What's been happening in the last few days

In a word, busy! Friday was a half-day at work. Michel had landed at Heathrow at 7:30 that morning and was making his way to his B&B to grab some sleep because he hadn't been able to get any for the whole flight and was now a bit of a wreck and was flirting with a migraine so it was best for him to get some kip and soon. Unfortunately, the lady at his B&B wasn't there when he arrived, so we set him up in the guest bedroom for a nap and we headed into town to get some errands done. We bought a nice pen for people to sign the guest book and made a special trip to Clinton cards for some Bobbles and some other stuff. We'd had the brilliantly sappy idea to make Mr. & Mrs Bobbles cake decorations (one is wearing a top hat and coat, the other has a veil! how cute is that?).

Our afternoon plans were severely derailed when the cat decided to go all toxic-waste-factory (TWF) on us. We'd run out of his normal cat food and had begun giving him some other brand that the breeder had given us a sampler bag of. He really, really liked it, but it's too rich for him. Not only was he smelling like a TWF but at one point that afternoon, he had diarrhoea from hell, which managed to coat his entire backside with shit. Nice. He smelled awful, and even he wouldn't go near it to clean himself – so we ended up having to clean the couch cover, a chair cover and my jeans because they got slimed. Imagine the scene of me holding the cat down in the bathtub with a pair of work gloves while Katy is using the showerhead to clean our cat's ass. The joys of pet ownership they tell me. Still, he ended up sleeping on us for most of the night so I think he doesn't bear us a grudge. After the cat incident, we went to the Red Lion for a nice pub meal cause I couldn't be assed to cook.

Saturday morning saw me up bright and way too early because I had to go fetch my parents at Heathrow. Took the train from Whittlesford to Liverpool St and then the tube to Kings Cross (where I'd planned to take the Picadilly line all the way to Heathrow). I know it's not the optimal route, but it's one I know and I can navigate it when I'm still not really awake. The problem was that Picadilly was not stopping at Kings because of maintenance work, and the Circle and Hammersmith&City were also running late (security and electrical incidents, respectively). I found an alternate route and ended up arriving a few minutes late so they were waiting for me at arrivals.

Their flight was mostly good and my dad seemed in decent shape considering his back troubles. We started the trip back to Cambs with little incident and regular smoking breaks for my dad. I think he got scared by a vending machine selling chargrilled steak flavoured crisps at one point.

Katy picked us up from Whittlesford, giving my parents their first taste of driving on the wrong side of the road. I now understand why it would have been a Very Bad Thing for Katy to come pick us up from Heathrow directly :)

Once we'd gotten my parents settled in with some tea/coffee/ashtray/chair in the backyard (my dad is really impressed with the chestnut tree out back), we went to pick up Michel to go do the final suit fitting. That turned out to be a bit of an adventure. The shirts we were fitted for turned out to be too small. They called the other Moss Bros branch in town, but that turned out to be completely useless. Apparently, they were overworked and understaffed and though they did call back the first time the fitting clerk called, they were less than polite to him on the phone the second time (so we ended up having to buy our own shirts from Debenhams and they'll be giving us a refund on the shirt hire).

Once we got home, we had time for a bit of a hurried meal and then Michel, my dad and I were off to the pub for my boys-night-out. We had a good time and the boys were not evil with me (though there had been mutterings that Some Things Might Happen :) The worse I had to do was to wear a god-awful silly had the whole evening, but that I can do. Had a few drinks and some good hearted laughs and everybody dispersed around midnight. That was a fun night.