Baptism, balloons and musical bumps

At 1.15 of the 21st April we all gathered in St. Leonard's church for Sophie's baptism. Sophie was kitted out in her finest whites, but only after a rather chaotic, unsettled, morning in the house. We took our place in the front pew of the church alongside Angela and Kenneth, Sophie’s new Godparents and along with the gathered family and friends behind us, eagerly awaited the beginning of the service.
The tall, smiling, Deacon Michael welcomed us all into the church before retreating back into his sacristy to dress in his official ceremonial, baptismal robes, or, as some of the gathered thought, their granny's net curtains.
Deacon Michael, a Canadian who first appeared in Saint Leonards church a few months ago, took us through Sophie's christening service in his stirring, impassioned style, reminding us all why we were baptised and asking us to denounce the temptations of evil and the devil in his loud, clear voice. The Deacon, with his line delivery, and minimal hairstyle, reminded some of John Malkovich, although thankfully never got quite as sinister (and Malkovich isn’t Canadian).
Through baptism Sophie would be cleansed of original sin and in doing so this act would make her a saint. A rather ironic term of phrase as Sophie had not exactly been easy going that morning and if sainthood involves continuing to waken your parents up at twenty past six every morning on the dot, without fail, I'm not sure I'm keen on it.
We don't need an alarm clock anymore. Saint Sophie starts babbling away to herself at the exact same time every morning, gurgling and chattering away to herself, or her wee bunny blanket, her small voice echoing around the room in the still, silence of the early mornings. If Ka and myself try to ignore her, the babbling soon turns into shouting and whimpering until she gets one of us up out of bed. A habit I see getting worse as the years go on.
Anyway, apparently Sophie is now a Saint in the churches eyes, in fact, according to Deacon Michael she is cosmic, but she is only saintly until she reaches such an age as to when she can make her own moral decisions, an age, I suspect, she's already reached.
Sophie is now starting to develop a little character. She’s now started playing with toys, talking to her dollies and, rather oddly, purring like a particularly happy cat, or Gizmo from the Gremlin movies. For one thing she steadfastly refuses to take her feet down off the small table before her on her feeding chair. No matter how many times you ask her to lower her feet down off the chair's small table, she simply smiles or frowns at you bringing the feet immediately back up if moved.
Okay, it's hardly enough to banish her from the church and accuse her of devil worship but it could only be the start of a rocky road to ruin.
Sophie did behave herself all the way through the baptismal ceremony though with the only hint of upset being when I tipped her backwards towards the baptismal font at the specified time.
Sophie sat quite happily in both Ka, and then my arms, for the first half of the service, spending most of the time chewing away at her right hand, before I took her baptismal candle from Deacon Michael and lit it from the Easter candle burning behind us. Ka and myself then exchanged, Ka taking the smoky candle and me taking Sophie to lower into the baptismal font, backwards. As she was lowered head first Sophie started to look a little worried. Her eyes darting about for support or reassurance, her mouth wobbled and began to twist into a wince and then a definite frown descended as the Deacon poured the three, rather heavy, pourings of water over her head. After the quick prayers and blessings I brought Sophie back up to her normal horizontal position and she quickly got back to nonchalantly chewing her hand.
Ka took Sophie back shortly after and I was put in charge of the baptismal candle which continued to smoke as we came back down off the altar. As we stood and listened to Deacon Michael the candle, unknown to me, continued to smoke, sending a long, black, wispy cloud up into Ka and Sophie’s faces before Angela swiped the offending waxwork out of my hands.
Following the short service Ka, Sophie and myself stood and posed for some photos before we headed on up to the local dive of a pub, the Salmon Leap.
Fortunately for us the Salmon Leap has a rather nice function hall upstairs and with a bit of decor, involving the purchase of some helium balloons, confetti and ribbon, the place looked half decent for the hundred or so guests we had piling in. Ka, Sophie, Morven, and myself were among the last to arrive, me wobbling into the hall with Sophie looking up from her car seat, probably wandering what was going on. Before long Sophie was out and being passed from pillar to ballooned post, visiting the arms of as many of the guests as possible, mostly of the female variety. Aunties, uncles, cousins, grannies, grandads, family friends and work colleagues (who will basically be adopted aunties) had all gathered for the occasion and took the opportunity to chat and catch up with one another. More photos were taken whilst everyone queued for a drink, some disappearing briefly to the downstairs bar to catch the football scores.
The fantastic cake, gifted by Great Auntie Tricia and Great Uncle Tommy, was cut, after a short speech of thanks and the buffet was opened and quickly demolished. Mum, Grace, Jillian, Lynsey Ann, Jean, Steven, Pauline and a lady from Lynsey Ann's work, Gale, (a nice lady who'd unfortunately spotted me at a previous John Barrowman concert), all contributed to the fantastic buffet before it was eradicated by the hall full of hungry guests. Plates were piled high upon leaving the table but unfortunately neither Ka nor myself got any of it. Sophie probably had more to eat than us as she half sucked on a 150ml bottle, now exhausted, without her afternoon nap and half asleep after being passed around the room approximately twenty five times.
I did manage to get my hands on half an egg roll and gave the plate to Uncle Colin to keep an eye on for me whilst I briefly disappeared off to chat to someone else. Unfortunately I shouldn't have.
I did manage to get half a sandwich from somebody's leftovers, a couple of bits of Gale's fruit loaf and a piece of the afore mentioned christening cake which was now being expertly cut up and dished out by Mum and Auntie Tricia.
Ka and myself had previously had the idea of entertaining the gathered kids with a couple of games and had brought along a few prizes. The easiest games to organise on the dancefloor, without any chairs or implements, we reckoned, would be musical statues or musical bumps. Both required very little effort on our part and no tools, only music. Unfortunately the musical statues turned out to be a little harder to run that predicted. Upon pressing play on the ipod for Olly Murs to begin his 'Troublemaker' the gathered kids started moving. Unfortunately the kids were either moving very little, in order to freeze easily when the music was halted, or were seasoned musical statue players, jumping about crazy and then expertly freezing in position, baring blinking an eyelid. Since I was in charge of pressing the ipod buttons, Ka was put in place as the judge and she was rubbish. She refused to put any of the kids out. Some of them were quite obviously moving but Ka would shake her head and her hands and shout “keep going, play the music!”
When we eventually whittled the dancers down to two kids we just flung prizes at them both and announced 2 winners. We then got all the kids back up on to the dancefloor for the musical bumps and that proved even more impossible as all the kids collapsed down on to the wooden floor at the exact same time, making it near impossible to pick any losers out. Well, all except Joshua, who kept pushing his luck. After another whole constantly interrupted four minutes of Olly Murs we eventually got two winners and called it a day with the games. The kids were happy enough diving about the dancefloor without our help anyway, and had been beforehand, so we just left them to it and spent the rest of the afternoon catching up with the grown ups.
After more hellos and thanks for coming, people began heading off home from around half past four. Morgan started panicking about the leftover empty pasta bowls and the identity of their owner, Grace insisted on circling the hall with binbags and Dougie done his bit for the bar, collecting the empty glasses up.
In the end only Sophie, Ka, Mum, Dad, Kenny and Lynsey Ann were left. We packed up Pauline’s pasta bowls, (I reported back to Morgan that we’d found their owner), the remainder of Gale’s fruit loaf, the helium balloons and the enormous pile of presents and jumped in the car for home, Sophie looking out from the innards of her car seat, having fully awoken once more and probably wondering where she was off to now. Ka and myself were not looking forward to getting the little lady home as she had not had the chance to eat properly during the party making it more likely that she’d have a little tantrum come dinner time due to the hunger and tiredness.
As it turned out we were pleasantly surprised. Sophie sat in her feeding chair, with her feet up, giggling and laughing, greeting Mum, Dad and Lynsey with lifted arms, who popped round afterwards with the rest of the balloons and for a quick cuppa. This is another new thing for Sophie. The lifting of the arms. Sitting in her chair she was raising them up and down intermittently, making noises, purring and yapping, eyes whizzing about like that wee crazy Gremlin from The New Batch. This crazy good mood continued throughout bathtime and dinner until I lay her down for bed in her moses basket. It was only at that moment that she let out a whimper of protest.
A minute or so later, she was asleep. We weren’t far behind her.

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?”

Googling garden sheds

At half past nine last Saturday morning I was standing in a very quiet Argos. Yes, Argos. The shop for lazy people. The shop for folk who can’t be bothered going looking for something but can be bothered standing and flicking through a gargantuan catalogue, writing out a number from the big book, handing it over the till and then proceeding to a waiting area where they then go on to another desk but only after your number has been called. Surely the only shop that still operates with not only catalogues but also pencils. Short, neatly sharpened pencils.
Whatever happened to the bookie pens? They must have been too expensive. Maybe they were too old fashioned? We are now back to the lead and wood.
That Saturday morning had been dry since we awoke so I had decided, since it was the day of the grand house warming, to run up to the retail park and purchase a lawnmower and get the lawns cut, just in time for the visitors arriving at three in the afternoon.
Along with having our own staircase, we now have our own gardens. Something else that is currently a novelty.
Unfortunately we haven’t yet been gifted with good enough weather to enjoy the gardens but as the grass had needed a cut and there was a distinct lack of rain in the air for a change I zoomed straight up to the local catalogue shop after having spotted the lawnmower at a good price on one of my web meanderings during the week's lunch hours in work.
Due to the busy workload of recent weeks I've found my break times changing from day to day so have completely lost track with everyone else's tea times and have found myself eating my sandwiches at the desk, all alone. Spending my lunchbreaks googling lawnmowers is not how I'd imagined things to change after my move to the Glasgow offices.
The other day I found myself googling Garden Sheds!
Is this how it all starts? Middle age? Googling garden sheds?
Surely it's too soon for all of that... but then I do need somewhere to put a lawnmower now. The garden shed idea has been temporarily knocked on the head anyway as they seem to be far more expensive than I'd first envisioned. Even in our trusty local catalogue store.
Ka and myself had visited the same Argos the previous weekend after seeing a baby bouncer chair online for a good price. We’d went along to investigate and found the item unavailable. The helpful, slightly over enthusiastic, wee woman behind the desk that served us asked if there was any way we’d been interested in a store card. We turned the opportunity down. The Argos lady then asked if there was any particular time we could accept its delivery from another store further afield. We decided against it after finding that the bouncy chair would have to be delivered on a work day. The Argos lady wandered whether we’d consider travelling to pick the item up. We shrugged and then told her it didn’t matter that much, we would pick up another bouncy chair elsewhere.
Obviously this was the wrong thing to say. The woman asked if there was any other bouncy chair of interest to us. We said no. She asked if there was any other item of interest to us. Anything at all in the massive catalogue. Again we insisted it was fine, there was nothing else. Now with a hint of desperation in her voice, the Argos lady asked if there was anything else she could look up for us, anything else she could do.
I had no idea Argos employees were on a commission. I wonder how much she would have got for a bouncy chair.
The same lady was behind the checkout desk when I bought the lawnmower on Saturday morning. A Flymo Easimo, complete with grass trimmer.
I have no idea about lawnmowers. This one had wheels, a blade and a collection box so it looked fine to me and my Dad also confirmed it seemed like a reasonable price when he phoned me up that morning. Being the green fingered expert my Dad is the guy to ask when any gardening advice.
Thankfully the lawnmower was available to pick up, there and then so half of the wee Argos lady’s questions from the previous week were not needed making her look a little disappointed as she started the payment procedure. The lady did try and talk me into some monthly cover payments but after some quick, fraudulent, consideration from myself, involving some unconvincing humming and hawing, I was off to the pick up point in the deserted store. It was obviously too early for all the usual Argos customers so I had the pick of the plastic blue/green seats at pick up point B. Clasping my massively long receipt, for my one item, I looked up at the television screen to see at which position my number stood at.
I was second. There was literally no other customer in the store so how I was second in the queue I don't know.
Still it was only a matter of minutes until the lawnmower was delivered. One of the young employees shouted my number out, even though I, the only person standing waiting on an item, was already making my way up to the pick up point.
And it was the wrong pick up point. The girl had planted the lawnmower down blatantly under the ‘A’ sign. My receipt told me I would be picking my lawnmower up under the ‘B’ sign.
Obviously I couldn't be bothered hanging around any longer than I had to so let them off with this, grabbed the large box and ran for the car, ready to cut up some serious greenery.
After a quick unpacking of various orange and black metal pieces and a short ten minutes or so of construction, a quick cup of tea, a piece and sausage and a conversation with Dad over the phone who was now warning me of the dangers of cutting wet grass. I’d never really heard of anyone electrocuting themselves whilst mowing a wet lawn but Dad insisted it happens quite often. Surely there’d be health warning about cutting lawns then? Would lawnmowers come with safety gear or a license if they were that dangerous?
Whilst Ka prepared the food for the housewarming guests I tackled the back lawn only pausing to empty the collection box hitched on to the mower’s back and to talk to the wee neighbour whose head appeared over the hedge at one point. Betty chatted away for around five minutes, introducing herself and eventually her husband, Malcy, (not sure of the spelling there!) who ventured out into their garden when he heard his name mentioned. Ka introduced herself from the back door, still in her pyjamas and polka dot dressing gown. After the giving us the lowdown on the surrounding neighbourhood Betty and Malky disappeared back indoors and let me finish the back lawn before I headed out to the front. Dad turned up halfway through my frontal assault to either find out if I needed a hand or to make sure I wasn’t electrocuting myself.
Whilst cutting the front I met the neighbour on the other side. An smartly dressed old gent by the name of Leslie whose getting his windows replaced by the council shortly, has a son and a daughter and an alsation dog whose getting a bit long in the tooth and will have to be put down. I didn’t quite understand everything the old guy said but managed to translate most of it. Ka introduced herself from the front door, still moaning about being in her pyjamas and polka dot dressing gown.
After Leslie had gone back inside I quickly finished the front lawn, neatly strimming the edges, Dad disappeared off to get on with his various gardening jobs dotted around East Kilbride and Ka got herself ready after finishing her work in the kitchen, finally taking of her polka dot dressing gown.
Before long everybody started arriving. Cherly and Roslyn were the first to arrive, with Cherly’s two kids, Eilidh and Orla. Orla, being a small baby, was immediately dumped into my arms, for practice.
Around half an hour later the front door didn’t seem to close. Coats were taken, drinks were given out and the washing hanging out on the lines in the back garden, which included my space invader boxing shorts, quickly taken in. There were more babies and kids than predicted and soon babies were being tripped over, wiped up after, kept entertained, fed or generally watched like a hawk and all within the confines of the living room and kitchen.
Nobody went outside.
The rain was off, I kept telling everyone, it’s not rained all day, let’s go out and sit in the garden. I’d spent half the day mowing the lawns and making the gardens acceptable for guests so it was the perfect opportunity to show them off, not to mention my hard graft from behind the spinning blade.
“It’s too cold” David, the nursery teacher from Ka’s work, shook his head, to which everyone else seemed to silently agree and chat on among themselves. All the hard work had been for nothing.
Tony and Suzanne could see my plight but after Milo got his boots a little muddy from running over the grass, they decided against it.
At least Milo appreciated the freshly cut lawns.
Resigning myself to the fact that no one was going to be sitting out on the lawn anytime soon I went into the fridge and got out another beer.
Around ten or eleven hours later, and more than ten or eleven beers later, Ka and myself seen off the last of the evening guests. Chaz and Pauline sauntered out into the street to jump into their taxi and we shut the front door for the last time and got to our bed.

Conversational struggles

On Friday night I was at a stranger's birthday party. Strangers to me, but not Ka as it was for one of the women in Ka's hairdressers. Linda was 50 and invited us along to the Tannochside Miners Welfare Club.
The Tannochside Miners’ Club was like any other Miners’ Club. One of those small, aged buildings, no way near as busy as days gone by, probably situated in a dark, slightly dodgy street, that houses various halls and bars for various different occasions and, to make up for the stickiness of the carpets, serves cheap booze and allows self catering. Perfect for private functions.
This Miners’ Welfare Club was only a short taxi journey from Ka's Mum and Dad's in Uddingston, so we had decided to save the taxi fare and stay the night there.
In all honesty, I wasn't particularly keen on going.
An invitation to a birthday party for a woman that goes to the same hairdresser as your wife is not a fantastic prospect for any husband I’m sure. A party a which you'll know no one but the wife, who'll probably chat away endlessly to the other women, leaving you sitting looking like a lemon.
Cue the awkward conversations with fellow husbands in similar situations (if there are any!).
I wouldn’t know anyone. I had visions of being surrounded by the gaggle of women that usually inhabit ‘Nutters’, Alan, the hairdresser’s, salon in Tannochside. As the women laugh and joke together, reminiscing about many a Saturday gone by in Alan’s ‘Nutters’, I’d be left sitting with a pint in the middle of a Miner’s Welfare hall, listening to ‘Grease’ from the giant speakers in the corner of the room, watching a bunch of older women line dancing or doing the slosh, whilst vaguely attempting to mingle with husbands in similar situations.
Mingling with other husbands is sometimes a bit of a struggle. At least I’ve found it a bit of a struggle at various parties or weddings in the past when I’ve been invited along as the husband of Ka.
The conversational struggles usually evolve from football. Quite often I've met other blokes for the first time and they've instantly launched into conversations about the nation’s favourite sport. Some of the guys have either hinted at or just asked straight out, "what team do you support then?", always with a suspicious glint in their eye.
It seems to be a bit of a clincher for some folk.
In fact, some husbands look at you even more suspiciously if you admit to not really giving a sh*t about any team. Sometimes you're better off just admitting to a team, any team, as you risk the suspicious looks which silently accuse you of great unmanliness (most people have never heard of The Glipton Giants).
I love movies but I don't hit out with, "what's your favourite movie?" whenever I meet someone, sneering if I don't like their answer and they reply with something starring Adam Sandler, for instance.
Well, maybe I would sneer if it eventually came out in conversation, but I wouldn't ask straight out where their movie allegiances lay, as if trying to get into some sort of conversational gang from the outset.
But then, if you are into football, like 90% of the male population seems to be, maybe it's a good thing the whole “what team you support” question? At least the other bloke would know exactly where you stand. Perhaps he’s only making a genuine attempt to strike up a conversation himself, struggling to think of anything else to talk about, and wouldn’t necessarily lynch you if you replied, admitting your support for his bitter rivals.
Anyway, as it happened, I didn’t have anything to worry about. Ka and myself met Jean and then Alison and Ben in the Windmill pub, just five minutes walk from the Miners. All three I was meeting for the first time properly, after only greeting them in passing in ‘Nutters’ before. Jean had walked from her house round the corner. She had just buried her dog (not immediately before leaving but a few days back) so was still a little down about that.
Over our first drink, Jean started talking of the burial and how this girl had passed away after only sixteen years.
‘Gawd, that’s terrible’ I said, as a photo was being passed round. It was only when I seen the photo that I realised it was a dog we were talking about.
“Oh, it’s a dog we’re talking about! That’s alright then!”, I very nearly said with a big smile and a deep sigh of relief.
Ben and Alison were nice and down to earth. Alison, a Financial Advisor with very shiny teeth’s Assistant, was chatty and outgoing and Ben, her hubby, was quieter and laid back. Ben didn’t even mention what football team he supported.
As the night went on, our conversation moved from many subjects including work, the secrets of Morrison’s ‘freshly made’ bread, shipbuilding, holidays, potato scones, Terry Pratchett, ‘Game of Thrones’ and cameras. In fact, we had more than a few things in common, which Ka and Alison both seemed quite relieved about. Ka stopped me at more than point during the night’s proceedings to make sure I was alright and that Ben was a nice guy. I nodded with a exasperated frown. It was almost as if the two wives were trying to set us up.
At some point, Alison probably asked Ben the same question except he probably replied with something along the lines of “no, he’s a weirdo, hasn’t even mentioned footie yet!”
We walked into the Miners’ Club at half past eight, immediately getting berated by the DJ for being an hour late, which turned Ka against him for the rest of the night. Whenever the DJ would hit out with a smarmy comment from behind the mike, and Ka was on the dancefloor, she’d waste no time in shouting a curt reply back at him. Alan the hairdresser waved at us from a table and bought us all a drink before disappearing off home and leaving us to the party. He was back in ‘Nutters’ early the next morning so couldn’t stay on to enjoy the dancing or the buffet.
A round of 5 drinks for £13. Where would you get that bargain other than a Miner’s Welfare Club? We also snaffled a couple of bags of onion rings for ourselves, enjoyed a magnificent buffet, drank lots of beer, finished with a Jack Daniels and headed off back down the hill to Uddingston in a taxi with a driver who was boasting about his new cable box. With a face like an old leather cloth, an earring and a voice like a emptying skip full of gravel this taxi driver glared at me as he drove. A one off payment of £180 and he was getting every channel available.
No fuss. No bills. He’d just uninstalled his Virgin package and got the new cable box from a guy he knows. Apparently I’ll know a guy too, if I’m interested.
“Ye’ll know a guy”, he said. “All yer movies and aw yer fitbaw”.
I wasn’t sure I did know a guy.

The season of the spirit

Peace and quiet. Saturday afternoon, alone in the flat. Ka was out at the hairdressers, attending the usual Christmas party at Alan’s, along with the salon’s other monthly Saturday afternoon regulars. Ka and myself were having our annual Chrimbo flat gathering in the evening, so it was very much the calm before the storm, and the perfect time to tackle some painting (as long as I hoovered up after myself, I was told).
I once more set up my easel to tackle my latest, a portrait of the great Al Pacino, which I have been trying to progress for the past three months. I've spent more than a few afternoons on this particular portrait and it's now getting more than a little frustrating. I had thought he may have been one of the easier ones with his prominent nose, heavily lined eyes, messy hair, creased chin. These features make Pacino’s face one of the most recognisable in recent cinema.
Or so you’d think. He’s turning out to be a far harder portrait than previous efforts. The quiet worked, to an extent though, and the painting did progress, just not as far as I'd hoped. The frustration got the better of me and I gave up at one point, taking some time out with a bowl of pasta, collapsing on to the couch to watch half of ‘Planes, Trains and Automobiles’ the story of another fairly frustrated fellow in the form of Steve Martin.
Eventually going back to the easel I battled on with Pacino's jawline until around half past five when the phone disturbed the quiet, and it was only then that I realised I was painting in near darkness. Ka was nearly finished, so I set off in the car to pick her up after clearing the majority of the art materials up.
Ka emerged from 'Nutters' with a new hairdo and a big smile on her face after a few glasses of wine, so I got away with the fact I hadn't yet hoovered the living room yet. Alan and the gathered women in the salon all called on me to come in to the salon as I stood awkwardly in the doorway, inviting me like the sirens on the rocks. Thankfully I resisted, insisting that I'd left the car running and escaped unhindered.
After getting home, I gave the flat a quick hoover and a tidy around, Ka lit the Christmas candles, the Christmas lights were switched on, the crisps and nuts were dispensed, the beer was made ready in the fridge and the ice stocks checked. Everything was set.
Chris, Pauline and Chaz were the first to arrive at around quarter to eight, the two girls and Ka immediately congregating in the kitchen as Chaz and myself settled down on the couches with our first beer to talk about the past week.
Chaz had been on location in Glasgow during the week, working as an extra on the latest Scarlett Johansson movie following his stint escaping zombies in George Square back in August.
Roslyn, Iain, Martin and Claire then arrived around half an hour later with some bottles, pressies and a 'Deal or No Deal' DVD game which we did eventually have a game of, halfway through the night, but unfortunately lost interest in. I think it may have had something to do with the fact we had to sit and listen to Noel Edmonds.
Ka handed out the now traditional Christmas snowballs, advocaat with lemonade, which this year was spiced up with the addition of a little Morgans rum, recommended to Ka by one of the sirens earlier. Soon after that Chaz was handing out the shots, Di Saronno Amaretto, being the weapon of choice, the midori and the Jack Daniels was getting cracked open and Iain was even giving shots of Buckfast out from his second bottle, a challenge which only a few plucked up the courage to accept.
Reality tv, hair transplants, Matt Smith as the Doctor and favourite movies were among the subjects discussed throughout the night as Ka served up pizzas and party food in the kitchen. Reminisces of movies that we watched as kids became a talking point, Chaz, the guy who watched ‘Predator’ and ‘Robcop’ when he was seven, remembering the terrors of Martin Rosen’s 'Watership Down'. With it’s haunting music, nightmarish imagery, themes of creation, death, destruction, animal pack mentality and brutality along with it’s tense, unsettling atmosphere it did seem to disturb more than a few kids who had been expecting another ‘Bambi’.
I’ll always remember the evil General Woundwort, the evil Rabbit chief with the glass eye (Was it a glass eye? Can rabbit’s get glass eyes?).
Not to mention that stupid bird with the annoying voice.
Apparently another of Chaz’s favourites was 'Chitty Chitty Gang Bang'.
I’m not sure where he was going for his videos when he was a kid?
He claimed this film title to be a slip of the tongue, of course, and went on to say how the Child Catcher had freaked him out.
But then, who didn’t that guy freak out? He was certainly a good bit freakier than any Predator or General Woundwort.
After Pauline and Chris left to prepare for their early starts the next morning, we got the obligatory Christmas tunes out and whilst having a wee dance, argued over which was better. My choice of John Lennon’s ‘War is Over’ was shouted off, and Elton John and The Waitresses were shouted for instead. Chaz got to listen to his choice of ‘A Spaceman Came Travelling’ before that was forwarded two thirds of the way through, at which point he rolled over on the couch and conked out. A first for Chaz if ever there was one. The rest of us continued until around half four in the morning until we all started to wilt.
I woke up the next morning to the sound of the bottle bin getting some serious fuel in the close outside. Ka was up and about, whirring around the flat in her pink polka dot dressing gown. Chaz blinked from the couch at around eleven as Ka gave him a shout, wanting her living room back, itching to get the hoovering done and settle down to watch Strictly Come Dancing on the iPlayer with a nice cup of coffee. I got up out of bed for long enough to see him off, the two of us looking a bit worse for wear after the Amaretto shots, and then immediately fell back into my pit, leaving Ka to watch Harry Judd’s triumph.
Chris appeared at the door a little later. Again I got up out of bed long enough to greet her and her wee grandchild, Chloe, who, after removing her wellies at the door, marched rather quickly into the living room, avoiding the smelly, dishevelled looking state lumbering out of the nearby bedroom. As the three girls sang a cute rendition of ‘Jingle Bells’ in the living room, I knew there was going to be no chance of getting any more sleep.

Grace's surprise and the toilet incident

The five or six cars piled up outside the Leckie/McGarva household may have given away the surprise element to Grace’s 60th birthday party on Saturday night. If it did though, Grace certainly didn’t let on, as she almost screamed with surprise upon entering Steven and Angela’s living room to find us all sitting there. We all broke in to the routine of the ‘Happy Birthday’ song, as Grace stood there, smiling over the surprise, while I darted about the floor taking some photos and Steven quietly filmed it all with his new camcorder from the corner of the room.
A good portion of Ka's family, along with Lynsey Ann, my Mum and Dad and myself gathered in the large living room to surprise my mother in law who’d come along with Dougie believing the Saturday night to be a simple dinner date with Angela, Steven, Morgan and Joshua. At least she had believed that up until five minutes before leaving her own house when Dougie had asked her to bring her new photo book, that she’d received for her 60th, in order to show Betty.
As Steven made his way up from Uddingston, after getting Grace and Dougie into the car, the rest of us had been running round the house, decorating, preparing food, nappying, fetching drinks, reintroducing ourselves to relatives not seen in months and some never met at all. As the final moments drew near the smokers were hurriedly pulled in from the front garden path, their cigarettes left spinning on the pavestones, and the kids were ordered to move into the living room, myself picking Joshua up from where her rambled around the buffet table in the second front room and planting him down in the living room, where he simply gave a slight frown of confusion at all the hustle and bustle and staggered on to the plate of cakes at the end of the room. Everyone began frantically hushing one another as Grace and Dougie’s feet were heard from behind the closed blinds which obscured the living room’s large bay windows, the small red stones of the driveway crunching underneath their feet, as Steven led them up towards the front door where Angela would meet them upon arrival.
Once the ‘Happy Birthday’ song was over and the initial surprise over with, Steven got the music on and Ka and Jillian got the food cooking whilst the rest of us started enjoying ourselves.
I had been enjoying myself up until I had to make a visit to Steven and Angela’s loo, a visit which ended up being far longer than originally planned. Unfortunately the toilet refused to flush properly and my, let’s just say, deposit, refused to be removed by this particular toilet’s flushing system. Not great in any situation, but in a house party, with a bunch of your wife’s relatives waiting patiently, not great at all.
As I stood there waiting on the cistern refilling itself for the third time the knocks at the door began. Concerned voices and questions from beyond the closed door started echoing through the hallway.
“Is somebody still in there?”
“Who is it?”
“Is the door stuck?”
“Is it the same person that’s been in there all this time?”
Various questions such as these echoed throughout the hallway until Ka’s voice finally piped up.
“Where’s Michael?” Grimacing, I gritted my teeth. “He’s not in there, and he’s not in there”. The ‘theres’ in question presumably referring the every room, other than the toilet in which I stood, swearing at a piece of excretion.
“Michael are you in there?” Ka rattled the opposite side of the door. Hesitantly I closed the lid over the toilet and allowed my dearest Judas wife entry at which I explained the situation. Ka replied by checking her make-up in the mirror and then leaving me to it. Before I got the chance to lock the door after her, Angela, the sister in law, appeared at the door, to which I again, reluctantly admitted the situation. Unfortunately Colin, Ka’s brother, overheard the situation as he walked by and almost spat out a haggis ball with laughter. Angela, determined that she would flush better, took control of the situation. She firmly grasped the toilet’s flush handle and twisted at which the usual gush of water flowed through the bowl.
“There” Angela shrugged and opened the lid of the toilet up. Unfortunately my floater was still there, bobbing around quite happily. Angela shrieked and ran from the room.
“It’s not even very big!” I yelled after her.
“It’s the size of the bowl!” Angela’s voice reverberated throughout the hall, as other passing party guests soon started mumbling about the toilet situation, the occasional laughing.
In my defense, the flush of the toilet was pretty pathetic and I cannot believe that it’s never happened to them before with such a poor plumbing system. Anyway, without going into too much detail, I eventually managed to get rid of the obstinate piece of discharge after attacking it with a good few large cups of water before Ka and Jillian had the chance to come through with a boiling kettle (a remedy Auntie Lorna bestowed upon them after, presumably, much debating in the living room with all the other family members).
Following the toilet incident I spent some time in the kitchen, plucking up the courage to face the guests in the living room again, conversing with Colin and Ryan and any of the drink seekers visiting in order to top up their glass or pull another bottle from the fridge. Uncle Bill told stories of Hawaii, Las Vegas and losing luggage at airports. Paul spoke with me about old Star Wars toys and the inability to throw any of them out. Colin talked of Torchwood, Tom Jones and T in the Park and Jean dreaded the London train at half past nine the next morning as she drank another small glass of wine from the box in the fridge.
Morgan, Sarah and Joshua played in the large rubber dinghy in the middle of the hallway, Uncle Bill occasionally jumping in to act as Captain.
Wee Joshua ate more than his usual allocation of cakes after he’d got bored of the good few pieces of Jillian’s pasta I’d fed him from my paper plate.
Grace and Dougie enjoyed a slow dance to Gerry and the Pacemakers’ ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ immediately after which Dougie demands for Tina Turner’s “Simply the Best” were largely ignored or laughed at.
It had been a successful wee night and it looked like Grace, and everyone else, pretty much enjoyed themselves. It wasn’t until half past one that people started saying their goodbyes, Ka tidying as they went, clearing most of the rubbish up and cleaning up the buffet table which, Ka and myself were pleased to see, had very little of our two lasagnes left. Must have been the Bechamel sauce…

Clowns and carrot cake

We were surrounded. Screaming, shouting, running, bursting, waving, dancing, wrestling, kids. It was the wonderful Morgan's sixth birthday over the weekend.
Ka, myself and the rest of the Leckies and McGarvas went along to our neice's special party in the church hall on Sunday. Around 26 small children in their best party gear hesitantly moved into the hall, after being delivered by parents and greeted at the door by Morgan and her Dad, Steven, who handed each a sticky name label. After the initial disappointment of not being assigned a name tag I went through to the hall and started taking photos of the party goings on, which were largely centred on a female clown hired for the occasion.
The clown was called Giggles and used to be a Procurator Fiscal. One hell of a career change, I thought, she must have wanted a break from the silly costumes and funny wigs. Giggles didn't have a wig. She wasn't even wearing a red nose!? How can a clown NOT have a red nose?!
Giggles spent the next three hours talking through a headset microphone at the kids gathered round, singing songs, playing games and basically controlling most of the kids extremely well in the potentially excitable party environment.
For three hours the clown's amped up voice went on. Kids sitting, shouting up at her. I wondered if this was the kind of thing I'd have to get used to as a father to be. Kids birthday parties. Bunches of yelling kids, chattering mothers and an over excitable Procurator Fiscal who thinks she can get away with being a clown without a red nose.
Only two of the many Dads who delivered kids actually stuck around for the party, the rest were Mums eithering talking away at each other or sitting, quietly watching their small child being entertained. Unfortunately I got bored halfway through and entertained myself by nicking marshmallows, eating carrot cake and talking to Colin McG about The A-Team and The Karate Kid movies. We took care not to speak too loudly though as you ran the risk of Giggles pulling you on to the dancefloor and giving you a job to do, a fate which befell some of the louder gabbing mothers.
Ka and myself once discussed the possability of kids entertainment for a living. Together with Colin and Jillian, who were both members of the Hopscotch travelling theatre group, we could make a bomb - and there wouldn't be any of this namby pamby everybody wins at pass the parcel or musical bumps mentality!
Giggles kept asking us viewers, sitting around the hastily seated kids, who was the last to get their bum on the floor during musical bumps. No matter how much I kept shouting out to Giggles she kept blatantly ignoring me, insisting it to be a draw when it so obviously wasn't. I had been watching. I pinpointed her in the small crowd of kids from my chair at the side. "Her with the pigtails!" I was yelling. "She's out! O - U - T, out, I tell ye!"
I'm looking forward to hosting the kids parties. The kids will get a giant bag of smarties to gee them up, a bouncy castle, if I'm feeling extravagant, and a run about the the back garden (even if it's raining!). Maybe the odd pinata up on the washing line... and there'll be no politically correct and boringly fair clowns! There'll be a winner at pass the parcel. The rest of the losing kids can go home bubbling if they want. If it turns out my child's going to be a bubbler then it'll do him good. It's best he, or she, learns how to be a good sport in life as early as possible and understands that sometimes they'll end up a loser. Just like their old Dad!... That didn't sound right...

Who nicked my custard?

Snow is falling, all around us. Christmas is now in full swing. At least two inches of snow is lying on the ground, cars are skidding on the roads, the shops are still packed and we're all waking up bleary eyed with sore heads from the beer consumed the night before. This was the case yesterday anyway as I woke up feeling slightly under the weather, Ka jumping out of bed to begin the tidy up operation after our little party the night before. Unfortunately she had to wait a while before attempting the living room as Colin McG, Jillian and Kenny were still lounging around watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, either on the folded down futon or, in Kenny's case, across the couch, under a burgundy sleeping bag. As they shouted for pieces and sausage from Ka in the kitchen I rose and staggered through groaning. With every hangover I have as I get older the idea of giving up alcohol for life seems better and better. Life is too short to be wasting half days under a cloud of booze in the brain. But then you could argue the other way and say life is too short to sit at a Christmas party sober, worrying about the effects that a couple of beers will give you the next morning.
The party was pretty fun though with most folf arriving around half past eight. My brother turned up a little worse for wear after a work day out and was a little disgruntled when we forced him to drink at least four pints of water before being allowed any alcohol. He complained at first but when we all realised it was having the desired effect he did what he was told (though i suspect it was more fear of Ka that talked him into it). So Kenny shouted at Miley Cyrus on the advent calender, Chaz got slagged for his pink sweater, Colin McG nicked the custard, Chris had a power nap under the coats, a white wine spritza cured Heather of her food poisoning and Claire hummed to the music whilst listening to Gillian and her wedding plans. Most people seemed to enjoy themselves although we probably waited a little too long before starting the quiz, hastily prepared by myself in the afternoon. Apparently it was half past one at night by the time we started and as a result things got a little too loud and one person in particular got a little too irate forgetting the whole 'it's only for a laugh' theme that is supposed to run through these Christmas games. Everyone was too afraid to say anything though as the guy in question is a copper and he would probably have arrested someone the mood he was in.
The Christmas tunes along with the drinks were in full flow and those of us left in the flat didn't get to sleep till around 6 in the morning. Chaz was the last to leave after Clair and Martin, who ended up having to push their taxi into motion as it had ground to a halt in the snow on the upwards slope of the street outside.
A push I could have done with on Friday morning as the snow that had fallen on Thursday night had turned to ice and as a result transformed our street into a icey slide. I managed to drive the car half way up the street before it stopped and started spinning its wheels on the spot creating an unfortunate burning smell. I ended up gritting half the street on my lonesome with one of my Granpa's old spades using the grit bin positioned further down the hill, sliding as I worked, hands turning to ice. The South Lanarkshire Council have once again chosen to ignore most streets that are not bus routes and we have not had one grit lorry all weekend. Some of the main roads have not even been gritted or cleared of snow in the past few days making travel around East Kilbride slightly trecherous. Not the best when you've still got presents to buy.

Gate crashers, kilts and christenings

A busy weekend there with some parties and a long awaited shopping trip. The weekend kicked off with a birthday party. Happy Birthday Uncle Tommy who hit the grand age of 50 on Friday (well, his party was on Friday anyway). Family and friends gathered at the Rolls Royce Club in EK to celebrate and to help raise some funds for the local hospital. A good night was had by all as we enjoyed the food and music with the credit crunch defying bar prices. There was over ten of us at the Reid tables and the drink prices were coming in at approximately 15 quid a round. Fantastic. You'd probably pay at least 15 for five drinks in Glasgow. No wonder Rolls Royce is making hundreds redundant - they should maybe think about upping their club bar prices. It was down to the women to rescue the dancefloor again. A gate crasher from Kenny's work turned up with a girl in tow, drunk and, worse than that, dancing willingly. Trust the gate crasher to put us blokes to shame. So, as we neared the end of the night a good bunch of us ended up doing the Macarena. I say "us" because embarassingly, for some Jack Daniels fuelled reason, I ended up shaking my hips to the awful spaniards, the surrounding Aunties, alonside Ka, Chris and Martin, showing me how it was done. As far as I can remember the dance moves were extremely similar to The Time Warp, in fact, it was a blatant rip off. Richard O'Brien should sue! However, it has been a while since I have done the Time Warp so don't quote me on that...Why is it you always end up getting up and doing these embarassing dances with Aunties? When you Mum asks you to dance you give her a firm and definite NO. One which may or may not come in the form of two words but when it is an Auntie you somehow struggle to give the same response. It is as if your conscience is unable to give an Auntie a negative response. There is something in the programming that conflicts and after a short mind battle, short circuits and results in a tired "okay then".
After saying our goodbyes to Tommy and Tricia we left the party to walk straight into a small crowd at the car park exit. The gate crasher was busy insulting a passing girl's diet plan and, as a result, was causing a bit of a raucous. Ka tried to calm the girl down and usher her on but unfortunately the bloke kept persisting with his idiocy. As Dad finally managed to pull Ka, Kenneth and myself from the crowd people started hitting off the temporary metal work fence, erected around the car park, like vertical trampolines. Shortly afterwards, the numbskull that started it all dived into a waiting car and sped off into the night, not before stopping at the side of the road and offering Kenny a lift. Thankfully, Kenny declined and Mum piled us into the car and drove us all home.
The next day was the long awaited kilt hunting. Sprung out of bed, with a rather surprising springiness considering the Jack Daniels from the night before, and wolved down a bacon roll, pulled on some clothes and jumped on a bus for Renfield Street. It was kilt day and time to bite the bullet. Generally not comfortable in kilts I had been kind of dreading the kilt day but, as it turned out, did not have much to worry about. Met Dougie and Colin at Slanj in St Vincent Street, a kilt hire place that, as we found out, only hires out a vast selection of 4 grey tartan kilts. Disappointing. Just as disappointing as the rubbish service we did not really get in the place. After Kenny arrived we headed out, disappointed and a little pessimistic, and headed straight for Moss Brothers on Renfield Street where Dad caught up with us, disconcertingly sneaking up behind up us as we were talking to the tailor. Unlike Slanj, the tailor in Moss Brothers went straight to work with his measuring tape and kitted us out in the full gear disappearing through a small doorway in the corner occasionally and reappearing almost instantly through the same door with kilts, jackets and shoes, hindered only by our over pondering of shoe sizes. Anyway, after the kilts were booked up Dad, Kenny and I went, yep, you guessed it, to the pub where we had a few pints and a spectacular pub lunch watching Scotland beat Italy.
The next day it was out and about again, only this time to the christening of my cousin Sarah's little boy, Christopher. It was good to catch up with some of the other family members after the service where the priest talked in detail about the light and the dark in religion and the rejection of evil drawing comparisons with the Star Wars movies. Darth Vader, of course, being the devil incarnate. Even though I had drawn similar comparisons many moons ago I did wonder if this was the first time I had heard the dreaded name Darth Vader in a chapel before. Now the priests are using the the texts of George Lucas in their sermons. I always knew Star Wars was worth watching.

Buffets make a good party

Unfortunately it looks like Gran Reid may be in hospital for another while yet. We were over in Hairmyres once again this evening. I took her raisins this time, but they were rejected. Lemon cakes - nope. But she did take the yakult. Never tried it yet. Considered nicking a bottle before I gave her the pack of twelve but I thought that may look slightly dodgy. She'd probably have had something to say about that. Apparently Princess Anne is visiting the hospital on Wednesday so she may get a royal visit. I'm pretty sure the Princess is not just visiting Gran Reid. She must have a ribbon to cut somewhere... but you never know. It's amazing the amount of people Gran Reid knows. A royal engagement.
Talking of engagements, Ka and myself spent our Valentines evening on Saturday at Stuart and Michelle's great wee engagement party in Blantyre. It turned out to be quite a fun wee night as Ka and myself sat and hummed and hawed over the different tunes that were played from the over enthusiastic DJ who, like the rest of his kin, had a strange inability to speak clearly into a microphone without sounding like a garbled Scottish version of Westwood (the DJ, not the East Kilbride neighbourhood where I grew up). Plus the party had a great buffet. It was especially welcome on Saturday as Ka and myself had not eaten since breakfast so as soon as the DJ gave the announcement (from which we just about made the word open out) Ka just managed to refrain me from jumping from my seat. As it happened I wouldn't have had a chance anyway as we were seated at the other end of the hall and, as we discovered, Stuart and Michelle have some very hungry relatives. As the queue shrank I did manage to venture up though a get two plates full for our table. The pakora and marshmallows were great. The buffet makes a good party. After the obligatory Loch Lomond Ka and myself headed out for the taxi home, leaving the party to the chaos that had erupted between two groups of friends and a girl collapsing from 'exhaustion' on the dancefloor.
Much to the annoyance of Ka's pal Tracey, Mr Russell Brand cancelled his scottish dates over the weekend, leaving the girls without a horribly loud, comedian to ogle over on sunday night so had to make do with a night on the tiles leaving me, alone, in blissful quiet. A quiet night infront of the box watching Lost and the first episode in the new series of Damages. Not sure if Damages needed a second series yet but time will tell...

The magic touch

Christmas is fast approaching, more so now after our weekend of excess involving much drink and food. Ka and myself hosted our now traditional Christmas Party on Saturday night and it was a enjoyable success. The first few hours were split with the blokes in the kitchen and the women in the living room. As the night went on, however, things relaxed as they always do, especially with a little help from my own Chrimbo quiz and Ka's Pass the parcel. Yep, pass the parcel. I controlled the music while the four oddly shaped parcels spun around the room behind me. Eileen seemed slightly disappointed after she excitedly unwrapped her big rude looking long present to find a large Scotland pen bought from the local pound shop. Claire won the musical Christmas mug, which had stopped being musical at the time of wrapping but somehow came back to life with Claire's magic touch. The jagermeister also made a long awaited return. Approximately five years ago I bought a bottle in America and have been trying to finish it ever since. It is now kept in a low kitchen cupboard among some other vials and potions. Iain was quite impressed when I produced the large green bottle from the low kitchen cupboard, blowing the dust from it's glass shell. Together with Martin and Steven we immediately drank to each others health. Apparently it's good for medicinial purposes - the digestive system and throat infections. It also has a tendency to get you drunk - fast. The Four Fandangoes team won the Quiz, storming ahead easily by at least ten points. Everyone did fail to answer the last question correctly. What christmas symbolic item is currently being investigated as a possible cure for cancer? Three imaginative answers came from each of the three teams for this one. Frankinsense, Myrrh and Tinsel. The three teams kidding on they were the three wise men. Well, two of them anyway... but then maybe the third wise man had taken gold tinsel to the stable, all those years ago, with the intention of decorating the manger or the stable? Trecking all that way from the Eastern lands with a pile of gold would have surely been pretty tiring. The three trekkers were also, obviously, astronomers as they followed the mysterious star. Either that or they were following a UFO. The same UFO on which the baby arrived. Perhaps from Krypton. Anyway, the correct answer was, of course, Mistletoe which, it turns out, is actually prescribed in Europe. Drunken quizzes are usually quite fun with all the weird and wonderful answers you get, but marking them whilst slightly inebriated yourself is pretty difficult, especially trying the read the drunken hieroglyphics scrawled down on paper. How Les Dawson managed all those years on Blankety Blank I'll never know. I doubt he'd been drinking jagermeister though.

Kind you'd like to meet

Congratulations to Craig and Gillian for their engagement and the success of their engagement party on friday night. We all had a great time in the Rolls Royce club. A few drinks, a few dances and a few songs. Everyone was there to wish Craig and Gillian well. At first it seemed like a reunion night for Ka's work colleagues, past and present, but I soon relaxed as they're all a cool bunch. Maybe I relaxed a little too much as, for some reason, after a couple of beers, I plucked up the courage to get up on the dancefloor and perform 'Oh Pretty Woman' through the karaoke machine. Unfortunately, mike in hand, I felt the need to try and get the dancefloor shy relatives up and asked for all those accompanied by 'pretty women' to get up on the dancefloor with their own 'pretty women'. None of the relatives moved. Failing this I then shouted, 'get off your arse and dance!' at Craig and Gillian's relatives. Needless to say they did not look very appreciative of my comments, some of the older guys growling from behind their pint glasses. I'm not even sure if Gillian and Craig appreciated me shouting at their aunties and uncles in such a fashion. I suspect not. I think I just got a little too carried away. The girls at the ELU, including Chris, Margot, Amanda, Roslyn, Cheryl and the rest, helped me out though and filled the dancefloor the best they could. I'm not sure what possessed me to get up and sing karaoke as I was not even drunk and usually hate the bloody things. Looking back I suspect it was the fact that it was the same few people on the dancefloor all the time and stupidly thought I could do something about it. What a time to suddenly gain a rockstar ego! Feeling slightly embarrassed afterwards I ran for the safety of our tables and hid for the rest of the night. I did receive some compliments with regards to my singing talents, however. Maybe I should try X Factor next year?
When last orders were shouted and everyone started filing out we piled into Chris' car. With Margot, Bev, Ka, Amanda, myself and Chris driving we set off to the forever excellent Centre Point. When I say forever excellent I am of course being sarcastic - but it was a last resort. However, once inside we ended up having quite a good time, dancing to classic tunes of the nineties. Rhythm is a Dancer, Everybody's Free, Key the Secret, mixed in with some Prodigy and such like. Some really good tunes so a complete surprise to go into Centre Point and enjoy yourself. Almost weird.
Ka and myself met the great Martin Darcy with whom I used to work behind the bar with in the Auldhouse Arms many moons ago. Leaving Ka in the taxi queue I ran down to the nearest grease shop and ordered a portion for us to share. A comment was made over my shoulder whilst I stood waiting, leaning on the warm metal counter to which I looked round. I knew I was in trouble. His name escaped me completely and he had to gently remind me with the help of some swear words and the odd barrage of abuse. He was not best pleased but he got over it when he met Ka outside at the bus stop and started accusing her of insanity for agreeing to marry such a person as myself. He was having a laugh, of course, and let us escape to a taxi.