate this kind on thing anyway - the sort of ornament which is to be seen in all peasant households across the land).

The Santa is of such low build quality that you can barely make out the words that emanate from the speaker but, when you do, you realise that it isn't even singing the traditional version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas". It is a very poor new version which involves the receipt of all manner of DIY items:

"Three orbital sanders'
Two hammer drills,
And a large black and decker workmate"

…or something like that - hard to make out really. M-I-L was hooting with laughter at it; I stood there, non-plussed.

Seriously, if you'd asked me to come up with the Christmas ornament from hell, I could scarcely have come close to this one. Why anyone would even think of making such a thing is beyond me, let alone why anyone would purchase it.

M-I-L even asked if we wanted her to get one for us! "It was only six pounds" she said.

SIX QUID! SIX BLEEDING QUID, for that!

Give me strength…
PS. If I get chance, I'll take a photo of it and post it on here so that you can all share in it's beauty!

Update: Try this for size!

Sorry about the quality but it was recorded on a crap phone camera in a hurry.

It's a Dog's life (Part II)

We have, it's fair to say, more dogs than most. Four to be precise.

The problem is that one of them (a rather large beast) hates two of the others and we have been forced into keeping them apart. Not ideal, but better than the alternative of getting rid of one, or more, of them. The upshot of this is that two dogs spend most of the day in M-I-L's section of the house, and two spend the day in our section.

(As an aside, it is worthy of note that the two dogs who reside in our part of the house are fit and well toned, and the two who reside in M-I-L's part of the house are clinically obese. However, she insists that doesn't give them titbits or feed them chocolate and cakes. Noooo, definitely not her. The fact that we've seen her do it is irrelevant. When she went away for a five week holiday over Christmas a few years back, the dogs lost weight. When she came back, they turned into bloaters again. Make your own mind up why that is!)

Anyway, M-I-L recently started to become increasingly paranoid in her attempts to keep them apart. Keeping the door shut was no longer enough - what if they ran out when she opened the door? She decided that she wanted a child safety gate fitting to the doorframe. Fair enough, I fitted it.

Then she decided that she needed two doors between the dogs and wanted us to shut the other dogs down at the far end of the hall so that if she opened the safety gate to go through it, and the dogs managed to run out past her in spite of her efforts to keep them there, then there would be yet another door to stop the other dogs getting through. Clearly the rantings of a mad woman so I've consistently ignored her requests. She does her best to keep shutting them away when I'm out of sight, but I simply let them out again when I see the door shut.

Yesterday, when I returned home, she wanted to prove to me that allowing the dogs in the hallway was a problem because the big dog had "had a go at the safety gate". By her choice of words, I had visions of the dog, foaming at the mouth, launching herself at the gate in a psychotic frenzy, hell bent on eating the other dogs. I asked her to elaborate on what "having a go at it" entailed, asking that it was the in line with my mental picture of events. Unsurprisingly, it turns out that it wasn't. What she really meant was that the dog must have bumped into it or something because it had been pushed out of position.

I went to take a look at it to find that it was indeed out of position, but it had been pushed from M-I-L's side of the door! Unless the dog had tied a rope around it and pulled, there's no way she could have moved it like that.

As usual, M-I-L refused to accept the evidence, preferring to utilise ill-informed conjecture to support her case.

…and so it continues...

"Soup"erb

The current Mrs James is currently feeling a bit under the weather due a particularly bad cold and has spent the best part of a couple days shivering in bed and aching all over.

M-I-L decided to "help" by making our evening meal. Now, I could wax lyrical about her (in)ability to prepare food, and her complete lack of grasp of the concept of hygiene, but suffice it to say that I was not overjoyed when I arrived home to that piece of news.

Tea turned out to be something which purported to be soup, but was in fact a very small pack of assorted pot-herbs boiled mercilessly for several hours in a very large amount of water. (When it comes to preparing soup, M-I-L has no concept of "less is more", preferring to go along with the contrary "more is more". In all cases, the "more" involves the addition of copius quantities of water).

Also, you'd think the stock cube had never been invented, or any other flavour enhancing additive for that matter. What I was presented with looked and tasted similar to something which could more easily have been prepared by placing a bowl under the hot water tap.

Giving credit where it's due though, I have to admire her artistry in skilfully removing any trace of what might be considered to be flavour, body, or nutrition from said delicacy.

Jamie Oliver must be sh*tting himself!