Popcorn, treasure hunts and the furry pencil case

“Papa’s juice, papa’s juice!”
“No Joshua, this is my house, so this is Michael’s juice”
“Papa’s juice!”
My nephew, Joshua, and myself had this argument a few times over the weekend. Robinsons fruit juice apparently has a pseudonym of ‘Papa’s juice’, a name that is not known, at least not yet, in the Reid household. Joshua’s only allowed a certain amount of Robinsons juice as he follows a strict diet of as little sugary drinks as possible even though he had a more than healthy helping of the massive bag of popcorn I purchased for his sister, Morgan and myself at the cinema a few hours before.
Ka and myself picked the two terrors up at around 2 on Saturday afternoon for a trip to the cinema to see Madagascar 3 and Alex the Lion, Marty the Zebra, Gloria the Hippo, and Melman the Giraffe. We were then heading back to ours to house the niece and nephew for the night whilst Angela and Steven went out to a friend’s 40th birthday party.
As it was mid Saturday afternoon by the time we got there, the cinema was busy and crowded with families buying tickets for the latest Dreamworks animation. Ka and myself both had our cineworld unlimited cards at the ready but it somehow still managed to cost us £12? £12 for two kids to see a cartoon? Unbelievable.
It must be a flamin’ fortune to go to the cinema as a family these days.
We proceeded upstairs via the great glass elevator which moves up the corner of the building, looking out over the northern end of the city centre. Port Dundas Street stretching out ahead, leading up through the bustling crowds of buses, cars and shoppers towards the quieter streets beyond and the joys of the M8. On reaching the fourth floor, the four of us piled out into the foyer where we joined the queue for some sweet popcorn. The last time Ka and myself took Morgan to the flicks I’d tempted Morgan with a bag of Butterkist from the kitchen cupboard which she quickly rejected as her Dad apparently bought her the special cinema popcorn every time she went. So, with this in mind, I joined the queue and upon reaching the counter, asked for a bag of popcorn from the baseball capped foyer attendant.
Regular or large, I was asked. First I wondered what happened to the small. Perhaps management had rejected it as they could slap as big a price on it. I asked the becapped girl what the difference in size was.
“Well” the girl shrugged, lifting the two paperbags, holding up the small, purple paper bag and the large, A4 sized, yellow bag. “The regular is £4.45 and the large is £4.95, it’s only a difference of 50p”. I’m glad she pointed that last snippet out as I would have been there all day working that one out. Upon hearing the prices being verbalized before me, I asked her to repeat herself suspecting I had misheard.
I was wrong I hadn’t misheard her reply. £4.95 for a bag of cinema popcorn. I almost asked her to repeat herself again but then decided against it, seeing Ka, Joshua and Morgan waiting patiently for me at the side of the queue. If it’s a fiver for a bag of popcorn how much is it for one of those ludicrous looking hotdogs or those plates of Doritos and guacamole?
Why do people eat this stuff in cinemas anyway?
Doritos, okay, that’s fine, I suppose. But why guacamole? Could there be a blander condiment on the planet? And why those stinking hot dogs with the completely ridiculous amount of tomato sauce zig zagged over them? I can’t imagine anything worse than sitting through the duration of a movie having one of those giant sausages squirming about in your stomach in a pool of red sauce.
You see some people walking up the cinema aisle to their seats, hands and arms laden with hotdogs, plates of doritos, bags of popcorns and giant cokes. How can they sit and each that much stuff, never mind pay for it?
Anyway, Madagascar 3 was great. Well, for kids anyway… or if you like listening to Chris Rock for an hour and a half…

Unfortunately I don’t, but the film did have some other things going for it. Full of fantastic colour and craziness the story was like a speeding circus train, racing through it’s scenes and landscapes. Much to the kids amusement. Especially Joshua, whose favourite toys and tv shows just happen to be “choo-choos!”.
After the cinema we headed off home, to East Kilbride making a quick stop at the Fort Morrisons for pizza, another of Joshua’s favourites. We hunted the store for the freshly made variety, circling the entirety of the store before ending back up in the fruit and veg aisle, not two meters from where we started out.
Getting home we unpacked the boot, lifting the various backpacks, bags, guitars, teddy beds, Thomas the tanks and teddy bears into the house, reminding the kids of the last time they had visited when the place was a mess of chairs and relations, not to mention the giant bouncy castle in the back garden. Needless to say there wasn’t a bouncy castle this time around, although there was a treasure hunt which I put together in my last half hour of work on the Friday evening.
Before the treasure hunt, and as time was marching relentlessly on, we decided to ready Joshua’s bed and build the Dream N’Play travel cot borrowed from the McGarva household. Ka and myself worked at it for around half an hour, whilst Joshua continuously circled us, telling us how Papa could do it. After some struggle we ended up phoning Dougie, who informed us it was Steven who built it in their house. Not wanting to disturb Steven on his first night off for a long time we worked at it a little longer before I ended up on google and read of how a pregnant woman with a baby in one arm, could erect the folding cot with a heavy flick of the one free wrist. Needless to say we then found ourselves on the phone to Steven and just as he was about to leave the house in Bothwell to travel over and give us a hand, the cot seemed to suddenly coalesce, almost as if the thing had a mind of it’s own and had been having us on the whole time just like that moment when the Delorean’s engine roared to life when Marty headbutted the steering wheel. Almost collapsing back on to the spare room’s floor, like Doc at the end of Back to the Futrue 2, we all celebrated, high fives all round and we quickly called Steven back to tell him to continue to ready himself for the party.
So, the treasure hunt could begin. This hunt basically consisted of eight rhyming clues and a treasure map with which I led the kids around the house, on a hopefully exciting, but needlessly tiring, journey to find two bags of gold coins Ka had bought the previous week. Okay, it wasn’t exactly the most bountiful of treasures, but it did work in keeping them entertained, whilst the pizzas were baking in the oven.
After having run up and down the stairs a few times, visiting various rooms, getting our feet muddy in the garden, getting the bedroom carpet dirty from the garden, getting Ka to shout at us about it, and almost smashing the living room clock, the kids eventually ended up at the base of our dying yukka plant, digging down into it’s soil with their hands and pulling out a bag of gold coins each. A bag of gold coins and more than a few dollops of dry, crumbly soil which successfully exploded over the surrounding living room carpet. Fortunately Ka was in the kitchen and missed this. I quickly instructed the kids to run through to the kitchen and demand their coins to be cleaned, keeping her occupied, whilst I dived into the kitchen cupboard for our tall, trusty white plastic friend, the J. Edgar.
Following the treasure hunt we all sat down to watch the last ten minutes of Strictly Come Dancing and eat our pizza, the quietest the kids had been all day, and that included the cinema. Joshua was then put to his bed, the now fully functioning, or at least fully standing, Dream N’Play travel cot and Morgan set up the Snakes and Ladders interrupted by Ka giving the supposedly sleeping Joshua a quick check upstairs. He was awake and needing changed.
Oh my god.
I had never known such a smell existed. I called the army and warned them of a suspected toxic blast in the Calderwood area after I quickly disposed of the heavy white, padded bag given over to me. I had to put it straight into the wheelie bin outside. Regretting my actions almost instantly I then feared for my wheelie bin’s life. I’d probably go out the next morning to find a sizzling mound of melted green plastic that used to be our two wheeled, refuge collecting, green friend.
And there it would be sitting. Joshua’s nappy perched on top, still steaming.
On the past Wednesday mornings since moving in, when we’ve put the bin out for collection, it’s always been full to bursting and as a result the birds have been circling it, pecking at the bags exposed by the half open lid. Gawd helped any bird that dared to have a peck at that blighter.
What about the bin men themselves? They’d have to put that in their lorry? Do they get paid danger money?
If it gets out I could wake up one morning with the whole street in quarantine! Dustin Hoffman talking to me from behind the mask of a protective suit.

Anyway, whilst the nappy lay in the wheelie outside, the smell safely contained upstairs, unfortunately in the room where I was to spend the night in the futon alongside the travel cot, our Saturday night continued.
Pictionary with the furry pencil case followed the snakes and ladders.
Not two days before, whilst rummaging through some more boxes in my Mum and Dad’s loft, I found my trusty furry pencil case. Mum recognized it immediately after I’d brought it down. Mum had designed and created this furry pencil case when I was around seven or eight, for all my many coloured pencils, pens and other various drawing implements. Upon inspecting it’s innards I discovered it still held functioning felt pens so I brought it home for the weekend and for my niece to use for her drawings.
Unfortunately Morgan wasn’t too impressed and insisted on using her own black pen to draw her stories which we were obviously supposed to know. Ka used her illustrative skills to depict Blackpool as a steep pyramid built by the blind Egyptians with Christmas lights and I attempted the old woman that lived in the shoe.
That old woman had so many children she didn’t know what to do. We were looking after two for the night and we didn’t know what to do. We were knackered. Cinemas, treasure hunts, pizzas and snakes and ladders all seemed to work though. The old woman in the shoe obviously wasn’t that creative, she just whipped them all and put them to bed. If the old woman were around today she more than likely find herself getting reported to the RSPCC.
Still, it was all good practice.

Red Dwarf real ale and Runrig

Skull Splitter, Dragonhead Stout, Devil’s Advocate and Stone the Crows. Just a few of the beers on offer last week at the 13th Ayrshire Real Ale Festival in Troon town hall. Straight after work, on Friday night, I jumped in the car and headed out to Barassie to meet up with Dad and Dougie at Tom and Linda’s house. The plan was to get a quick dinner in the Barassie Reid’s house before heading out to the annual beer festival, staying the night with my Aunt and Uncle and the two dogs, Sally and Jake.
Dougie and Dad, who’d been at last year’s beer swilling event, had the spare rooms and I had the luxurious splendour of the living room floor, so whilst the two Dad’s were out getting everyone a fish supper, or a steak pie supper, in my case, Tom and myself pulled the couch cushion in from the mobile home, parked outside in the side driveway, ready for another trip the next Sunday morning.
Four giant portions of fish and chips and a steak pie supper later, we were ready to go. I knew agreeing to the chippie was a mistake as soon as I agreed to it. Eating that amount of food with the intention of then drinking a copious amount of beer could not be a good idea, surely?
Leaving Linda indoors with the dugs, Tom, Dougie, Dad and myself piled into the car and drove down to the Troon town centre, heading straight for the large concert hall after a brief stop off at the seafront Morrisons for a quick visit to the cash machine.
Once parked and disembarked outside one of the small, cosy looking bungalows on Academy Street we followed the few passers by up towards the Troon Concert hall, where, according to the notice board standing outside, Donnie Munro was to be playing at the beginning of November.
One of Mum’s favourites, Donnie Munro is the former lead singer of Runrig, the Scottish, gaelic speaking, celtic rock band. Donnie left to be a politician back in 1997. He’d played his last gig with Runrig at Stirling Castle on August 29th. I know because I was there, along with Colin, Chaz and Adie. Shazz was also there with relations, somewhere in the crowd. Colin had always been into Runrig and I wasn’t unfamiliar with them after hearing more than a few of Mum’s albums, not to mention my Uncle Laurence’s tapes. The 1988 live video ‘City of Lights’ was also a favourite of Mum’s. The live video began with lots of sweaty, eager looking Runrig fans trampling over one another to get through the front doors of the Barrowlands whilst Radio Clyde reported from the Eye in the Sky, circling the gloomy towers and rooftops of Glasgow as the opening drums of Dance Called America boomed through the echoing ballroom. At the time of the farewell gig in Stirling we must have been going through a particularly patriotic musical phase and had even cajoled Adie and Chaz into liking them, although I think that was down to the fact a few of the songs had rather loud drums which sounded good emanating from a bass tube.
I’ll never forget that Farewell Donnie Concert. Not because the singer officially left the band that night, or because we met the man himself and Runrig guitarist, Rory MacDonald straight after, but because suffering a slight hangover, Dad woke me up the next morning and told me Princess Diana had been in a car crash earlier that morning and died soon after.
Anyway, Donnie’s political career obviously didn’t work out fabulously so he’s back at the music, much to Uncle Tom’s vexation (“Runrig? They’re rubbish - Name one good tune?!”) but the night of the 13th Ayrshire Real Ale Festival was going to have a very different kind of music.
Paying our £4 each and receiving our pint glasses and programmes in the process we ventured forth into Troon’s crowded concert hall. A bar took up the whole of the right side of the large hall, barrel’s piled up behind, all with A4 paper labels displaying the many wonderful varied names of the sweet nectar stored inside, all colour coded indicating which kind of category they each fell into. A bitter, a best bitter, a golden ale, a strong bitter, an IPA, a mild, a stout or a Speciality ale. Over 120 beers were being served over the bar, £3 a pint or if you wanted to drink quicker, and taste more, £1.50 a half pint. The bar was run by a large bunch of volunteers from the organisers, Camra, the Campaign for Real Ale organisation whose posters adorned the walls shouting about petitions to George Osborne whose apparently taking over two thirds of the cost of our pint as we drink.
After visiting the Real Ale festival with Tom last year, Dad and Dougie, had told stories ever since of great beer and good music so I was curious to see what kind of music this occasion was going to serve up. As we shuffled through the crowd for our first beers, guys moved around on the stage at he end of the hall with wires and instruments.
First up, I tried the Kelburn Jaguar, a smooth, fullbodied ale with undertones of grapefruit and citrus with a hoppy aftertaste. No, I have not turned into the beer version of Jilly Goolden, I am merely reading from the programme, though I do remember this being the best beer of the night. As the crowd of drinkers got busier, a few of Tom’s mates introduced themselves, each with their own flagon of ale, and the band took to the stage.
Big Licks’ surprisingly good loud cover versions soon had Troon Concert Hall rocking with hits from the likes of the Goo Goo Dolls, Tom Petty, the Stones, Lenny Kravitz, Primal Scream and a whole lot of others. Three guitarists, one a bassist, a drummer and a lead vocalist who immediately reminded me of Bill Nighy from “Love Actually”. He was around the same age with a similar hairstyle, except a little longer at the back and a bit balder on front, with similar Bill Nighy glasses.

He made very decent attempts at the cover versions’ vocals, and jumped around the stage flinging the microphone stand around rather well, considering his age, smiling and laughing through his rather pronounced teeth excitedly. The bass guitarist looked on a little bored in his dark T-shirt and jeans, nodded emphatically to the beat, as most bass guitarists do, whilst the two other guitarists worked hard over their fretboards, spinning off into the occasional impressive solo between pints delivered to the top of a local amp by their wives.
Second beer of the night was the Golden Plover, a light, golden ale that was exceedingly easy to drink as we hummed along to the music. A beer named Red Dwarf followed as the third beverage of the night. I seen the name in the book and thought that since the new series had now started back I owed it to Doug Naylor himself to give it a bash. Another good choice.
Losing track of my beers, though taking it a little easier following the steak pie supper, I’m not sure what was drunk after the Red Dwarf but last of the night was by far, the worst. Merry Maiden’s Mild was this particular tipple’s title and it was in no way merry or mild. It was like drinking watery, alcohol imbued syrup.
Pretty horrible. Especially as I had to drink this one rather quickly.
The witching hour had swiftly come around and Tom informed us we’d have to run for the free train journey home to Barrassie. Dad, Dougie and myself followed Tom and his pal, a short running pal of my Uncle’s, up Academy Street towards the train station. Unfortunately we were travelling upwind.
As we walked there were some distinctive noises from one of the arses walking ahead of us and unfortunately we walked straight into some clouds of definite noxious nitrogen mixed with carbon dioxide with what tasted like the Merry Maiden’s Mild.
Up ahead, the train [ulled up at the station at the top of the hill. Tom and his pal arrived at the train station just as the doors slid open to the waiting crowds of beer swillers and other Friday night travellers. We had to run up the last hill behind them, after having deliberately fallen a safe distance behind whilst debating which of the guys the putrid gases were exiting from. Just as we ran up behind, gasping after the short jog, Tom’s short pal gave another loud frump. Our timing for arriving at their rear, out of breath, could not have been worse and as we suffered in another cloud of rectum gases.
After two minutes on the crowded train the five of us disembarked at Barassie, where Tom’s short pal left us with one last fart, propelling himself up Barassie station’s cross platform stairway behind some chattering girls. Tom had invited him back for some toasted cheese but I wasn’t too keen on the consequences of some more beer being introduced to the guys system, not to mention the cheese. Sally and Jake would have been packing their bags, never mind the rest of us.
Although Sally did almost get a rather more comfortable bunk for the night before we all headed off to bed. Just as we all parted from the living room following our toasted cheese, and Tom’s trip through his concert ticket memory box, I visited the bathroom to clean the old gnashers. Whilst I was brushing everyone else had a good laugh as, the now elderly, Sally made herself comfortable in my cosy mobile home couch cushion and sleeping bag set up on the living room floor.
She looked so comfortable.
I kicked her out.

Giant inflatables and disappearing buffets

Frank Sinatra’s slow, melodic version of Send in the Clowns’ played through the living room stereo speakers as we closed the front door on another day of guests at half past midnight on Saturday night. We were finishing up a little earlier than we had done at the previous housewarming but certainly didn’t feel any less tired.
It was the family’s turn to visit and from three o’clock that afternoon we’d had everyone from the Kerrs and the Taylors, to the Symingtons and the Leckies, not to mention the Reids and the McGarvas. The food had been demolished, the beer nearly all drunk, the wine bottles finished, the irn-bru and diet cokes swigged and the caffeine swilled, not to mention a bottle of the finest Arran Malt Whiskey with accompanying cheese and biscuits which more than a few people partook in, a gift to the buffet from my Uncle Jim from his new abode on the ‘geologist’s paradise’ (not to mention the golfer’s paradise, the camper’s paradise and the whiskey drinkers’). A text arrived in the morning from Jim to say he was supplying the cheese and crackers, bought from the famous Arran Cheese Shop, just before my Dad turned up in his gardening gear with his hedge loppers and his ladders. He was here to start the back garden.
The hedge running up the left of our back garden was ridiculously overgrown and, as a result, blocking a lot of the Scottish sunlight out so Dad and myself had been talking about trimming it all down at some point and getting it into some kind of order. I hadn’t expected to see him turning up on the doorstep with his ladders a mere four and a half hours before the arrival of the first guests though. The first of which would be the bouncy castle organised through one of the Mum’s in Ka’s work. This Mum owns, or is part owner, to a company that hires these inflatable structures out and Ka had the rather brilliant idea of hiring one to keep the kids entertained throughout the day. We had told people to turn up whenever, and however, they wanted from 3 o’clock onwards, saying there would be entertainment for the kids in the earlier hours of the afternoon.
Just as Dad and myself finished tidying the last of the giant bushes and hedge branches away from the back garden’s lawn, a job that involved surreptitiously chucking them over the back hedge into the council ‘controlled’ wilderness behind us whilst cutting and scratching my arms to ribbons, the bouncy castle man turned up at the front door, Ka immediately racing away in fright, up the stairs as she was once more still in her polka dot dressing gown (she does wash it, honest!). The guy brought through the black box generators along with a couple of mats and cables and gave the garden a quick check over and then instructed me to take down the washing lines before he disappeared through to the front of the house again. After obediently deroping our washing poles I jogged off through the house to meet the bouncy castle man once more, this time at the front door, mulling over how he was going to fit the giant roll of plastic between us, through the entrance. With a bit of shoving, a bit of squeezing, a bit of wall scraping and a touch of sweat we managed to squeeze the rolled up monstrosity through the not terribly wide front door, then finding ourselves in the hallway and faced with a similar problem three times more as we took the heavy delivery through the house and into the back garden.
That is the one major downfall of owning a terraced house. No side gate to the back garden.
Anyway, we eventually got the giant barrel shaped roll of plastic through and out on to the back lawn where the bouncy castle man immediately set to work, pinning the flat structure down into the wet, slightly mushy grass as I stood and watched the large square unfold over half the garden.
“We’re going to need a bigger garden”, I thought as John Williams’ dark, foreboding music built up in my head. The castle slowly rose up before me blocking the sunlight out that my Dad and myself had revealed in the previous few hours by chopping the surrounding hedges. A shadow now loomed over me from the giant arched roof of the inflatable monster which continued to rise like a cake in an oven with way too much baking powder. A slide seemed to shoot out from the nearest side of the structure as it filled with air, pillars and loops decorated with bubbling fish and swimming scuba divers rose up inside the filled framework and before long you could barely see a patch of grass around the plastic bouncy building.
These kids better turn up, I thought, as I seen the bouncy castle man off after he’d run through his rather vague health and safety procedure which basically involved making sure little kids were looked after within the castle and nobody did anything stupid.
I’m not sure he realised whose house he was in.
As Ka finished straightening her hair upstairs, I reminded her that I wasn’t doing any kid entertaining today. The whole reason we got the bouncy castle in was for me to specifically not do any child entertaining.
As soon as the first child came through the front door, who as the first on the bouncy castle? Muggins, that’s who.
At precisely three o’clock, on the dot, Aunty Lorna and her three girls, Wendy, Pamela and Susan, turned up along with Yvie, Wendy’s youngest. They all had their own customary tour of the new abode before Yvie finally got her way and headed out to the bouncy castle with Auntie Susan. Along with Yvie the first kids took to the bouncy castle and I helped support the little girl over the curved, wibbly wobbly surface inside the castle. Susan stood on the patio and supervised her niece as she got used to moving over the giant inflatable and the stranger egging her on inside it.
My cousin Sarah arrived soon after with her boys Christopher and Daniel and Uncle Ian and Aunt Anne just after. Before long I had company on the castle as Ian took wee Daniel up into the bobbing innards. More kids arrived in the form of my younger cousins Megan and Lauren with my Uncle Laurence and Aunt Maria, Claire arrived with her wee girl, Olivia and as the afternoon progressed and more and more of the families started trooping through the front door the house warming was soon in full swing. Ka got the buffet served single handedly, only because she refused anyone permission to help, I took coats and served drinks, my time on the bouncy castle now down to a minimal after the growing number of kids took over. I was also a little more hesitant to venture on to the bouncy castle along with so many kids after following Colin, Ka’s brother, on his first attempt to board the inflatable. He got so far as getting up on to the main section before losing his footing, falling back over his arse, taking me with him and managing to land on my head, much to the kids and the Symingtons’ amusement.
Mum, Dad, Jim, Lynsey Ann, Tricia and Tommy came in early evening, just in time for the second serving on the buffet table after the first table full got pretty much demolished within half an hour. Grace’s macaroni and homemade bread along with Ka’s wraps, olives, pizzas, prawns, cheese sticks and my very own chilli all went in the first tableful to be closely followed by the second which included Mum’s lasagne and Jillian and Jean’s coconut snowballs.
Jillian and Jean’s white chocolate coated coconut balls are now famous at family buffets, each in their own small paper cake cases and although merely around 2 – 3 centimetres in diameter each probably hold around 500 calories within their small, sweet interior. The coconut snowballs are almost becoming just as traditional as Aunt Linda’s trifle which, unfortunately, we lacked on Saturday as Linda could not make it due to an extreme cold.
My chilli was well received by most or so I thought until Pamela approached me in the kitchen and complemented it. She asked how I made it. As I started describing how I gently browned the mince in the pot she asked how I made my spices.
Make spices? I had no idea you could make spices? I bought mine from a shop in a jar, I replied to her.
Pamela frowned slightly and then asked how I made my chilli powder. Again I replied that it came from a jar bought in a supermarket. Morrisons own, I believe.
Looking thoroughly unimpressed now, Pamela squirmed with discomfort a little and started describing how she would usually make her chilli powder before trailing off and disappearing off to the living room again leaving me to ponder who invited Nigella flamin’ Lawson.
I wouldn’t have minded so much if it had been the real Nigella Lawson in my kitchen giving me her tips (just check my spelling there…).
Aunt Tricia had been so intrigued upon hearing about the bouncy castle beforehand that almost as soon as she arrived she joined Grace up on the giant inflatable and both ending up marooned, struggling to get up, thanks to the kids bouncing and ricocheting around them like popcorn in a microwave. At one point Joshua even accidentally headbutted Tricia across the head giving my Auntie a small, slowly growing, lump for the rest of the night whilst Joshua bounced off unaffected. In fact, he looked more than at home on the inflatable. He bounces about rooms like a blonde haired tigger at the best of times, giving him an inflated ground to use is possibly asking for trouble. I’m quite surprised he didn’t end up in Betty and Malcy’s garden next door.
The girls of the group also found it highly amusing to run up and hit, tap or punch either myself or Colin over the leg, waist or arse repeatedly before running off back up on to the castle. Lauren also took to mounting my lower right leg in an effort to hold me to the spot. Both were amusing at first but soon got slightly tiresome. There were perfectly good tall pillars of hot air within the castle, to punch and smack, why the kids felt the need to continue to hit Colin and myself I’m not sure.
Once the bouncy castle was gone everyone retreated inside for the night. Megan brought her guitar out to impress us with some Killers tunes and the rest of the night was spent chatting and drinking along with some more eating.
As I poured a few drinks for people and Tricia came into the kitchen requesting an aspirin, I spied Ka pulling a large, rather delicious looking, rectangular pizza from the oven’s innards. I’d barely eaten any of the previous tablefuls so I quickly rushed the drinks I was pouring. Once I’d finished pouring and dishing out the glasses I went straight for the buffet table in the living room to grab a square slice and found an empty breadboard with a large rectangular square of heat, grease and crumbs awaiting me.
“Who invited this lot?”