mess'd up weekend

The weekend started with 'Fun Friday' - a misnomer if ever there was one.
On the last Friday of the month the officers' mess is open to families. The idea is that the parents have a quiet drink at the bar, whilst the children sit down nicely to pizza and chips and then, once they have eaten their supper, play nice calm games like scrabble or charades or something, while the adults have a bar snack.
Of course the reality is that big hordes of kids, manic from being cooped up in school all week, swiftly down a couple of cans of Coke and then swoop around en masse like a sticky red-cheeked tornado, jumping off sofas and kocking over anything in its path, be it toddlers or ornamental canons.
Meanwhile, all the adults prop up the bar, knocking back G&Ts.
Did I say all the adults? Oh no, that's right, all the adults except me. And possibly one other concerned mother. Both sat biting our lips with 999 on speed dial.
But the kids love it... and I'm willing to endure just about anything if it gets me out of having to cook and wash up.
Which is why I was back to the mess again on Saturday morning for brunch.
I let the children bring some toys along in the hope that they would play 'nicely' after our fry up whilst I enjoyed a cup of coffee, read the paper and perhaps had a bit of a chat about current affairs with a couple of other parents.
Before we even got there Twin 2 was screaming to the world because I had committed the heinous crime of asking her to walk for a bit as my arm was aching from carrying her. The meal itself was a morass of coco pops, scrambled eggs and plastic dinosaurs.
I do remember having a very brief conversation about the merits of Take That over Boyzone, and mentioning that the reason Robbie was everyone's favourite is that he looked as if he was "good in the sack", which I followed with, "I'd love to stay and chat but one of the Twins has done a poo, so we'll have to go."
I'm not sure where my wild optimism about these things comes from. There is always this gaping chasm between the idea of spending time in the officers' mess and the cold hard truth.