So the loo roll held out. Just. But that was more by way of a series of unfortunate events leading up to nearly a full roll (well as full as value rolls get anyway) falling into the loo and ending up sodden, waterlogged and fished out and put in the bathroom sink.
So after a full morning at work there I was, poised infront of the cashpoint, safe in the knowledge that access to real proper cash was at my disposal. Clutching my parcel of fudge ready to send, knowing I had barely enough petrol in my car to get me to the garage, fully aware that back at home there would be a loo roll situation just waiting to happen, not to mention we had no bread, no cat food, very little milk and Ady has no bow tie to wear to his staff do tomorrow night (I did offer to ‘knock him one up’ using a pair of Davies’ old pyjamas appliqued with the corner of one of Scarlett’s old t shirts and adorned with a hama bead but surprisingly he refused :lol:).
I’d prepared Lucy for me being slightly late home. I had a plan to get cash, go to the post office, send the fudge, look in two charity shops for bow ties, get loo roll, cat food, bread, milk and come home via the petrol station, fully sorted. I then did that really stupid poking a weeping sore to see if it still hurts type testing exercise of thinking to myself ‘hey what if you forgot your pin number?’. Now I sort of know my pin number, in much the same way as people know some phone numbers as is they can dial them but if asked to recite them they stumble over the order of the digits. I can tap it into a cashpoint or a chip and pin machine but I’m buggered if I can actually summon it to mind. And then of course the four numbers it is comprised of – which start with a 2 – began to do this sort of Fantasia style animated leaping about infront of me in a taunting ‘you can’t remember what order we’re in!’ type manner. And sure enough, no I can’t. I try once, with a certain amount of confidence. It is wrong. A ha I think, then it must be this combination. Nope. At which point I totally forget both of the combinations I tried before and do a sort of a blind stab at a third attempt at which point it spits the card back at me with a sort of ‘ha-ha!’ type attitude and tells me to ‘go contact your card issuer. Loser’ (well maybe it didn’t say loser exactly but it hinted at it. Not very festive or season of goodwill to all men cashpoints are they really?). I did a sort of flappy panic thing and then galvanised myself into a ‘come on Nic, you can do this, you know your pin number’ show of bravery only to have it dashed before I got as far as entering it by the cashpoint adopting a ‘Listen Buster, I told you to go and contact your card issuer. Now stop shoving the card into me and hoping I’ll be too busy making a list and checking it twice and panicking about whether I should buy more brandy snaps ‘just in case’ to remember that you forgot your pin number, take your card and GO AND SPEAK TO YOUR BLOODY CARD ISSUER! Oh and Seasons Greetings.’
Duly chastened I slunk back to my car and drove home.
This put me in rather a situation. First of all the fudge really had to be sent today. Also we really couldn’t have gone much further without loo roll. Either that or I’d need to start cutting old clothing into strips to make reusable stuff which is a frugal step too far I reckon. And we needed milk and bread and cat food and I don’t think any of those foodstuffs can be effectively recreated with old clothes. I needed to go into my nearest branch of my bank to draw out cash over the counter so I could do / buy all the things I needed. This posed a couple of issues: 1) the whole petrol thing 2) the bank is in the middle of town. To get to it I’d need to find a parking space and then buy a ticket to display in the car window /take a bus / catch the train. All of the above require money, of which I had none.
Fortunately in much the same way as Scarlett can get Ady to do stuff for her after I’ve said no and even sometimes after he’s said no too, I was able to ring my Dad and he came to the rescue. Lucy very kindly said she’d stay at my house with all the children and I went to collect my Dad, drive into town and he sat outside the bank in the car on double yellows ready to move on if a traffic warden came along. I got some money out, explained the whole forgotten PIN to the cashier and got a new one on it’s way and then dropped Dad off home again, popped to the post office, where next day guaranteed delivery of rather heavy fudge cost more than the budget for the secret santa (note to self, make LIGHT home made goods next year and post on bloody time!) and was regaled with Christmas greetings from semi-celeb status post office workers before coming home again.
Had a very nice couple of hours chatting to Lucy with various interjections from children. I’d brought home some art books for Davies which he was really pleased with and flicked through a couple with me – he’s really into the idea of ‘drawing in the style of…’ and I’d picked up about 6 books of very different styles of artist so he’s chuffed with them. I also showed him to do shading and blending with pencils tossing in a little anecdote about being shown the technique by John (the one who died and I did that speech at his funeral) when I was about D’s age, which he took to and has used in various pictures this afternoon. And then we had a me using the term et cetera / etc. which Davies asked about the meaning of and having told him ‘and so on’ I remember the dictionary so got it down from the shelf and looked it up and introduced Davies to dictionaries. He loved the idea and we looked up various words he came up with ‘hello’ which led to ‘informal’ which led to a discussion on how putting in/im/un infront of some words causes them to mean the opposite with various examples.
Lucy and The Rs left and Davies who had been itching to do so all afternoon showed me how to play X box. He put on Super Monkey Ball and we had a play for that for half an hour or so while Scarlett did some colouring and gave me helpful advice (things like ‘try not to die Mummy!’). I scrabbled together some tea for them and then Ady got home. I whizzed off to get petrol, loo roll, bread, milk and etc. while Ady gave them a bath and then we all watched The Simpsons together when I got back.
I am now feeling particularly warm and fuzzy having consumed much alcohol and all that remains tomorrow is the bow tie saga. Even if I find one in the first charity shop I happen upon you can bet there will be more to say about it than that! 😉
You should have asked me- Tony has about 6 bow ties!
😆 but are they full sized?! 😉
His workmate (the one who provides pheasants and logs :)) has come through with one so no need for me to go on a bow tie hunt today after all – hurrah!
Nic, this may be against your principles, but… Tip from penniless student days: steal toilet roll. I used to have a good friend who would stagger out of pubs with those big rolls under her coat. If you don’t want to be so antisocial, you just take double when using toilets out in the world. This got our student house through those ‘end of term’ moments, back in the days when students didn’t get loaned money. I guess it would be a bad example for the kids, though. So you’d have to make up a lie to explain it away and from there it is surely just a short step to damnation!
Hope Ady looks dapper in bow tie!
Been there and done that LOADS of times Allies and not just with loo rolls. I would however argue that even with value loo rolls one per day is bonkers! Teach the kids to use less!
I remember loo rolls going missing from places I worked in and wondering who would steal loo rolls -now I know! 😆
Ros – value loo rolls cost about 10p per roll and although the kids use way too much it’s worth it to not have to be wiping bums myself 😆