Jan 2nd

One of those post Christmas and not yet time to do any work yet lie ins. Guilt ridden nd maybe all the better for that. In fact it was only Sophie’s arrival with a request (demand?) To be taken to town that got me moving at all.
The fucking house is a nightmare. Dirty washing in every corner, every cupboard bulging with bags of waste paper.The kitchen has been without a floor now for 3½ months. Half the cupboards are missing, the drawers are hanging off at strange angles. There’s no room to put anything away so a huge eclectic pile of crap now grows daily on the table. Decided to lock horns with H as the littered contents of her handbag spewed out onto the sitting room floor, Crap crap crap.....empty torn envelopes, empty pill packets, two for one offers, leaflets from every place she’s visited and most she hasn’t in the past five years, kit kat wrappers....dig a bit deeper and you may well find the kit kats themselves in various states of decomposition. Total disorganised chaos
Took S & Daniel into down. Believe it or not he had moved himself to arrange to meet a gang of mates in town, forsaking bloody World of Warcraft for the afternoon.
It was a nondescript late morning, a thudding grey sky with just a hint of sunshine somewhere up there hoping to make it’s presence felt. The forecast said it would get colder as the day went on. The forecast wasn’t wrong.
I spent he afternoon, when not ferrying Sophie and Daniel to and fro, bent over the laptop alternating between my "interests" and trying to plan something for Sophie’s birthday tomorrow. Seem to be settling on a guided tour of Lords followed by lunch.
As five of us can’t get into my car, decided we better get H’s mobile skip into action (the battery was flat last time we tried it). Much pushing and shoving ended in tears. The thing has been requiring fixing for nearly a year now. It has (I discovered today) no back lights, one brake light, the bonnet flaps up and down causing the alarm to explode into action without any warning (this can include 5am, making us a joy to be neighbours of) and the number plate has now been replaced with a biroed cornflake packet placed on the dashboard and visible only to the finest cameras at NASA’s disposal.
It wasn’t the best time to point out the shortcomings of this approach to motoring. H has been ill, badly for a few days, and she didn’t need to be pushing cars up and down the road. Predictably she wedged the car against the pavement several times. It is perhaps fair to say that the more sympathetic side of my nature was not to the fore, and hence the tears. Bless Emma. She came into the street in her dressing gown with a cup of tea for her poor sick Mum, and carried it the length of the road to her. She’s still an adorable child, but we all know that she can’t have more than a year of true childhood left. It’s the saddest thing.
I kissed her on the head as we went shopping for Sophie’s presents in Asda. I really will miss being able to do that. As it happened I kissed a spot and she yelped and dished out a stern rebuke.
The evening was enlivened by a Thunderbirds special on BBC4. Virgil & Brains saved Alan and Tintin from an untimely meltdown at the sun. The "All you want to know about Thunderbirds" was a wonderful nostalgia trip. I wished Dan would have watched it with us, but he was back at the computer by now. Ems did though, and greeted the whole thing with a mix of childish enthusiasm and rather wise questions.
H has been asleep on the couch most of the day, and as tomorrow grows closer she is in full wart hog mode.