Monday 7 April 2014

Party time!

This morning dawned grey, rainy and totally miserable! I drove to work with a heavy heart, I have to admit, because I wasn't really looking forward to today or tonight when Sophie was due to have her party. Things worsened at work when Maureen came in to tell me that Chloe had phoned in sick, which meant that we didn't have an assistant cook and also, that she wouldn't be going to Sophie's party tonight...

We tried to get other staff in as we knew it would be busy, but in the end I had to phone my daughter to plead with her to come in for a couple of hours over lunchtime to help out. Understandably she wasn't happy but did agree to work for a while until the busy midday rush was over. It meant I had to drive home to get her and she'd already started tidying up the house in preparation for tonight, bless her.

The afternoon was spent grappling with a payroll problem which put me in a worse mood! I desperately need a new computer as mine runs on Windows XP which is due to detonate soon! I did wonder whether my problems were caused by this but by now I'd had enough of the background noise of kids screaming so I went home to help Sophie clean the house.

When I arrived home she'd been shopping with Keith to buy a load of food and had cleaned everywhere downstairs so I could have gone to the gym, which was my original plan! I had a lovely bath and then Keith and I decided to go Ten Pin Bowling for a change and then have dinner in Market Harborough. We had spoken about going to see "Noah" but the timings weren't right and besides, it had had bad reviews in the Sunday papers!

We went bowling in Kettering and as our lane wasn't quite ready we sat at the bar and I had a glass of wine while Keith sipped mineral water. He's done so well and I can see that he's definitely lost weight so it's paying off for him.

We had two games, costing £21, which lasted all of 45 minutes! Keith won the first game and I won the second but it didn't help that the people playing in the league arrived half way through our games and they all looked very professional!

By now it was pouring with rain so we ran to the car and took a leisurely drive over to Market Harborough where we parked easily and went to the Indian restaurant we'd eaten in a few weeks back. There was just one family about to leave...and us!

No-one else came in while we were there, but at least it was nice and quiet! We had a delicious meal - poppadums, a mixed meat platter and curries (biriani for me, Madras for Keith) - and a couple of drinks and it was very relaxed.

It was now only 9pm so we drove back home and called into the pub on the way. There was a lot more noise here as a group of people were at the bar having been in there quite a while judging by the raucous laughter and chatter! By 10pm we had no alternative but to head for home and see what awaited us...

To be honest, it wasn't that bad. There was a huddle of teens in the kitchen when we arrived (including Sophie) and they were all just having a good chat and a laugh. Keith and I headed up to our bedroom straight away, saying goodnight to Mikey who was in the living room on my laptop. We watched the news and I read but after about twenty minutes of getting home they turned the music up loud and it stayed that way until about 11.30pm. I'd told Sophie to quieten everything down by midnight and I'd warned our immediate neighbours of what was going on so I was ready to go downstairs and tell Sophie if it got out of hand!


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