It's Himself's birthday tomorrow...he'll be seventy-eight. Not that you'd know...I think he's still as fit and as active as he was when he was fifty.
We had a so-called surprise party on his fiftieth...it was awful. Honestly...truly dreadful. I'd arranged for a couple of Magicians to come you see...and a bouncy castle for the children...and all his children and my children came...and their children...we had our people then. There was T and G and K and our foster children as well...
Must have been about fifty people all told. I'd done enough food to feed them all twice over...the house was bedecked with balloons and there was plenty of booze...
The weather was brilliant...warm and sunny...
And the adult children squabbled...and their children clung to their parents legs and regarded the bouncy castle with pure horror...Himself's shouty son drank himself into some sort of oblivion...his wife threatened to go home on her own...my daughter, still in the throes of anorexia and bulimia kept dashing to the loo to throw up...all the babies worked themselves into a lather and were scarlet in the face from screaming...
Then the magicians arrived.
They were downright dreadful...the woman was very short and rather fat...she was dressed in a sort of costume which did her no favours whatsoever...her husband was tall and skinny and when he shook my hand his breath almost knocked me backwards...perfectly rank...as though he'd been chewing things long dead.
G, who was an amiable sort of bloke, was looking forward to having his face painted ...but both he and she said they weren't going to paint the adults faces...just the children's...G was much like a child and I thought it unkind for them to say that...especially after I'd explained the family dynamics to them beforehand...
Then T took all her clothes off...she was prone to doing that and we were used to it...Teresa was following her round holding out T's knickers trying to persuade her to at least put those back on...there were toddlers falling over and screeching and various daughter-in-laws were looking daggers at each other...
I finally managed to get the entire family together to watch the fire-eating...muttering just under my breath that they'd better bloody well behave for at least a few minutes...
The fire-eating was so incredibly abysmal...it was so awful that we all began to laugh...at first quietly behind our hands until we couldn't cope any longer and let rip with guffaws...
The two magicians stopped.
The chap came over and told me they'd never been so insulted in all the time they'd been entertaining...they'd never had to deal with a teenager who ran about naked...nor with people who were slow in their learning...G. dug me in the ribs at that point and said cheerfully...'I'm slow aren't I?' and he quickly followed that up with telling me T had her vest and knickers on now...
The magicians packed up their horrid costumes and their face paints...the fire eating things and the silly bell they rang every now and then...they drove away in their VW van in a huff.
The daughters-in-laws were still bitching at each other...the shouty son was in a drunken stupor on the settee...Himself's eldest son was still making a play for my daughter...T was still charging up and down the hall in her vest and knickers and the 'phone kept ringing...
Himself and I retreated to the kitchen...we shut the door firmly behind us and drank loads of wine...
One of by nightmares in life would be if any 'so called friends' arranged a kissogram - I'm no prude but that 'd be the pits for me! xx
It Was A Different Time And A Different Life...
feeling a bit down
