Busy bees

We managed to pack lots in this week. On Thursday after school, we took the kids to see Tangled, the brilliant new Disney film about Rapunzel (just as good for grown ups as for kids). On Friday, our car, the interior of which resembled a mixture of a child's playroom, a student house and a nuclear waste dump, was in need of a good clean. Not since I discovered a plate with a pizza on it in Sarah Robertson's bed in Kew, have I seen such a mess. Rob was sent out into the cold to do the job but within moments a pyjama-clad Flo was hot on his heels. Once I had wrestled her into a jacket she was off, working her way through a series of vacuum cleaner attachments until the car sparkled. We can't seem to get rid of that smell though.  On Friday night, keen to catch up on our pre-Oscar film viewing, Rob and I watched and enjoyed The Social Network, the nerd-tastic story of the creation of Facebook.

On Saturday we drove across Romney Marsh and on into Kent to Canterbury, where we planned to show the girls the cathedral. I hadn't been since I was 18 when we watched a performance of Murder in the Cathderal in the crypt.  This plan was aborted when we discovered it was 8 quid each for adults and 4 each for the kids to go in. To a cathedral.  Instead we had lunch in the city and then drove on to Whitstable to see Liz and Charlie in the run up to Charlie's birthday party. A bottle of prosecco was opened, cupcakes for the party were decorated and then Charlie and Flo, who are now strangely inseparable (strange because in Sydney last year they fought all day long), disappeared upstair to mix toothpaste and shampoo in a bucket and make a big goo perfect for rubbing into carpets. Downstairs the parents sipped wine in blissful ignorance because they were quiet. The evening continued it would seem in a similar vein of wine dirnking. At some point a curry and pizza were produced ad consumed. I'm guessing the last bit as I have no memory of actually eating it, but the tell-tale curry stains on my dress on Sunday morning gave that away. Oh and the fact that my head felt as if it had actually been split open with an axe. I have never, ever had a hangover like it - the closest being the one the morning after my 30th birthday when I cried, I felt so bad, and Rob had to drive me to and from work, I felt so ill. Now I've mentioned we drank a bit but on surveying the empties there were only 3 and there were 3 of us and this didn't seem to be the sort of hangover  you get from drinking a bottle of wine, more like 4 or 5. I spent 5 days last week on a protein only diet and I'm pretty sure this may have had something to do with it - no carbs, fruit or veg, just protein and fat-free dairy. Needless to say, after being helped into the car, I started to feel better on the drive home but didn't touch a drop of wine at Maria and Lol's where we had a lovely Sunday lunch with Dad and Alexandra, where stories of drunken nights were shared around the table...