A little more to eat??

Back home about 2.30pm from our adventures, we sit down to a late lunch of home made leek and potato soup and french bread..then Jean fetches the grandchildren from school. They are two gorgeous little girls, P and H, aged 6 and 4 and I look forward to playing with them. H comes straight up to me and says, 'Where is the man?' and I realise she means Clive. I lead the girls to a chair in the corner of the lounge where Clive is hiding, reading his book, and the girls stand one either side of him, staring, wide eyed. As they start taking and P shows Clive her precious teddy bear, and a great deal of flirting is going on, Clive is instantly besotted and I creep away unwanted, and I realise that females start using their charms on the opposite sex far earlier than we think.

However, when they sit to watch Frosty the Snowman video, Clive manages to get back to his book, and when I sit on the settee suddenly I am surrounded by wriggling girls and we enjoy a gossip and I am shown teddy, and pictures drawn at school and even a gap in H's teeth.

Later in the evening, after they have gone, the four of us settle down to watch a dvd of Evita, starring Madonna: once my cousin has opened the sliding doors to his fully stocked bar, and we are all given copious amounts of drinks, crisps, peanuts and pork scratchings. The bar is so impressive and the house so big, I start seriously considering it as a venue for the next Ops meeting..they even have an indoor swimming pool...

My cousin's surround sound system with speakers everywhere is turned up to the level of sound he likes, and I worry that I need Doggit's ear plugs. I remember being blasted with Phantom at the same volume last year and nearly wetting myself with shock when the organ kicked in....this year I was prepared and actually the music sounded amazing and I really enjoyed it.

At 10pm it was dinner time, and we sat down to a huge spread of lasagne, potatoes, vegetables, followed by garden grown stewed plums and cream. I am starting to look and feel extremely fat.....

By 11pm my cousin is in full flow and sorting out the next dvd to watch/be deafened by: the choice is Peter Gabriel's live concert staged by the director Robert Lepage: Secret Worlds (I think) it is a fab, fab dvd, the music is stunning, the volume wonderful and the staging amazing. I'm not sure how Clive manages to sit in an armchair in the corner and read the paper...