Sponsored by
It's another X-ray-ted anniversary
GOT anything planned this Easter weekend? A bit of spirit-crushing DIY? Trudging round in the April chill in some Godless, soulless theme park you've paid the best part of £100 to get in?
Maybe you're thinking of packing the kids off to granny's so you can celebrate Easter in peace in some of our fair city's finest boozers and restaurants.
Well, my advice to you is don't bother. The thing about plans is someone always comes along to ruin them – usually in the most accidental, pointless and cack-handed way imaginable.
Take our wedding anniversary last weekend, for example. Our kids' Barrow nana was cooing like a pigeon in the way that only nanas can when I asked if our charming young daughters could stay overnight while me and my equally charming wife painted the town red to celebrate 11 years of matrimonial bliss.
The details were so fine-tuned that we'd even arranged a drop-off and pick-up point roughly halfway between our houses so we could each cut the journey by 50%. The table was booked, the decks cleared, the season ticket for that weekend's crucial United v Villa match passed up and passed on (face value, obviously. I'm no tout) and everything ready for a great weekend.
We'd been looking forward to this for weeks and then BANG! Our nine-year-old daughter does a passable impression of a Premier League Carlos Kick-a-ball footballer looking for a penalty and goes over on her ankle in front of all her friends in our back garden. Pain. Screams. Tears. Snot.
Actually, for anyone who has never had the misfortune of turning their ankle and feeling like it has snapped off and then watching it flap about like a kids' party balloon in the wind then you don't know what you're missing. Childbirth? Pah! You wanna try tweaking your ankle ligaments, love. Then you'll know what real pain is.
Once the screams had subsided and her size two foot could be examined properly 'don't worry, I'm not going to touch it' then it became blindingly obvious that it needed to be looked at by someone who knew what they were looking at. The first day of the Easter holidays and she looked like she'd broken her ankle. A&E here we go again.
Now Friday nights in casualty can be a bit scary even when you're 39.
When you're nine they must look like something out of a zombie movie.
All those drunks staggering about and picking fights with their own reflections in one place at the same time – and it was still daylight.
The horror, the horror.
Two-and-a-half-hours later and guess what? One X-ray and no break, thankfully. But also no weekend at nana's either because she needed a bit of pampering and TLC from her mum – and if a sore ankle which necessitated a trip to hospital isn't a good enough reason to spend the day at home on the sofa being waited on hand and foot (no pun intended) and watching all the crap kids' TV could pump out in a day then I don't know what is.
Still, there was no reason for our six-year-old to miss out on a bit of nana time so she couldn't wait to get her bag packed for 24 hours of being spoiled rotten in that way only grandparents can, will and do. Also, the family who live next door have an enormous trampoline and a seven-year-old daughter who constantly asks my mum 'when are those girls coming to stay again?' – so the lure was just too strong to ignore.
So there we were – just the three of us on our wedding anniversary. We even went out for lunch to some pretentious gastropub out in the sticks where they had the brass neck to charge us nearly 7 each for a sandwich – and by a sandwich I do mean two slices of wonderloaf with a bit of filling in it and some pre-washed supermarket salad in a bag tossed round the edge of the plate.
Our daughter had hopped the 25 yards from the car to the pub and we didn't have the heart to make her turn round and hop all the way back without any dinner – so like mugs, we paid up.
A bowl of chips, three soft drinks and 32 later we blinked our way back into the daylight and drove home in silent, stunned disbelief. Happy anniversary, darling.
Still, my wife cooked a nice romantic dinner for three that evening (the table for two at the best restaurant in town was cancelled because we couldn't get a sitter at such short notice) and everything was okay.
And guess what? The very next day our daughter's ankle and foot were right as rain. Gambolling about on it like a spring lamb, she was. Just fancy that! Don't kids make a remarkable recovery.
But the tone for the weekend was set earlier that day when a very kind traffic warden left a little note tucked under my windscreen wiper after I'd parked my car somewhere I shouldn't have for all of four minutes. A 70 fine (generously reduced to 35 if I paid up sharpish) for 240 seconds. The word snide doesn't even cover it as far as I'm concerned – he must've been hiding in the bushes, keeping tabs on his prime nicking spot and delivering his little yellow packet of misery the second my back was turned, like some Milk Tray man gone wrong.
A few weeks ago the Lancaster Guardian ran a story about a tea room in Kirkby Lonsdale that proudly displayed a sign outside its premises which read 'We Do Not Serve Traffic Wardens'. Personally, I'd only be too happy to serve the sneaky little *****, so long as I could spit in their tea first – although for legal reasons I must make it clear they do no such thing at that wonderful establishment.
Email to a friend
Print this page
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Lancaster
Saturday 26 May 2012
Today
Sunny
Temperature: 12 C to 23 C
Wind Speed: 23 mph
Wind direction: East
Tomorrow
Sunny
Temperature: 13 C to 22 C
Wind Speed: 18 mph
Wind direction: East
