In-laws, Star Wars and Koalas

Well, I survived the onslaught on the in-laws. We had 11 for lunch – got up moderately early and made French bread, beat the living daylights out of the pumpkin soup and added coconut cream, orange juice, cardamom, garam masala and jalfreezi curry paste, put on a Christmas pudding to boil, made quiches and felt dreadful – sandpaper throat, earache, cough – had been hit by lurgy in the night – drank around 44 gallons of blackcurrant juice (possibly a slight exaggeration) and only 1 latte!

Everything went off without a hitch – the presents were wonderful, the children were angelic, the food was fine, the weather was pretty good (the flood having gone down by then) and the Accountant and I looked like fabulous, well organised parents. How wrong impressions can be!

It was the old saying about the swan all over again – you know, the one about looking serene and unruffled on the surface, while underneath the water the legs are going like egg beaters? Well, the main fridge and its associated freezer died on Monday. The man is coming tomorrow to take it away and install a new compressor. It’s currently an extremely expensive gallery for children’s art and shopping lists. Hooray for the beer fridge.

This is much smaller and means that much of my wine and San Pelligreno mineral water has been unceremoniously tipped into the pantry. The pantry is cold enough to crystallise honey and make my olive oil go solid, but it really isn’t properly cold enough for wine. Or mineral water. There’s certainly much less room than in our usual fridge.

On the up side – at least it forced me to clean the other fridge out properly.

As soon as everyone left yesterday, I promptly collapsed. I didn’t even quite get the Turtle Walk sock finished. I’m halfway through the toe decreases – photos tomorrow, I promise.

Then in the middle of all this I realised that it was a really good friend’s birthday yesterday – AND I HADN’T KNITTED HER ANYTHING! Luckily, I won’t see her till Friday, when she brings her kids over for Destructoboy’s birthday and I actually have ‘Last Minute Knitted Gifts’ out of the library (a book I think I must buy) and I will knit her the wrist warmers. So tonight’s job is to get those wrist warmers going – I have the yarn (Silk Road) and the needles in my ziplock project bag, all ready for the off.

I think the reason I didn’t finish was that we watched the last Starwars film last night. We’ve had a bit of a fest over the last week or so and watched all six in order. I must say that doing this shows how poor the most recent three (first 3 in the sixology) are in comparison to the first three. (last 3 in the sixology) The ones from the 70s and 80s are better scripted and acted, have a better story, more humour and take themselves far less seriously. The special effects were amazing for their time, but the films didn’t rely on them – they were much better all round entertainment.

The most recently made were portentous and took themselves much too seriously. Despite the stellar casts, Anakin was a pretty crappy actor and the films relied on special effects, rather than great script and story, to carry the film. They seemed too much like a cash-in exercise – too bitty and badly edited – too much jumping about.

There. That should provoke some comment. I will say that I saw the films in the 70s and 80s when they were released and loved them, and time hasn’t dimmed that love – I really think they are great romps and despite seeing them heaps of time, I still think they’re pretty well perfect – I love the mixture of action and tongue in cheek.

From the toilet training battle front – Destructoboy finally had his first poo in the big toilet – and event inspiring much praise, a present (dinosaur underpants), jellybeans and a caramello koala – I want to make sure that I don’t many more pooey pants to wash, believe me.

I have no problem with bribery – none at all! I am happy to bribe my way into old age. ‘Anything that works’, is my motto. I would have been appeasing and negotiating with terrorists and paying ransoms with no qualms whatsoever. See – it takes an attitude like this to be a really appalling parent – oh, and a pantry full of jelly beans and caramello koalas!