Monday

Sons sedate version of his birthday party this afternoon. Sedate as the Mother in law is here, and well she's 83-ish and has some odd ideas about kids and how they should behave, not that she's over strict just plain odd, and one can see the kids not understanding what the hell she's going on about. Anyway Son friends son and mutual friends daughter where here. For some reason unknown to logic and common sense, negotiation for our son to go to a local steam/fair thing ended up with a phone call to mutual friends partner The Prof, who said a very understandable flat NO adding that he couldn't cope with three kids!... which i entirely understand and personally i wouldn't have asked him, but all the females in the area seem to have gone collectively "difficult"!... anyway i said after the daughter went, that wife and grandma should go to the park and they agreed, or so i thought. Of course i should know by now it wasn't going to be that easy to get two hours peace... The wife proceeded to drink tea at an incredibly slow pace.. i mean like three quarters of an hour, while i ground my teeth in frustration, just knowing my chance of quiet was slipping away and no amount of hinting would make a difference. It was like hinting to a plank of wood....eventually grandma completely missed the point and said she was staying here ....so fuck that... i said Ok and went out...

Drove way down to the end of the country, drove past Lennies place. Stopped outside for a moment, and realised it must be the anniversary of his death, as MinL was down then, she comes down for our sons birthday each year. Maybe even the same date...

Drove back to find them still dithering and prevaricating tortoise lady came round and they dithered more all of which means in pissed off and our son is set to be horribly tired tomorrow and ive got to fucking live with that and MinL while wifes at work..