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?”

Leaks, fridges and electric hob knobs

After dinner last night I was busy carrying out my husbandly duties when there was a large crash and a horrendous scream from behind. I had to quickly abandon the pot which I had been busy scrubbing with my bubble covered hands in the sink, and turned to see what the commotion was.
The fridge door had fallen off it's hinges. Unfortunately Ka had been trying to close the large, upper door over at the time. Something had been preventing Ka from closing the door over so she looked into the fridge to make sure everything was tidied away properly and just as she moved to take her head back out from the fridge's innards, the door, complete with the weight of all it's interior shelf innards, including the milk and my Branston Pickle, collapsed into her face, banging her across the forehead.
Just as I was about to start moaning at Ka’s volume I turned to find my wife crouched over in pain, holding the fridge door up on one bottom hinge. After shoving the door temporarily back into place I got a bag of ice together from the freezer and told Ka to put it to her head as I seen the red mark now throbbing on Ka's forehead grow into a potential lump.
The washing machine has been leaking. Two of the electric cooker’s hob’s knobs have broke off (and no, they don’t taste great with a cup of tea!). A bit of the front door’s frame even fell off when I closed the door the other night. I had to superglue it back on. What else is going to fall apart? The place is turning into The Money Pit! I’m half expecting Tom Hanks to crash through the front window one night while I’m turning the hobs on with my pliers.
As Ka sat and relaxed on the couch with the bag of ice pressed to her head, giving her brain freeze, I attempted to fix the fridge door with a blob of blu-tac before deciding that the Currys website would probably be a better idea.
A quick, unexpected, credit card payment later and there is now a brand new fridge being delivered on Wednesday morning. Mum will pop by after her pilates and sit in for the delivery which I paid £15 for the pleasure of having delivered between the hours of 1 and 5 for. The one good thing about buying anything on the Currys website is you’re not hounded for guarantees and insurances when you get to the checkout.
No other time would suit unless we waited until the weekend but on returning home tonight I nonchalantly swung the fridge door forgetting all about the worn out hinge and almost suffered the same lumpy head as Ka did.
Everybody seems to be settling in to the new office in Glasgow Central Quay for the time being. Sly Bailey, the Trinity Mirror Empress herself visited Central Quay last week, moving around the various floors accompanied by her entourage. As I have my back to the always open Studio door I missed the whole procession but was informed by the ever watchful Andrea, who sits opposite me, that she had a very nice pair of shoes on. Always one to spot the important details, she said that the pair of shoes in question would be enough to make Andrea’s family go without food for a week. If Andrea’s family are anything like her that what probably be doing them a favour as all she seems to eat are protein shakes, those disgusting looking mushy substances which, apparently, you simply must base your diet on if you intend to build muscle, losing weight or keep fit in anyway, shape or form. I’m not sure what’s wrong with a good healthy diet but maybe some people just like sitting in their office theatrically shaking plastic bottles and flasks around kidding on their working at the Copacabana.
The new colleagues in our office are Graeme, Andrew, Ewan and Yvonne.
Yvonne has a liking to karaoke, singing along to most of the ditties that are played on Radio 2 in the duration of the day. Graeme dances around the office, finds nothing a problem, and occasionally picks up the phone and pretends he’s an answering machine for Andrew, beeping and even singing whilst the caller waits. The Bette Midler classic, “The Wind Beneath my Wings” was the last song a caller enjoyed whilst waiting to be passed over to Andrew, who is forever shaking his head at his colleague, as he types away frantically on his mac. Ewan is the line manager of the three who spends all his time keeping sales people at bay and a lot of his money on Peanut M&M’s which Yvonne hands out willy nilly, without his permission.
I’m enjoying the new surroundings although I do occasionally miss the rest of the S&UN gang who are out in the open plan office with the rest of the production and sales staff. Some of the sales staff I’ve known for years over the phone and only just met face to face. Some people you meet for the first time not even realising you’ve been talking to them for five years. You go out and happily start talking to someone as if you’re only just meeting them for the first time only to realise afterwards that that was the woman that shouted at you over the phone a year or so ago for not understanding her copy instructions.
Mum managed to get a wee job in the town centre last week. Mum’s been looking for a job, on and off, (mostly off) for around four years now so this is quite big news. Kenny emailed me today from Oz, rejoicing the fact (“it’s about time too”, I believe were the words he used).
Mum arrived back from a holiday abroad on Friday. She’d been away for a week with my Auntie Tricia with Aunt Ann for her 60th birthday retreat along with a bunch of pals from both Scotland and London.
Unfortunately Adventure Ted never got an invite, but did send photos of her London trip along in Auntie Ann's card which she would have opened on her birthday on the Sunday.
Mum and Tricia arrived home on Friday at the airport expecting Tommy, Tricia’s other half, to be there waiting to pick them up.
Tommy was indeed sitting waiting to pick them up. Unfortunately he was sitting in Glasgow Airport whilst Mum and Tricia had arrived home at Prestwick.
Grace and Dougie, Ka’s Mum and Dad, arrived home from their week in Turkey the same day. We popped round to see them on Saturday afternoon after seeing ‘The Cabin in the Woods’ in Glasgow.
A bunch of teenagers take a break to a holiday home beside, the river, in the middle of nowhere and unexpectedly enter a game of life and death, involving zombies, ghosts, werewolves and scarecrows. Ridiculous and crazy but surprisingly entertaining stuff if you like a good dose of the ridiculous and the crazy in your horror. By the way, this is the movie we’re talking about, not Grace and Dougie’s holiday.
No, they were living it up in 5 star accommodation, full board. All the sun, food, drink and entertainment they could possibly want. They brought us back a tea towel.
Only kidding, they also brought us back chocolates, socks and a large bag of suspicious looking white powder.
Yes, apple tea. To go with the tea towels, currently soaking up the water splashed over the floor by the misbehaving washing machine.

Quiz show hosts and lumpy custard

35 years is a long time. Imagine being married for 35 years? Amazing. That's my Mum and Dad, as of last Monday.
35 years married and still together. Even more astounding is that Grace and Dougie, Ka's Mum and Dad, are hitting the big 3-8 this year. All these years and yet both couples still get confused over some of the most basic facts about their lives together. Facts such as the first thing they do when they get out of bed in the morning, their most romantic holiday destination and the mother in law's birthday.
Following the game Tricia hosted on the previous Sunday, I, in my eternal wisdom, thought it would be a great idea to have a Mr & Mrs game following dinner on Friday night. We were in dire need of a soundproof booth as the two Mums and Dads battled it out whilst I did my Nicholas Parsons, asking the questions, like the family quizzes of old (not diving about in suspenders, I might add, which was the last time I seen Nicholas Parsons, playing the narrator in The Rocky Horror Show).
Things got off to a slightly confusing start as I started asking the questions incorrectly, leading the Mums and Dads to think that the two answers they had to give for each question was their answer and what they think their partner would answer about them, rather than simply answering their answer and what they reckon their other half's personal answer would be (if you get what I mean?). I bet Derek Batey never had these kind of problems.
Derek Batey, as I found out by visiting a Mr & Mrs website, was the original presenter of the quiz show on tv, not Parsons. According to the website he once tried to calm an Irish couple before appearing on the show:

Batey: Did you have a good trip over from Ireland?

Irish contestant: Yes, thank you.

Batey: Did you arrive today or did you stay over last night?

Irish contestant: We came across yesterday.
Batey: Did you fly or take the ferry?

Irish contestant: I don't know - me mammy booked the tickets.

I'd always thought it had been Nicholas Parsons that hosted Mr and Mrs but apparently he only presented Sale of the Century (A Sleeper song?). Both of these shows were before my time, or just finishing a few years after I came into the world, so it's no wonder I can't tell one from the other. In fact, looking at these online pics, Derek Batey looks a lot like Nicholas Parsons. Same grins, same silver hair, same suits, same ties.
Could there have been a giant Quiz Show host factory somewhere, perhaps in Dagenham, in the seventies, churning out these cheese grinned, middle aged maestros?
A giant machine, not unlike a steampunk Bertha, sitting in the dark factory innards, a giant conveyer belt running from the machine's mouth like exit. A small army of silver haired, stripey tied, Quiz Show Hosts, straight and tall, only leaping into action after stepping down from the end of the conveyer belt, grinning with a tooth twinkling grin and immediately shouting "Come on down!".
Leslie Crowther, he was another one. The guy in the blazer and glasses who was the father of Thin Lizzy's girlfriend. He'd call audience members down on to the stage with that ecstatic call through his big square Deirdre lenses. What was that one..? The Price is Right! (I looked that one up too...)
And Bullseye of course. Now there was a quiz show. I'm not sure Jim Bowen was produced in the same factory though.
Bullseye reminds me of lumpy custard. It was always broadcast on a Sunday after the footie and we usually got custard with our Sunday pudding. That and Super Gran.
Gawd, Sundays were rubbish.
Together with Paladin the talking lamp I'm surprised I could bear to watch the telly at all. I hated most of those Glen Michael cartoons. You could tell, even at that age, they were all cheap rubbish. Like those cartoons your Mum or Gran used to buy you on VHS from the Poundshop or What Every Women Wants. Fantastic titles such as 'The Book of the Jungle', 'The Beauty Sleeping' or 'White Snow and the Seven Wee Men'.
Anyway, Friday nights Mr and Mrs game went well and played with great enjoyment considering there was no prize.
They certainly deserve a prize for 35 years of marriage. I wonder if Ka will put up with me for 35 years?
Maybe we'll have more of a chance if I stop spending my time writing about Nicholas Parsons, ancient quiz shows and complaining about lumpy custard.

Cookies on call

Just back from Dunblane. Ka and myself stayed at the Doubletree Dunblane Hydro, a monster of a hotel perched on a large hill at the edge of Dunblane village. As Ka and myself drove up the winding road towards the front of the building we couldn't help but be impressed by the large Victorian structure with it's towering height standing over us like a traditional hollywood style haunted house or murder mystery setting. One of the best things was the greeting at reception.
Standing on the plush carpets before the tall wooden panelled reception desks we were greeted with, not only genuine friendly smiles and offers of help with luggage, but also, most importantly, a large, steaming hot chocolate chip cookie straight from the oven wrapped up in a thin paper envelope. The receptionist had just pulled them out from a small storage unit under her desk. No wonder she was all smiles. What a fantastic perk to the job. Chocolate cookies on call. As we waited on the elevator to take us up to the top floor, the beautiful stench of cookie filled the air. The need for tea grew within me as we waited with the cookie smell wafting around me. The champagne we'd brought for our overnight stay could wait. Tea had to be made immediately in order to accompany this smoking hot baby.
Of course, Ka opted for coffee, (that ain't right is it?) and after enjoying our 40 grams of fat in cookie form we thought we'd walk the dietary sin off by exploring Dunblane. A town we'd never visited before and were curious to have a walk around. We returned to our rooms an hour later, considering a trip to Stirling. From what we could see, Dunblane has a Cathedral, and a Tesco. Oh, and a Railway Station, presumably for escaping by, sorry commuting by. That's about it.
After our short walk we opted to stay in the hotel and take advantage of it's amenities enjoying a dip in the pool and a sweat in the steam room, all the while I mulled over the location of the Doubletree chocolate cookie factory. Could it have been in the Hydro's basement, with small serving lifts rising the cookies up into the receptionists desks, just in time to serve to the lucky arriving guests?
Could Celebrity tv chef, Nick Nairn have had a hand in creating the cookies?
Ka and myself dined in the luxurious setting of The Kailyard, Nick Nairn's Restaurant, housed within the hotel. Beautiful meals of duck and tagliatelle served with a nice, crisp Pinot Grigio (crisp, hmm, I may become a wine connoisseaur yet). We then retired to our room where we danced to the final tunes from a dying iPod and ate strawberries with champagne.
The breakfast, this morning, was immense. Tables of cereal, freshly cut fruit, bacon, sausage, egg, scrambled and fried, potato scone, porridge and whisky, racks and racks of toast and baskets of chocolate chip muffins. Muffins, but no cookies. The cookies were disappointingly absent at breakfast.
After breakfast we went for another swim in the hotel's pool which was more of a challenge than yesterday, as it seemed far more difficult to keep myself afloat after my platefuls of food in the past 24 hours, not to mention champagne and wine.
All in all, not bad for a short Valentines break.
A Valentines all kicked off on Sunday night by a visit to Tricia and Tommy's.
Tricia was on a mission. Ka, Lynsey Ann and myself walked into her house only to be bombarded by a plethora or hearts. Tricia had transformed her living room into a Valentines wonderland with candles, confetti, balloons and paper hearts hanging from the ceiling in coloured, curving, twisting, acetate papers. Tricia had went to town with it all presumably just stopping short before she had painted it red. Christopher and Martin hummed in quiet but amused disapproval, well used to their Mum's fantastic enthusiasm. After dinner Tricia had organised a game of Mr & Mrs for the gathered couples. All two of them. Tricia and Tommy themselves and Ka and myself. Chris, Martin and Lynsey Ann opted out, thankful, for a change, that they were single.
After around twenty questions, with a possible 300 points up for grabs, Tommy and Tricia managed to win the game. Winning only by a mere five points I should add but with totals, which Chris quickly pointed out, that were not even a third of the possible total. A miserable performance by both parties. As a luxury item of clothing I thought Ka would have preferred a pair of her boots to underwear but hey, what do I know? Not enough, as it would turn out. It was the iMac on a desert island and the purple pants that tripped me up. How was I to know that particular desert island would have no electricity supply?
As a result of the Valentines games we all won a prize regardless of how bad our result was. The girls all got various items of smelly stuff and chocolates whilst I got a large, heavy wrapped box. Puzzled, I started unwrapping my present, nervously laughing upon revealing the Mr. Men Library. A boxed collection of every Mr.Men title by the late, great Roger Hargreaves. The reason I was nervously laughing is because I immediately became slightly emotional as the Mr. Men Collection had been the one thing I had informed Ka would be the first purchase I would personnally make for Baby Reid's own library. Obviously I did not bring everyone down at the dinner table by mentioning this as Tricia started telling of how she always used to read the tale of Mr Tickle to me as a wee tyke.
Mr. Tickle had hands on enormous long arms, with which he could reach people from far off and give them a damn good tickle. Mr Tickle could also lie in his bed and reach downstairs, into his kitchen and get himself a cookie from the jar. He'd have loved the Dunblane Hydro!

SiMBA, Sands and Tricia's Poem

The night before Lucy's funeral my Auntie Tricia, Auntie Ann and Uncle Tommy popped round to see us. Over tea, crackers and cheese we shared our grief.
During tea, Tricia gave Ka and myself a rolled up sheet of card tied with ribbon. Tricia had been working hard the previous night on a memorial poem which she gave to us as a contribution to Lucy's SiMBA Memory Box. The week following the death of little Lucy this Memorial Box had been shown to all visitors and well wishers to our flat.
We received the SiMBA Memory Box after the passing of Lucy in hospital. It is a small, white chest of mementos put together following a baby's passing in the care unit as a gift to the bereaved parents and an item to remember their child by. In our box was placed the small blanket upon which Lucy lay in the incubator, a small teddy from the SiMBA charity, a small collection of photographs taken by the hospital, prints of Lucy's hand and footprints, her hospital tags, her small, colourful little New testament bible she received upon Baptism and cards of sympathy from both the hospital's Neonatal unit and SiMBA itself along with various leaflets offering help in coming to terms with these sad events.
Sands, the Stillbirth & Neonatal Death Society is another charity featured in the reading material given in the Memory Box, which helps bereaved parents after the passing of a young baby. The Sands organisation offers guidance, support and help and is run by volunteers from all over the country who all give time from their own lives up following similar experiences in losing their own young babies, in order to help parents in similar circumstances come to terms with their own tragic events.
Both great charities and both more than worthy of any support.
Support which some family and friends have already offered and given in the form of donations. Alongside the donations towards Wishaw's Neonatal unit Ka and myself have also received we would like to say a great big thank you, on behalf of the charities and in memory of Lucy.

Lucy Reid - Our Angel Baby by Patricia Taylor

A Little Angel, lent not given
Taken too soon, to be in heaven

We just don't understand
And we'll never know
why God chose you for his Angel
And we had to let you go

One thing we know for certain
You are loved beyond compare
God picks his Angels wisely
Though our pain is hard to bear

You touched so many hearts
Many tears have been shed too
We know that you'll be with us
to ease the pain we're going through

Goodnight our darling Lucy
You will be our guiding light
A special bright and shining star
Looking down on us each night

xx

What lives are

Whilst Ka was up in Aberdeen, staying sober at her friend, Gillian's, hen doo, I had a pretty quiet, mellow weekend. It all got off to a significantly melancholic start with a funeral. My Unle Tommy's Dad passed away suddenly last week so I joined the rest of the family at Our Lady Of Lourdes Church for the funeral service, followed by tea in East Kilbride's old Village Torrance Hotel.
Having only met Tommy's Dad a few times at family parties,or gatherings, on the odd occasion, I can't pretend to have known the man well, but what I did make of him seems to be on the right track from the way people spoke of him on Saturday. Like all funerals it made me wish I'd had the chance to get to know the man a little better. Tommy Senior seemed a very pleasant, gentle, friendly man. From what I remember at the family gatherings, he would always be found sitting back, comfortable in a couch, taking in the jokes, conversations and banter with a placid ease, taking joy in relaxing in the family environment whilst not neccessarily contributing vocally. Certainly not something the Reids are known for.
So it was with great sorrow that Tommy and his family said goodbye to Tommy senior. Tommy said that although obvioulsy upset by his Dad's passing, he felt some ease in the fact that he was there, in the hospital, at his father's bedside when it happened. A quiet closure, being with the relative at the time, that some would be grateful of.
That's always the worst aspect of a relative passing, and of funerals. The great feeling of a missed opportunity in saying goodbye in the last moments.
Sitting in the church, on these occasions, always reminds you of people now gone. It made me think again of my grandparents, the Reids, who had passed in the last few years, and the Sloans, who I sadly barely registered the passing of due to my youth at the time. There are others too, of course. Aunties, uncles, friends and other relatives that you wish you could have had the chance to talk to once again.
It's only when these people are gone that you miss them, you come up with interesting questions to ask them, jaunts to take with them or good things to say. Interesting or meaningful things to say, not the trivial or unimportant matters that you used to talk about. Well, I know I did anyway. I write a blog for pete's sake. Talking about trivial things comes quite easily to me.
But then, I suppose it's the trivial things that all pile up to make, big, mad, staggering towers of important things, and they are what lives are and what life is all about.

Sales, biographies and diamond pattern waistcoats

With our streets still looking like our freezer in need of a severe defrosting we've had a quiet weekend only venturing out for a short trip to the local shopping centre yesterday and the gym today for our Sunday worship (body worship in this case). The trip to the shopping centre was the first time Ka and myself had plucked up the courage to face the shops since before Christmas and it turned out to be a marginally successful trip with an exchange being made and a few items being found in the sales and a few chance encounters with other friends battling through the mob. I managed to get a rather excellent suit jacket, reduced from £90 to £26 after hesitantly asking a reluctant sales assistant for a chest measurement. Asking her if she reckoned the jacket would fit I ended up having to talk her into throwing her measuring tape around me. As it happened the jacket was a perfect fit and will prove perfect for when the wife takes me out to dinner. In the same store I also got a spiffing navy jumper with a blue diamond design over it's front. Ben Sherman, reduced from £30 to £15. In fact, after purchasing it, I realised it reminded me a lot of a waistcoat that came with the suit I hired for my High School formal. The occasion when you all go out, at the end of your last, or second last, school year and hire a suit, dressing like move stars for a night. Most people getting the smart black tuxedos which I did indeed get but me, having to be different, decided for an additional diamond pattern coloured waistcoat. Maybe the jumper wasn't such a great buy after all - I seem to remember that waistcoat made me look like one of those comedy snooker players. All I needed was a large pair of square spectacles. It certainly did not have much of an effect on the night as I failed to get a dance for the duration of the formal but then I never got a dance at those High School functions anyway (violins please!). In retrospect maybe that's why I wore the waistcoat anyway, because I knew I had no chance. The only vague chance I had that night was with a bottle of MD 20/20, lime flavour, and that was shared between four of us.
Ka managed to buy a couple of pair of shoes in the sale too, surprise surprise. Soon we'll be needing a Carrie Bradshaw wardrobe for the amount of shoes she has. As I sit at my computer writing this blog the shoes are stacked in the open wardrobe above me, the large shelf trembling with the shoe strain. Ka will say the same about me though with books.
I've just finished 'The Moon's a Balloon' the late, great David Niven's autobiography, written around thirty eight years ago. My Dad lent me it to read just before Christmas as I had always been curious about this book which had lasted for so long at the top of my Mum and Dad's living room unit. Niven was an actor through the thirties, forties, fifties and sixties and played opposite many of the old greats including Humphrey Bogart and Errol Flynn and the like. One of the old school before I was even born. What a life Niven led. Now he did have plenty to write about. I wonder if he ever had the fashion sense to get a diamond pattern waistcoat?
There's always a slight influx of biographies and/or autobiographies at Christmas. This year Ka got me the Chris Evans book and Auntie Tricia got me the Jack Dee autobiography. Jack Dee I've always liked because of his great dry sense of humour and his fantastic smile. A few years back I would not have even considered reading a autobiography by Chris Evans but ever since he took on the evening job at Radio 2 he's got me through many a late night Tuesday shift with his banter. Of course that'll be no more now that he's taken Wogan's show on in the mornings so I'll just have to hope they'll have a half decent replacement for the evening shift. Either that or I switch on the old iPod.
My Chrimbo present from Ka this year was a belter. A beautiful deep purple iPod Nano. There's no Deep Purple on it yet but maybe I'll look into remedying that. It's both funky and functional with stunning graphics to help you navigate through your music library. The library I've just started to build up in the past week. Fantastic. I'm just off to put more tunes on it.

Getting better all the time

Uncle Tommy has almost finished the Wedding video. Well, DVD movie, they're not called videos anymore are they?
We watched the rough a good few weeks ago now and since then Tommy has been working hard on a finished version. Ka and myself nipped round to the Westwood to visit Tommy and Tricia on Monday night. Ka is off to a 'Disco Diva' hen night on Friday and needs an outfit of some description. For some reason, Tricia was sure she could help. She was sure she would be able to find something lying around in her wardrobes. Tricia complains that she used to wear this gear before meeting Tommy so, in effect, must blame Tommy for killing off her inner Disco Diva. As my Auntie takes Ka upstairs I imagine Tricia supplying her with a large dark pair of shades before going into a wardrobe full of glittering, sparkling, luminous blouses and flares beaming an incandescent light out into the bedroom as she opens it's large doors. As it happens, Ka came down with a rather normal looking pair of jeans so my Sergeant Pepper like visions of Tricia's magical wardrobe were perhaps a little over the top.
The wedding DVD is almost there as Tommy has been patiently working on it for weeks, modifying, tweaking and generally slaving over his laptop in various movie making applications in order to get all the footage he filmed on the day into as good a movie presentation as possible. I feel I should publically, or at least on this blog, say a big thank you to him for all his efforts. To tell the truth I suspect he's had a few hairy moments with it all and more than a few moments of near laptop through the window incidents but the disc he gave me on Monday proves it has all been worth the wait. Thanks again Tommy.

Photo update

Finally finished putting together and uploading some new photo pages for Reidnet. The new pages include a collection of photos from the Wedding kindly contributed by Uncle Tommy, Aunt Trish, Aunt Ann, Chris, Martin and last, but certainly not least, the wonderful Jillian. Thanks very much to all of them for supplying me with a good amount of photos - especially since I did not take any. The most important day of my life and I barely clicked a camera button!
The other new pages include photos from our holiday in Rome and Venice. Both of these collections having been heavily filtered as I think I went kinda camera crazy after taking none on the Wedding day. Hopefully both collections show, to some extent, how beautiful Rome and Venice are and what a great time Ka and myself had walking around the Italian streets.

Father Gaffney and the video nasty

Thankfully Auntie Patricia held back the tears at the weekend when we all settled down to watch the wedding video that my Uncle Tommy had been spending the week working on. Apparently Tommy had plugged the camcorder into the tv on the Sunday after the wedding and had Tricia and my other Aunt, Ann, who had had been visiting from London for the occasion, both in tears as they watched what he had recorded. Personally, I'm not sure I believe them and think they may have been exaggerating a little. My mum and her sisters were born in the Gorbals which makes me believe it must take a hell of a lot for them to shed any form of tear. Thanks to Tommy though, the wedding now exists in televisual format to help us remember our special day (I certainly hope I never wake up one morning and wonder who this female is that I'm living with). Of course, it also exists for women to cry and gossip over which is what will probably happen next week when Ka's female friends all pop round to the flat for a viewing. I very much doubt I shall hold such an occasion especially since my brother, the best man of the piece, turned down his invite to the BBQ/film showing on Saturday night describing it as a video nasty. Thankfully it was not so nasty, except from the fact that I looked as if I had a bean pole stuck up my arse as I spent the whole time in the church standing straight and rigid with a look of extreme seriousness on my face, seemingly unable to move without some great difficulty. Kenneth laughed, Ka cried, Angela cried and laughed and the priest, a rather entertaining Father Gaffney, forgot my name, at least twice. He even called the ceremony a baptism at one point. In fact, I'm sure Father Gaffney may well require the video to remember the day more than the rest of us.
Ka picked up the phone to him on Monday night and he asked her how the holiday in Paris went. Paris was great thanks but that was two years ago now - we were in Rome and Venice for our honeymoon! Father Gaffney would no doubt have took a trip at one point to go and see the Pope? I wonder at what point it was climbing up the Eiffel Tower that he realised..?

Put the freshness back

I know when to go out. I know when to stay in. Get things done. Today I've single handedly done some freelance work, watched two episodes of Ashes to Ashes, washed two lots of dishes, picked Ka up from work, then taken her to a hairdo appointment and done the housework. Yep, you read right, housework! Hate it. If there was one thing in this world which I could pay someone else to do for me it would be housework. Dusting, hoovering, polishing tellys, brushing floors, cleaning bathrooms, slipping on the porcelain bathtub whilst cleaning down the tiled walls and banging your tail bone off the bath tap (hitting your tail bone off anything is generally very sore but a bathroom tap is not to be messed with). That's definately one thing that would make being rich great, having your house cleaned for you.
Most blokes, of course, don't need to even complain like this as they get it all done for them. I'll mention to some of the guys in work about doing the housework and they'll either look at me and laugh, spit out their tea in a giant spray of outrage or simply look rather vacant as if they don't have any idea what the hell I'm talking about. A quick run around with the hoover doesn't make me any less of a man does it? As long as I don't get the shake 'n' vac out and start dancing round the living room I'm pretty sure I'll be alright. It needs done after all and it earns you a couple of brownie points with the other half too (which you can cast up at a carefully selected moment later on).
Talking of the other half, Ka is off on her first hen doo at the weekend. When I say first, I mean first of three. A trip to Newcastle being the first, a work night out being the second and a meal out in Glasgow being the third. On Saturday morning I'm dropping her off in Hamilton to meet up with the eleven other crazy women going down to Geordie land, including her sister Angela, my mother, Auntie Tricia and my sis, Lynsey Ann, to mention a few. Imagine being stuck on a small bus with that lot?! Angela has organised a non stop couple of days though so there will be enough to keep them busy. Hopefully Ka will come back in one piece. This leaves me with the place to myself. A nice freshly hoovered place, because remember when your carpet smells fresh, your room does too.

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.