18 September 2010 (Saturday) - A Birthday Party

I was just thinking about going to kip last night when the phone rang. ‘er indoors ^TM  had been out at a mucky undercrackers party and on the way home her trusty vehicle gave up the ghost. Eventually (at 1am!) she was towed home, with the alternator belt missing. Which was a nuisance. To be honest the thing hasn’t sounded right for a while. Regular readers will realise that up until a week ago I had cash in reserve for such disasters. Oh well. Having a new alternator belt will just have to be her Xmas pressie this year. I just hope she didn’t spend too much last night on mucky undercrackers.

In the week (with help from the Rear Admiral) I took the top box off of my car. It would have been easier all round to have left it on, I suppose. I’ve heard that taking the box off improves fuel consumption. But a colleague regularly drives from her house fifty yards down the road to Dublin. She’s done exactly the same journey with and without her top box, and she says it takes exactly the same amount of fuel. But with the box off, I can now get under the barrier at the council tip. Much as the place can be “R-tard central” at times, my dustbin of garden waste was full. So full that I had to empty it before I could generate any more garden waste at all. The tip opened at 8am, so I was there for opening time, only to find that I was about thirtieth in line to get in to the place. And who should I meet at the tip but a fellow Blogger. I had one bin of garden waste to shift: he had a car full. I spent five minutes helping him shift his rubbish. Well, his car was blocking me in. It was either help him or beep my hooter at him. Either option suited me…

I then went to work for a dull morning. Which was probably for the best. Saturday mornings are either non-stop dead busy, or are just plain dull. I know which I prefer. Home via the garage to collect ‘er indoors ^TM who had arranged to have the fragments of her car delivered there for fixing. Once home with an empty compost bin I mowed the lawn. It was a tad long – I’d not mowed it for at least a month. Following a quick jaunt to the fishing tackle shop for some bait I put the telly on and fell asleep whilst watching “Tron”. A waste of the afternoon, really.

And then the clans gathered and we set off to the Queen’s Head in Kingsnorth where we’d planned a surprise 40^th birthday party. All surprise parties are somewhat dependent of the guest of honour actually turning up, and during the week things had looked somewhat dodgy on that score. But eventually he was tricked into going to the pub, and a good time was had by all. There’s no denying that as the evening wore on things did get decidedly vague. Did we really play “musical chairs” to Sparks…?