HOORAY! The festive season is well and truly over
We've emerged more or less unscathed.
Well, apart from Nicholas, naturally. He managed to break his hand after a fight at school, which I'd love to think he'd learned a lesson from. I'm not holding my breath.
At least he'd managed to create a far greater punishment than even I could devise for him – spending the Christmas holidays in a cast from his wrist to his fingers.
I encouraged the cast technician to enclose as much of his hand as possible, just to make it that little bit more difficult to play his computer games.
He managed to break his right hand – but writes with his left, so that won't stop his school work.
And he's managed to be excluded from football, rugby, etc, until the end of January.
Of course, being sensible about taking care of the hand didn't enter his head at all.
He still went to his football team's Christmas 10-pin bowling party and when I picked him up from it, he was driving a dodgem. Not a clue.
And then there was the smell. Never having been in a cast before, I didn't realise how deeply unpleasant the festering mess would become.
Apparently, one of end-of-term dares at school was to sniff the cast. Ah, what marvellous, good, clean fun…
We also received the regulation amount of odd and inappropriate gifts and as ever, my mother didn't fail to disappoint.
She decided to buy me and the Grinch huge black wine goblets. Fair enough, only she didn't actually open then until she was wrapping them on Christmas Eve.
Plain black they were not … encrusted with glitter and bling, wishing us both a happy 18th birthday!
She'd had a couple of brandy and Babychams by then, so wrapped them anyway, with a note in each one: "Cock up on the goblet front, just pretend you're 18."
The glitter's now shedding all over the house, but it seems to be strangely attracted to Gary's face. It's most fetching.
And Vanessa managed to buy Gary a tankard filled with jelly beer sweets – only the stench of them was awful – like Nick's cast, really.
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Print this page- Sunderland’s astonishing rise even surprising Martin O’Neill
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Weather for Sunderland
Friday 10 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -3 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 15 mph
Wind direction: South
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Cloudy
Temperature: 1 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 10 mph
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