pass the parcel

Well, I'm better. Which is obviously a good thing in most respects, but it does mean I now have my appetite back, so I do need to hurry on down to the gym this week before the inevitable slide back to dimpled cheeks (and I don't mean on my face). 

I haven't been ill all week, but we have also had some friends visiting, so I have had the luxury of wine and conversation in the evenings, rather than have to huddle round my best-and-only-friend the laptop. 

They are trekking at the moment, poor things - we're having thunder and hail at the moment. It's all very dramatic, but probably a bit scary if you're halfway up the Himalayas. Ooh, and talking of drama and mountains, the wives trek turned out to be a right old hoo-har. I couldn't go as it was the week Hubby was in the UK (and anyway I was too busy commissioning jewellery). However, there was a schism, and it turned out that half the wives went to Annapurna, and the other half went to Langtang. Wish I could say more, but I'm not one to gossip, as you know.

It has been quite an exciting week. Lovely friends arrived on Saturday with their boys, who are a bit older than Son. The boys have been sleeping in Son's room and sharing baths, Bionicles, Roald Dahl books, etc. It has been quite busy in his room. However, as I said, they are off on a trek, so he's decided to have a sleepover with the Twins tonight. Good luck to him. Twin 2 has a cough like a forty-a-day-miner and Twin 1 appears to have totally lost her volume control. And there's a thunder storm going on outside.

He may manage to sleep through the racket, if only because he's utterly exhausted after his very exciting birthday party yesterday. 

I'm fairly exhausted too. Have you any idea how long it takes to wrap a pass the parcel present? Twenty layers, it had. Twenty. It was the size of a mini cooper when the game started. Amazing that it didn't knock out any of the younger participants.

I don't really understand why kids get so excited about pass the parcel. They know, that underneath the really humungous wrapping paper is just a poxy colouring set, or in this case, an educational book about astronomy, woo-hoo, and yet they still want to play. Why? 

It's a bit like buying a bikini: you look at the picture in the catalogue, and even though you know that you don't look like a swimwear model, you still hope that by some miracle that buying the bikini will shave inches off your thighs and years off your age. You are just setting yourself up for disappointment. So it is with pass the parcel. All the kids secretly hope that it's a huge present and that they will win it. The sad truth is, it will be something that cost less than a fiver, and probably all they will get is a small bag of cola fizz, in any case.

Do you think pass the parcel is a metaphor for life? Starting out with heady optimism and ending up with jealousy, bitterness, and a bit of tooth decay.

I should probably go now, don't you think?