Hestia and..... some miscellany

First up, I need to let you know - Tartarus made it home.  On Saturday night.  A full twenty four hours after I was expecting him to arrive home. I was not amused.  As a result, I had a face like an Afghan hound chewing a wasp when I met him at the ferry. 

<- illlustration of a face like an Afghan hound chewing a wasp



 It transpired that on Wednesday (original pay off from the ship day) the Mexican Navy were having a Gay Pride Day or something of a celebratory nature and the port was closed for the day.  This has happened before.  These Mexicans will do ANYTHING for a day off.

Anyway, he paid off on Thursday.  And when the tired and fed-up merchant navy officers hit Mexico City airport, they naturally hit The Friendly Man's Bar where the bar staff are on first name terms with our returning heroes.  A couple of shandies *cough* later, they catch their flights to whatever parts of the world they live in.  Only one of them is trying to return to Blighty and this would be, of course, the one that belongs to me.

For the second time in his life, he was refused access to the plane on the grounds that he had been drinking.  There is no point in arguing with KLM over this matter - sailors travel on greatly reduced air tix, so it is better to keep a high-paying tourist (this is a Thursday flight to Europe, remember) happy and bounce the cheapie sailor to the Friday flight.  Well, that's what Tartarus maintains anyway......

This 'drink' fact was relayed to me when he was in Amsterdam airport. So I hung up on him, as any sensible domestic goddess who had been scouring the internet for days for news of possible volcanic activity, ground crew strikes and possible muggings of drunk Scottish sailors for their mobile phones and ipods.

Reader, by the time he got home, I could barely look at him.  I was furious.  Not only had he been turned off the flight, but he had booked himself into an hotel at Mexico airport AND NOT EVEN PHONED TO LET US KNOW.

OK - so his phone doesn't work in Mexico, but I'm PRETTY confident that the hotel would have a phone that could, somewhere.  I suspect that he didn't phone because he possibly didn't want me to hear his drink-slurred voice.  Wifely radar can pick up an over-carefully enunciated word anywhere in the world.

We just KNOW guys, that's all you need to remember, we just KNOW.....

Anyway - long story short.  He is home.  And I am over the upset.  Kind of.

Other more upbeat Miscellany now: Sonshine won an art competition at school on Monday.  This is it:

Utterly thrilled to miss his orienteering expedition, as you can see

It apparently shows the Council where they should stick the Town Bell.  I came up with a different suggestion entirely, which is not fit for publication here.

Passed his cycling proficiency on Wednesday.  He got a certificate and a comment that said his trailbiking helmet was not suitable.  Given that he is the only child in his class who actually WEARS his helmet outside of school cycling lessons, I don't really care whether they think he has restricted viewing under his chin.  Frankly, if the car is under his chin, there's not a helmet in the world that will help.

Sonshine nonchalantly asked me for a cheque for £175.00 for the 5-day school trip to the outdoor centre (please God, don't let me get the call to be a parent helper at that! Tartarus and I are planning a Mid-Week Break that week). I was agog at his cheek.  I would have been sucking up to my parents for MONTHS if I was looking for that sort of cash.  I would at least have cleaned out my stinking wee hamster.  Ah - and that brings me to the next bit of miscellany.....

Nibbles has utterly ruined a pair of curtains.  Well, only one curtain to be fair.  But if one curtain is ruined, the pair are pretty much ruined, don't you think? - lookee here to see for yourself the damage that a small rodent can work in a single night when a curtain is accidentally trapped in the front of his cage. Please note that each of these photos shows a different set of holes:

This soft-furnishing desecration has also resulted in me throwing myself on Tartarus's non-existent capacity for mercy with regard to the tiny destructo-rodent.  *He* wanted to do something arty and fatal to him with a rolling pin.  I, on the otherhand, am quite attached to the little varmint and begged for clemency.

Clemency won, only because Tartarus doesn't know what it means - plus there was the MotoGP to be watching on the Telly. And an escaloped hamster would also take quite a lot of cleaning up. Plus he is still trying to get into my good books viz a viz the Flight Debacle.

What else has happened?  Not much - Tartarus has now spent two days, cleaning the house around me like Aggie and Kim re-incarnated into the one grumpy male body.  I'm just ignoring him.

Never mind, it's only six weeks until he goes away again.....