Last night turned out pretty exciting as I ended up on a late-night rescue mission after Dazz and Tinks managed to drain the battery of his car and strand themselves at a nearby lake.
I was busy introducing K to Ghost, a flick I love but haven’t seen in years and which she ended up kind of liking, I think, when Dazz buzzed me to see if I have any jump leads. I don’t but managed to grill him enough to find out why he needed them, at which point I decided to go get them. Dazz tried his hardest (ish) to protest, but when I pointed out he was sat in a car park in the cold at 10.30pm with a 7-month pregnant young lady he relented.
I swung by his parents’ house to grab some jump leads (which turned out to be his anyway) and then found them sat in a secluded car park (where they’d ended up after trying to push-start the car), in the pitch black, with heavily-steamed windows. Too many jokes presented themselves for my brain to unscramble them all quick enough, so I ended up only managing “Hello” which kind of disappointed me.
Being the mechanic I am, I bravely stood and watched Dazz as he did all the things you need to do to jump start a car, which mostly involved a tangle of wires, untangled, connected to various pieces of his engine and mine. I started my car, he tried his, but it didn’t work. At this point we had spent about half-an-hour WAY past the level of my expertise with cars (push peddle, make go), so we relented and got on the blower to the AA.
Telling us they’d be up to an hour and given the obscurity of our location, the helpful call-centre man told us it’d be better if we went and waited in the nearby pub so he could find us easier. We reluctantly agreed and set our stall out in the welcoming arms of the Something-Or-Other Pub on the lakeshore and got the drinks in.
In fact, Mr AA managed to turn up almost immediately, so we did what all good friends should and sent Dazz off to deal with it while we finished our drinks. Once we were done, we piled in my car (which was still nice and warm from having had the heater on almost-full-blast to re-warm Tinks – and me once I’d been out in the cold) and headed back to the flat, where we met Dazz, who’d had his car fixed and put back on the road and been for a drive to charge the battery and got to the flat quicker than we had got through our drinks. Oops.
Tea was ordered, and provided, and we spent a good hour talking through the relative merits of the various Flanimals, plus whether Keighley is too far away to drive to MK every night to read Baby Ebn Apple Pear Orange Bear or if Dazz should record it as a book-on-tape. We eventually sacked out after they’d left around 2am.
I lay in bed and didn’t sleep for, well, the whole night really. I think they last time I checked the clock was 6.30am before my Tac-alarm woke me at 10, just long enough to down my various morning pills before zonking out again. Next thing I know, K’s waking me up and I’m moaning at her telling her I’ve set my alarm to wake me at 11am and she’s telling me it is 11am.
Reluctantly, I rouse myself and stand under a shower for long enough for my brain to realise it’s really not going to be allowed to go back to bed, then throw on some clothes and we head out the door for our lunch date with my Godson Little R and family.
After ever the warmest of welcomes, we are fed the most amazing roast of slow-cooked beef and trimmings, which does much to brighten my day. Stomach happy, Oli happy, everyone else happy(er) that I’m no longer grumpy.
We spend some time with R looking through his life-story book he was given by the family workers when he was adopted and we chat for a while with his ‘rents about adoption and such. He’s got such a healthy attitude towards and such a detailed knowledge of it it’s so far away from the classic ideas you get of kids being brought up thinking they’re “natural” children then suddenly finding out when they’re 30 that they were adopted. The way R sees it, his Mum is his Mum, but because she was poorly he couldn’t come from her tummy, so he came from the other lady’s instead.
After a couple of great fun board games (neither of which used a board, come to think of it…) R headed off to play with a friend – which he’d been dying to do all day – and we sat and chatted with D&H for a while before my tiredness finally got the better of me and we headed back home where I immediately hit the sack and slept for an hour, waking up a whole lot more grouchy than I had been before I went to bed.
To keep the grouch away, we settled on the sofa to watch another of the pile of chick-flicks K’s been lent my a friend at work, opting this time for Mean Girls – a film I’ve seen before and don’t totally hate – followed almost immediately (after a tea-visit from S&S) by Three To Tango, a movie I was almost embarrassed to find myself enjoying. It’s no Citizen Kane, but it manages to be both totally predictable while at the same time surprising and fun.
When that’s done my eyes have had enough of being open for the day and order me to bed where I can hopefully get a good night’s rest. With nothing much to do tomorrow, at least I can sleep till noon if I need to (minus the 5 minute wake-up call for Tac at 10).