You gotta have friends

as sung by Donkey in Shrek 🙂

It’s kerazy o’clock, I’ve drunken more in the last six hours than possibly the last six months and frankly I should be sleeping.

This morning we left Sussex, and my Mum who was on a real woe is me kick with lots of ‘well you just go off and have a good time and don’t worry about me’ type shit and sat in traffic for the best part of 4 hours. We then endured nearly two hours of soft play hell which basically entails sitting in an overheated environment which smells of feet and sounds like a toddlers event at A&E with added overpriced tap water (paying for tap water WTF?!) and enforced sock wearage (which offends both Scarlett and I!) communicating mostly by sign language and fairly poor lip reading with other adults, then climbing many stairs to sit in a room with lots and lots of children, all of whom I individually adore but when faced with as a collective armed with party blowers I begin to feel murderous tendancies towards, my own spawn included for a further hour. If you don’t believe in heaven I guess you can’t believe in hell but frankly if believing in that as a concept is a part of religion then I am comfortable with no heaven either!

But there were many people there that I love. Proper love with kisses and laying down lives for and that. People who mean lots to me and I have missed ever so much this year. And the same goes for Davies and Scarlett. So despite the smell of feet and the danger of encountering a stray elastoplast or dirty nappy at any moment in the ball pool they bravely solidered on in having a blast with their friends. And we braved the pumped hot air and wood effect fillofoam to catch up with friends and it was fab 🙂

Was hugely impressed with Merry’s penguins and particularly Chris’s fantabulous Angry Birds cake which certainly for our kids was the utter highlight of the party. Chris, you rock 🙂

Proper catching up with people was not possible but it was lovely to have hugs and speedy chats with folk in advance of next week – we have felt most bereft of friends this year so many at once was a joy.

We popped back to Merry’s for a cup of tea before heading to Marcus and Michelle’s where we have had a lovely evening. Michelle and I made Gad the guitar teacher play songs for us while Ady and Marcus and the kids watched DVDs and we’ve had some very constructive feedback and opinions on our next move which has been very valuable. The Eigg vs Rum debate still rumbles on which makes next moves tricky to decide on but some nice balanced input from people with no ulterior motive other than the best move for us because they love us is really helpful. Looking forward to more sober debate tomorrow!