Had dinner with three good friends last night, including my friend with the two broken legs. What a nightmare. She has to plan what she needs either upstairs or downstairs almost for the whole day because once she’s got herself there she can’t move. She is entirely reliant on her husband to assist, but is beginning to get the hang of a very trendy wheelchair. I made her a pie. It was the worst pie you have ever seen and I almost didn’t give it to her because I had made out of pastry a person sitting in a wheelchair. Once it had cooked it looked more like a bloated seal on a scooter – everything had sunk. I put some Clarins moisturiser inside the pie instead of the usual apple or blackcurrant – it made her laugh a lot (phew).
One of my friends (who is a teacher) was horrified to hear that I had attempted to talk about sex with the children. “The counsellor is wrong” she said – DO NOT EVER ATTEMPT TO SPEAK TO YOUR CHILDREN ABOUT SEX, it is simply too embarrassing for everybody concerned to be even the slightest bit beneficial”. I mentioned to them that I had had this conversation with the counsellor during her talk – apart from two people out of about 50, we all agreed that our parents had been a completely useless font of carnal knowledge. At that point I asked her why she felt it was important that we as parents should be so much more involved. “I mean, we all survived…I most definitely didn’t want to get any information from my parents – parents having or knowing about sex is an almost unbearable thought (that surprisingly hasn’t changed through the generations as far as I can see) so what has changed now?” “We need to turn the tide” was all she said, whatever that means.
My son’s rugby team lost their game, which means that they are out of the tournament. They were so disappointed and because I have been helping them with their training, so was I. I drove my dejected son home. He was going to come with me to see some friends, but wanted instead to go home. HOWEVER, had they won their match we would have stayed out for at least three hours. Had this been the case, my house would have been completely flooded. The water got turned off today because they are changing the pipes in the road. My 7 year old left the tap on as no water was coming out and the plug was in the sink. When we got back the water was overflowing onto the floor but had only been doing so for about 10 minutes. Very close call.
