New arrivals

by John Passmore

I’ll tell you the point of writing a blog – so you know what you’ve done. I write it in the evening between dinner and clarinet practice and it’s become an essential part of the day. If you read Jim Rohn, you’ll know all about the benefits of writing a journal.

Except last night things were a bit different. We had friends for dinner and it was quarter to midnight by the time we'd cleared up and I went to take the dog out. In the end I found her in the living room. There was an odd squeaking noise like a mouse with its tail stuck in the fridge door.

There was a mouse on the floor! No it was bigger than a mouse… Suddenly I had one of those heart-leaping-into-the-mouth moments: The dog had got hold of one of the children’s bearded dragons! These are lizard-like creatures called Norbert and Kreetcha. It looked as though she’d skinned it.

Then it dawned. The puppies had arrived six days early – or at least the first one had. Over the next two hours a further six arrived (one of them sadly, stillborn).

So you can see why the blog didn’t get done.

And now, do you think I can remember what happened yesterday. All I’ve got is the note on the edge of the page: Gary Newland, John C, MT, email, Rob Brown and Steve Newby. Three of them have ticks against their names which means they wanted to know more (and are now considering it). The others have crosses and didn’t. But more than that it would be cumbersome to tell you. The point is there are six of them.

The one thing it doesn’t cover is that half an hour before our friends were due to arrive for dinner, I discovered we only had one bottle of white wine. I dashed to Budgens and, as usual at the checkout, I turned to the person in front of me and said: “Here you are, I always give one of these to the person in front of me at the queue. It’s about making money.”

“About making money?”

“That’s right, I’m in the utilities business, that gas, electricity, telephones….”

He looked a bit quizzical but the girl behind the checkout had been listening with interest so I thought I’d give her one too – they were A5-sized invitations to the COP that I run off on my printer. But I only had one left and just at that moment the next customer arrived and he seemed a much better prospect (the checkout girl looked about 17) so: “Tell you what,” I told her. “I’ll give you a card instead.”

By this stage I’d caused such a commotion that the man behind wanted to know what it was all about.

So I told him…