Party Season

My Blog has sat dormant for a long time, in fact it's been 1 year and 8months since I last posted.
I really lost the will to write anything and to be honest after a period of realisation that there are so many people out there writing and so little traffic or people visiting, I just thought what's the point.

For some random reason I thought I'd log in and was surprised to see a reasonable amount of traffic and a bit of a surge in visitors over the last couple of months. This is no doubt down to increasing numbers of bots and spam traffic but nevertheless it did make me wonder whether anyone new had discovered my random ramblings.

When I read back some of my old posts, I still find myself chuckling away and think the pieces are quiet well written and flow well. I'm glad I've captured tales such as The Blueberry Smoothie Incident and others as although I have fading memories of this event - the post takes me right back to the evening in question and helps me remember my kids when they were younger and the usual ensuing chaos we face as a family.

My daughter is now heading towards 15 years old, and today starts her first part-time job as an assistant at children's birthday parties. She's really looking forward to dressing up as a fairy and assisting the other characters - this is the equivalent of having to make the coffee, as you have to work your way up until you become the star Princess attraction.

This reminded me so much of her own younger years where she was always dressing up and would spend all her days in her pink princess castle as the cutest 6 year old ever. Of course that's the twinkly memories, the fact she was also a little brat who had the biggest tantrums I've ever seen also rears it's ugly head.... But it is amazing how that thought is suppressed as time passes and the rose tinted spectacles make it seem so much more angelic.

I still recall her fifth birthday party which was a complete disaster with the party games. You know if you are honest, you usually try and fix it so your own child at least wins one game at their own party - well on this occasion it all went pear shaped. She won nothing, and as the games progressed her bottom lip trembled and the tears flooded down her face. It culminated in a diva-esque performance of the highest calibre.

As a parent who likes to at least seek some revenge for these moments of scarring I've had to endure - I kindly reminded her of this performance as I wished her luck heading out of the door to her first children's party. Hope it goes well, I said. Let's hope you can handle the tantrums - to which she replied, yeah no problem Dad - I wrote the book on them, remember!

Don't I just. Good luck my little Princess x

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Isn’t it nice to see some daylight at the start and end of the day!

I can emerge from my grumpy, vitamin D lacking winter hibernation and look forward to another glorious summer….. Can’t I?

Last year’s blind optimism ended pretty quickly when after a couple of unseasonal high temperature weekends in March….it then rained for about five months solid.

I had no sooner dusted off my Barbeque, shorts and straw trilby and the cats and dogs started falling out of the sky. My garden was ruined, although to be fair that wasn’t actually helped by the real dog using my beautiful lawn as a toilet.

In fact the place now looks like a quagmire where acidic puppy pee killed spots of grass which have turned into clumps of mud and now have the churned appearance of a ploughed field. No thanks in part to her hundred miles per hour running round and round in circles, with cartoon slipping feet when she is told to “come here” and consistently disobeys every command. It really is only a matter of time before I resort to rugby tackling her. However, I suspect this would end up with me face down in the mud and the dog triumphantly doing another lap of honour while barking the doggy version of “one nil to the Labrador”

In other news, my Pet Insurance, Car Insurance and House Insurance have all increased to the point where I must be single handily funding the industry recovery. Combined with life insurance, health insurance and gas boiler insurance I was beginning to wonder if there could possibly be any more insurance out there. ……Then I got our travel insurance renewal form through along with the AA breakdown insurance.

On the subject of increased payments – my electricity direct debit just went up to £80 a month. It is incredible. I swear to god it was £19.50 in 2003. I’m not even joking – and yes I do have copies of every previous bill from 1994 onwards. You never know when you’ll need them. In fact I might start burning them to save some electricity of an evening. What could go wrong? – I’ve got house insurance anyway, right?

It did also get me thinking about renewable energy. If only I could harness the raw power of Labrador! I’m thinking giant size hamster wheel with a bone on a piece of string just out of reach. Hook it all up to a drive wheel and I could sell megawatts back to the national grid. (I’ve checked my Pet insurance – there is nothing to say this isn’t covered)

My idea could be franchised. Households up and down the country, nay….the world could benefit from my ingenuity. Hang on; my wife’s just said she’ll kill me if I even think about it. I think she’s also just checked my Life Insurance policy.

Ah, now there’s an idea – why doesn’t someone market Divorce Insurance?