If they were me and I was you

Ned seemed very pleased with the presents I gave him, which is always a relief. I tend to be pants at present-buying, especially for chaps. The two pairs of shorts (which he initially thought was a jumper) are a tad tight, but he admits going up a size is admitting defeat. His plan is to make sure he always stands up straight and keeps his tummy sucked in so that he looks lean and lovely. However so far his time limit on remembering to do this has reached a massive three seconds, and my suggestion of eating and drinking less was met by not a little whimpering.

His other main present was much bigger, and he viewed the package with trepidation. “It’s an implement, isn’t it?” It’s something he’s been wanting for years and years and years, and they had some cheap in Aldi a few weeks ago, and he sent me to have a look at them before they sold out. When I arrived there was only one left so I grabbed it. Once I was holding it I could look at the pallet they’d been on and see that there were none on it, so I could tell Ned, in all truthfulness, that they’d all gone. Then it was merely a question of hiding it in the wardrobe till the big day. He was very surprised, and unnervingly excited, to unwrap a chainsaw. I fear my apple trees may be doomed.

Pottering around the garden today (lovely weather, got two loads of washing dried) I noticed that dear Mr O’Reilly had got the fence panels nice and level by cleverly digging a shallow trench along the boundary to avoid the slight slope. Which is all very well but it means that when the flowerbeds are levelled off again the bottom couple of inches of the panels are going to be buried and will almost instantly rot. Oh joy.

Tomorrow the car has to go and be MOTed. Bother. We were hoping to have replaced it a few weeks ago so we could have avoided this, but time has caught up both with us and the rubbish car dealer who doesn’t appear to want to sell any cars. If it’s going to cost more than a couple of hundred squids to get it through the test it’s hardly going to be worth it (it turned over the 199,000 mile mark on Monday), unless we decide to keep it for at least another six months. Which if the dealer doesn’t extract his digit PDQ is looking very likely.

Other than that I finally got The Boy’s student loan application posted, so that’s one more thing crossed off the worry list.