Friday night - and I'm out for a few beers with the lads from my old work. Two in the morning and I'm regretting my insane decision to leave my coat behind at home. The taxi queue is over two miles long and it's minus four outside. It is a certainty that I will be dead by the time my name is called for my taxi.
So - using my in-built geographical homing instinct (pigeons and men are very alike) - I stagger home. I am preserved from much of the cold by the many precautions I took through-out the night and am greateful for the large numbers of beers that insulate my body from the cold.
I creep in the door of the house - careful not to wake the kids. I make myself some marmite and toast - again careful not to wake anyone.
Then I stumble up the stairs and tip-toe into the bedroom, turn on the light - remember to turn the light back off because it's the middle of the night and attempt to creep to the bathroom by feeling along the wall until I come across it.
At this point Sarah is wide awake and for some weird reason - not as excited about the night out as I am.
I wake the next day feeling like a herd of bull elephants just trampled on my head. So - I know exactly what to do.
I raid the freezer for provisions. Cornetto - check. Orange fruit lolly check. I crawl back up the stairs to bed and for the brief seconds that they last - the hangover is at bay. This is stage one of many stages on the road to hangover recovery.
Stage two - ibuprofen.
Stage 3 - bacon eggs and toast. We are out of bacon so this is a bit of a calamity.
Somehow I am in charge of Declan for a few hours as Sarah and Fintan are off to the airport to collect nana. At this moment in time - Declan probably has more brain function and working cells that I do. After an hour of reading Thomas the Tank engine stories I am done in. Percy is doing my nut in. We watch Charlie and lola but I find it too stressful. There is a space party Lola wants to go to - but she already has other commitments. This is a serious moral dilemma and I don't know how the storymakers are gonna resolve this one. Either way - it is too much stress so early in the day. So I flick on the news and watch people rioting in Egypt. Hmmm - this is fairly stressful too.
So Fintan comes back and we play football in the frozen wasteland that is our garden.
"My hands are cold Fintan. Can we go in now?" I plead.
"Put your hand in your pocket daddy."
"Ok."
"Can we play with the waterguns daddy?"
"No - it's like minus twenty out here. Even the canal has frozen over." I tell him.
"Please...Pleeeeease daddy."
"No."
Five minutes later and after a nightmarish Mexican standoff - I am trying to de-ice a pump action watergun Fintan has found beneathe a tonne of decaying leaves.
Later still - I find myself attempting to stem the gag reflex as I hold Declan's tiny shoes in front of me.
"I wish people would clear up after their fecky dogs!" says nana.
"So do I! I spend every weekend cleaning dog crap off the buggy or the kids shoes!"
So yet again I am outside with a boiling kettle full of water and a clump of kitchen towel. Scraping a wodge of dog crap off of Declan's shoes. This is turning into a hangover of brutal proportions.
We finish the day by heading off to see The King's Speech. I wasn't expecting much - but it's really good. People even clap in the cinema when it's over. And the last time I heard people do that - it was 1984 and Ghostbusters was on at the Odeon in Bromley.
Sunday - and we head to the Zoo. We pull up and about thirty seconds later - Chris and Sarah and their gaggle of little ones pull up a few cars down. How random is that?
We wander round the zoo - where I am mainly astounded at how hairy the male urangutans are. They need a haircut - seriously - one of them looks like chewbacca crossbred with a red setter. But they are immense. And pretty cool.
But it's the monitor lizard who looks the most deadly today. He gives Declan and I the evil eye and looks ready to take a bite out of us - if only that damned protective glass wasn't in the way. His eyeballs keep on focusing in and out and eyeing me up. And his nose is right up against the glass - as is mine.
Then it's off to the batcave and home.
On the way home - nana asks a very probing question that leaves the whole family stumped.
"Why are there no Yellow Ducks?"
She's right - we have a bath tub filled with various yellow ducks of random size - but when was the last time you ever saw one? Yellow chicks - yes - but yellow ducks? Someone out there must know - someone!
And on that note we drive out of the zoo - past the noah's ark at the entrance and home.
"Bye bye Arthur's boat..." says Fintan.
"Bye Bye rhino!" says Declan.
Bye bye indeed.
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