I have a horrible confession to make...now don't misunderstand, I love my step daughter and her husband dearly but it's lovely when they've gone home to England and we can get back into our own routine...
It's difficult you see, to be bright and cheerful for eight days in a row...especially when it's hammering down with rain and all I really want to do is read a book or play about with making something out of Fimo.
You have to sort of entertain don't you...come up with mindless chat, once the gruesome update on the rest of the family has been dissected and we've put our jaws back and closed our mouths...there's that terrible temptation to interfere, which I am prone to do...I have to nod and say 'oh dear' in a non-committal way rather than leap straight in and say what I really think about their daughter who rushes her children straight to the hospital if they have a vague tummy-ache...or another daughter and her family who live off take-aways.
Reuben works on an intensive pig rearing unit which is enough to make me quite cross at the best of times...so when he mentions pigs with prolapses and so on I can feel myself getting crosser and crosser...then I found the man who was the first to discover the circulation of the blood was Reuben's Uncle several generations back and he wasn't feckin' interested...he was trying to reach the next level of some daft game he was playing on his device that does everything except peel the potatoes...
T and I roll our eyes in despair.
And he eats toasted cheese and pickle for breakfast...puts the bread and cheese in the microwave and honestly it's enough to put you off your cornflakes...
But he goes shopping with Himself and fixed the new camera...and he makes cups of tea and coffee without complaint.
And dear Teresa cooks supper and does the washing up and remembers to cool down boiled water for my oxygen concentrator...
So maybe I shouldn't revel in having the cottage back to ourselves...perhaps I ought not to look forward to going to bed on the settee and reading some gruesome murder mystery rather than struggling a little to stay more or less upright until ten o'clock at night...