In trouble - again!

I met a delicious irony yesterday.

The D&S team in LITS, my colleagues are, on the whole, an abstemious, temperate lot. One of them hardly drinks at all, another has a glass of wine with dinner from time to time. Another has been wondering if they should cut down in their household because they can finish two bottles of wine in a week. Temperate, moderate people.

We all went out to the pub last evening. And I noticed that the Team Alcoholic was THE ONLY PERSON who didn’t have a drop of alcohol in the course of the evening. Not one. A single lime and soda for me. And the rest of them? Complete debauchery. Moral Turpitude, if ever I saw it. They each had TWO. TWO, I tell you! Of alcohol. Some had three, but I was so appalled by then I had to leave.

I also had to catch a train, so had no chance to sit and enjoy being appalled by this over-consumption of festive merriment and excess of beer.

Got back to Chesterfield. Ambled up to the bus stop. Walked around the church – to see my bus just pulling out :-( 30 minutes till the next one :-( And it was cold. Really cold. My feet were freezing. The rest of me wasn’t too bad; I had my Dr Who scarf, my fleecy hat, my gloves and my waxed jacket. But my poor feet were definitely suffering.

Got home. Reintroduced alcohol into the equation and warmed up by nicking about a third of The Builder’s extra large portion of chips. I left him the evil mushy peas.

We’re in trouble again. You remember how on the Sunday after Christmas we’ve got The Builder’s family coming for lunch? It started out as a “let’s have Jeanette and Ian round for Sunday lunch while we’re down in Salisbury at Christmas and invite Gwen and Mick too so they can play with the great grandchildren”. Then Mick died and The Builder though it might be nice to invite his two brothers and his sister with their various accoutrements. So we did.

So we first got into trouble because the invitation I sent to Peter didn’t expressly have his friend’s name on it, so she clearly wasn’t invited and wasn’t best pleased. It didn’t include Peter’s name either. None of the invitations had names written on them. This was apparently irrelevant, at least to Peter’s friend.

At the very end of last week I sent every one a Christmas card with a follow up invitation included. Made sure everyone’s name was hand-written on. Double checked to make sure the friend’s name was written on, correctly spelled. Triple checked that I had remembered to include a line inviting people to confirm with me the number of people they would be bringing with them in case anyone had weekend guests they couldn’t abandon. Posted them off. The cards, not the guests.

And now we are in trouble again :-( The Builder’s mother is miffed because we have invited his (adult) children and their children. We have invited his sister’s children (they are, mind you, only 12 and 9 so we could hardly leave them out). But we haven’t invited his brother Terry’s 40-something children and their sprouts :-S But aren’t they included in the “tell me how many of you are coming bit”? Apparently not, according to Gwen

Sigh. It’s a minefield, I tell you. A veritable minefield. In the highly unlikely event that I ever decide to invite the entire Builder Clan to anything ever again – I shall have a cake party open house and issue no invitations at all (Does that mean that all the cakes will of necessity be eaten by only The Builder and me?). Or perhaps I’ll just invite the Hyde family, who seem to realise that the Declaration of a Sunday Lunch carries an implicit invitation to Uncle Tom Cobleigh and All. Anyone for Sunday lunch on the Sunday after Christmas 2009?

Any suggestions as to how we squish possibly 30 people into the holiday cottage will be very gratefully received. (Oh – and where they’re all going to park!)