The Gnome Handbag of great division, JLS Groupies in the midsts and rockin the birthday sing slam world

We land in Dublin despite the epic fog in Liverpool and Karina is there to greet us off the plane.

Fintan runs up and gives her a big hug.

"Karina? You know? We got you a bag for your birthday - it's a suprise!"

"Thank you Fintan that is so lovely..." says Karina.

Is there any way to erase her memory - to take it back? My only option is to bring on an immediate concussion. I consider slamdunkin' her into the ground - but this is probably not the best approach. She is dead 'ard and will likely pulverise me if I attempt this.

Instead we head out for a family dinner where the great present is officially revealed.

"Oh My goodness! Gnomes! A Handbag! Gnomes on a handbag" Karina is dead chuffed.

Andrew, her brother looks on in abject horror. Shock has settled in.

"We bought her a handbag? With feckin' gnomes on it?"

"Yeah - I was kinda angling for a playstation 3 but I got outvoted!" I tell him sombrely.

"Wait til we tell him the price," Sarah whispers to me and giggles. This is very funny.

"A feckin' gnome handbag? What's the world coming to?"

Indeed.

The following day - we meet Karina and her friends down the Dropping Well pub for a few jars. Half way through the night we begin an impromptu sing-off. Karina's friends begin with a sweet rendition of Happy Birthday to Karina. We reply with "Ding Dong the witch is dead! The witch is dead!" and join in with our very best munchkin impressions for added comedy effect.

They reply with a loving, heartfelt rendition of "You're beautiful" by James Blunt. And we slam them into the ground with "Who let the dogs out! Wooof wooof wooof woof!"

I've never had an impromptu sing slam in an Irish pub before but it's great fun.

Victory to the family is assured and as Andrew neatly sums it up - "however great your love for karina - our hate is greater!" Of course - in reality - that's not true - but the McGrane's if they are one thing - are a family of great messers!

In an attempt to redress the economic balance and pump some much needed euro wealth into the stuttering Irish economy - I do my fair bit - and order an excessive amount of the black stuff at the pub. The next day I will suffer - but I am happy in the knowledge that my dedication to improving the Irish debt situation will surely pay off.

We fly home on the Sunday - a family of hacking coughs, flu and general illness. At some point in the week Declan vomits everywhere - but it is a phlegm induced vomit and we feel good about that. Sarah goes away on a work course for the week - to somewhere remote and northern (Yorkshire I think). She calls me from the hotel that night after a few glasses of red.

"Sooo....guess who I've been talking to at the bar? Go on...guess?"

"Er...I dunno...Ronaldo?" I ask stupidly.

"No JLS! JLS!" She is hyper -excited. I need to talk her down. She is turning groupie on me.

"JLS!!!!" She giggles again.

"I told them they were very nice boys. They'd done very well for themselves."

"So basically - you talked to them like a grannie would?" I say.

"But they're so cute!"

"Ok - now here's the plan. You go back there and you get them drunk and bring them back to your room. We sell the story to the red tops and away we go!" I joke.

"Don't worry. I'm already headed back to leave my room key under their door!"

I am pleased she is having a good time. And mainly I am pleased because this means that when I eventually meet Kylie at some random five star hotel in Outer Mongolia - her on tour - me just loitering or waiting for some giant gas pipeline to be built. Well - then I will strike. I can sleep with Kylie with no fear of a come-back.

"Remember JLS! Remember JLS!" I'll tell her. Remember JLS!

Nursery are jealous. Girls at work are jealous. Boys at work scratch their heads and ask "Who are JLS?" Becky at work points out one little flaw in my plan...What if Kylie doesn't want to sleep with me?

"Are you mad?" I tell her. "Why wouldn't she?" There is an eerie silence. Hmmmm. I may need to work on that part of my plan. But I have time. Plenty of time...

Sarah calls the next day. "I just had breakfast next to JLS - they are amazing."

I fully expect the new fanclub to open from our address by next week.

In the meantime - Fintan has his customary injury-related trip to Casualty on Wednesday. The school call to tell me he's gone flying - hit the playground hard and bit his tongue and left a big hole in it. There is blood and shock and trauma. But by the time we get to casualty he has perked up and I read the Gruffalo to him approximately a thousand times before we are seen.

They check for bits of tooth inside his tongue and then he gets the all clear. Apparently - stitching a tongue back together can lead to high levels of trauma in children and is not the recommended approach for healing. I sigh a giant sigh of relief.

We walk back past the labour ward and I show Fintan where he was born and where mummy works. And then we eat alot of chocolate.

By the time Sarah returns at the end of the week I am a walking half dead zombie. But the kids are alive - albeit rather scruffy by the time we get to the end of the week. Luckily I had remembered all of Sarah's key instructions and written them on my hand on Monday.

"Feed the Kids!" was top of the list. "Pick up the kids!" was next. But actually - if you got the second one wrong - then the first was irrelevant. But I ran out of hand by then.

And today - Sunday. I have my first bath in roughly ten years and listen to the Duck radio play Paul Young and soothing eighties hits. For a short period of time I am at tranquil peace and my body doesn't ache quite so much. I get out of the bath and look out the window. The canal besides us is totally frozen. And the trees outside are caked in thick frost. It looks quite magical. And out of the bare trees - a small white feather floats and flutters in the still air - and swirls in the morning sunlight. And it reminds me of Milly. Perhaps it is a little hello. I say hello back and then we get on with the day....time to play monsters and chase the kids round the house...again.

Explodo rocket wheel-barrow munition-death and mump badger Wagner fightclubbing

"You know Daddy. Someone tried to blowed up the King."

"Is that right? The King?" I say - mildly confused.

"Yeah - and that is why we have fireworks Daddy."

"Wow Fintan - you learnt alot today at school. Do you know who tried to blow up the King?"

"Yeah. Guy Fawkes. He's in heaven now."

I was wondering exactly how school was gonna cover up the torture and subsequent excruciating death - but the "he's in heaven now" solution seems to hold up.

With exactly this sort of highly educational background we set to work on Saturday night with enough weaponry (I mean - legally available fireworks) to sink the Bismark ten times over. Collectively - we have a couple of hundred quid's worth of serious firepower to send up into the night sky.

We place all the kids and sensible parents inside the conservatory - they are cold but safe. Sarah lines up a front row of seats for the kids just like we're at the cinema.

"Guys...I'm not sure this is a good idea..." says Sanjib.

"You what?" says Chris.

"Eh?" I ask.

"We're far too sober."

It's true. Lighting fireworks after only a few beers has clouded our judgement. I have filled the bin from the toilet with water and brought it outside for a start (Just in case a stray rocket hits one of us slap-bang in the face). This is far too risk aware.

"Sarah!" I yell indoors. "We need more beer!"

We move onto a wine and beer chaser combo and this livens up events. Steve comes over from across the road and we give him some lighter fuse to play with.

Sensibly - Chris assembles all of the fireworks into the garden wheel barrow. Sanjib momentarily questions the sense in four men lighting fireworks in the pitch dark using nothing but a pin-sized LED that Chris holds in his mouth to light our path.

I issue out lighters and we test-light them. Check.

We hammer a few rockets into the ground and away we go.

"On the count of three lads..." I warn them before utterly ignoring my advice and instantly lighting my fuse.

"You said Three! You said Three! You B*stard!"

"There's no time...run! Run...F*ckin' run!"

And lo - the fireworks 2010 in-house extravaganza is underway.

We soon realise that walking away from the badly angled firework without turning back is a necessity. This will save our face from third degree burns.

We stand in the cold biting drizzle-misery and congratulate ourselves on our efforts.

"These fireworks pack a fairly decent punch eh?"

"Yeah - well I didn't even touch anything less than a five on the Bangometer," says Chris sagely.

And there-in lies the key. Every firework worth it's salt has a Bang-o-meter. 1 to 5. What a flipping great job - rating fireworks on the Bangometer. It is a job my mate Chris was born to fill. One day - one day I'm sure he will. If only he could master Mandarin.

It's early in the night when the first near miss strikes. A rogue rocket - blown off course by a freak gust of November wind and a badly planted plastic rocket launcher whizzes off into the nightsky in a trajectory roughly directly in our path. Four middle aged men stand holding beers failing to move as a lit rocket lands centimetres from the giant F*ck off Wheel barrow filled to the brim with enough firework explosive to leave a small hole in the ground where Chester used to exist.

Typically - we play the incident down..."Woooooahhhh...that was close...right...the kids want Catherine Wheels - quick - hammer some into the Climbing frame - we're losing them...we're losing them..."

Later that night - I feel invigorated with the sheer unadulterated joy of blowing things up for the sheer hell of it. We head indoors and set up an impromtu kids disco before discussing the merits of Wagner winning X-factor and whether a thirty foot super-sized toxic anenome could ever defeat a giant squid in a fight. I miss these conversations. And wonder if a Mump badger (if it ever existed) would truly beat a Polar Bear in un-armed combat. Perhaps we'll never know.

By Wednesday - Declan is hooping and coughing like Dot Cotton after fifty ciggies and Sarah and I end up tag-teaming in bed with him for the next few nights. Does anyone know when I will stop having to go to bed with a bloody child roll-out-of-bed protector attached to my king sized bed? There is nothing - nothing more confusing than getting stuck on a giant barrier every time you try to get out of bed in the middle of the night. It's like a stair gate - but in your bed. It's a flippin' nightmare!

Seriously - if only someone would invent the inflattable air bag carpet. Just a millisecond before the baby falls out of bed - the carpet senses and automatically inflates to protect the fall. Could make the carpets fairly pricy - but it would at least ensure a quiet nights sleep.

In the meantime - feedback from the book is positive. One of the girls at work even reported back that her hubby switched off Match of the Day to finish Dumb Luck. Can there be a higher accolade? Can there? Surely not. Surely not.

The Weekend of accidental bed wanderings, Cankles McGrane and the Duvet of Doom

Saturday morning and I stagger down the stairs and slump on the couch with my sister-in-laws and friends who've come up for the press launch the previous night.

"Boy I feel crap. But what a great night! How good was that?!" I say.

"Yeah. It was amazing."

Everyone agrees it was a roaring success.

I smile to myself. Happy in the knowledge that for once I didn't make an utter idiot out of myself. I go so far to tell everyone.

"Yeah - and I didn't make a fool of myself."

This is where my sister-in-law points out one little faux pas.

"Hmmmm...except for the bit where you wandered into my bedroom at four in the morning and tried to get me out of Declan's bed."

"Aha! I tried to get you out of Declan's bed! OUT OF BED! Not INTO Bed! Although - to be honest - alot of girls would be throwing themselves in my way for that kinda action..." I narrowly avoid a Vulcan death grip.

Later that night I ask is she has "Cankles" - I never heard of this before - but "Cankles" are when your calf and ankle combine together into one giant indecipherable mess. I have never feared for my life so. Specially cos it just isn't true! I was just messing.

The girls get their own back during the day. Fintan convinces me to get inside his dinosaur duvet. I park my hangover and get in.

"Get in daddy! Get in the envelope!"

"It's a duvet Fintan - not an envelope."

"No daddy. It is an envelope. Fold it up and post it!" he states solemly and he proceeds to roll me like a piece of dough inside his duvet - in the living room whilst Strictly Come Dancing is on. Up and down inside his dinosaur duvet.

"I can't move Fintan. My arms are trapped. What happens next?"

"Attack!!! Tickle him! Attack him! Sit on him! Sit on the envelope!"

And out of bloody nowhere an entire McGrane family and Jez and Michele and my bloody one year old (traitor) jump on top of me and tickle my feet mercilessly whilst simultaneuolsy squeezing the breath from out my lungs. I don't think I ever laughed so hard.

And later - we play the Wii and I've never seen an entire family attempt to beat the crap out of each other with so much vigour! Funny. Very funny!

But back to Friday. We've rented Bishop Lloyd's Palace for the press launch cum booze-up for Dumb Luck. Bishop Lloyd died about four hundred years previous and his pad hasn't changed much since then.

Ceilings fifteen foot high, a ten foot wide fire-place that stretches into space. Even the mantle piece is higher than yer head! And wood pannelling was obviously de rigeur back in ye olde medieval days.

The Mcgrane Massive and Jez and Michele work their magic on the venue and it is transformed into a bona fide crime scene - police tape, dead body and murder weapon - all present.

As people arrive we direct them towards the booze and then the crime scene and ensure we capture their mugshots. Needless to say - this is gonna be blackmail of the highest order. If only one of them becomes a superstar then we're going straight to the red tops...(maybe).

We dress Chris as a policeman and DCI Richards is born. Chris - being a method actor of the highest calibre - instantly takes to the role.

The problem is - he's wearing a yellow Bob the Builder tabbard last worn by Fintan in 2009 and his policeman's hat is designed to fit a three year old. Every time he raises his arms or moves his head he loses circulation in his outer limbs.

I read a section from the book and this is when I realise that doing my world famous "Irish" accent in a roomful of Irish people may not be a good idea.

I think I get away with "Tree" instead of "Three" - and maybe they never noticed my "Feckin' this" and "fecky that's". I get home. My father in law asks me to put on a pair of moon boots he just found and suggests we head towards the canal to fetch some concrete.

The following day my hangover cure begins in earnest - by 11am I've consumed the following:-

3 ice lollies - (one pinneapple, one blackcurrant and one orange)
2 pieces of bacon
1 fried egg
2 ibuprofen
3 teas
23 baked beans
Bread (lots)
2 Swizzles Manard Drumsticks (meant for Halloween)
and a slice of Victoria Sponge Cake

It works. I feel fantastic by 2pm. And celebrate by steaming round the Grosvenor park on their toy railway with the kids.

All too soon the best weekend I've had in a very very long time is over and reality gets in the way temporarily. Until the next time...