In which I get a good night's sleep

I woke up the other morning a few minutes before the alarm.  Satisfying on the one hand to wake naturally – less so when you realise that it is set for 6am.

As I stirred, I felt a foot gently caress mine.  “Aha!” I thought – the Shah is getting frisky!  I turned my head to glance lovingly in his direction (Ok “lovingly” is a bit of an exaggeration.  Actually a shed load of exaggeration.  More like “fuckoffingly”) and almost fell out of bed in fright as I saw – not the Shah’s dusky features crumpled up in front of me – but the beautiful smooth olive skin of my daughter.  My spluttering woke her up.

Me:  What are you doing in here?

TD:   Mummy – I just wanted to sleep in your room.

Klaxons immediately sounded in my skull.  One word gave it all away. And that word was  MUMMY.  Never in the field of teenage terrorism has one fifteen year old uttered the word “MUMMY” without it indicating extreme emotional blackmail and manipulation.  The conversation continued.

Me:  Did you strip your bed last night?

TD: Er, yes

Me: and you ceebs to put clean sheets on it, huh?

TD: um, sort of

Me: Gotcha. Where's Dad?

TD: (sniggers) In the spare room

Nice innit?  I sighed the weary sigh of one resigned to her fate and staggered out of bed and downstairs.   Some time later, I staggered back up again having attempted to feed the cats in the meantime. 

I have to digress here a bit because one cat (Paddy, the Ginger Minger) has begun to communicate his feelings about food very clearly.  Food is very close to Paddy’s heart but he is picky and it is impossible to predict what will find favour with him on any given day.  One day you can bung down a bowl of Whiskas and he acts like Mr Creosote on speed.  Give him the same thing another day and he lets you know he thinks it’s shite.

The way he does this is to stand some distance from the bowl, sniffing the air disdainfully.  He then offers up dirty looks which I ignore.  Because of his lack of success in the ‘looks that would fry a lesser mortal’ department, he approaches the bowl and looks closely at the scran on offer.  He then proceeds to scrape the floor with a front paw, just as he would if he were digging a feline latrine in the garden.  I have even gone so far as to ask the Vet what this is all about.  She laughed uproariously and said she hadn’t a clue and he was probably letting us know what he thinks of the low-quality slop we try and give him.  Well, those are the words that came out of her mouth while written all over her face was ‘who do you think I am, the cat whisperer or perhaps Desmond Morris, you dozy cow?’

Anyway – back upstairs, the Shah is arguing furiously with his daughter (how unusual).  She is refusing to get out of bed, he is attempting to get dressed, by which I mean cramming himself into a pair of black trousers which probably fitted once upon a time.  He had hurt his finger playing football the night before (and no, he doesn’t play in goal, so go figure) and was finding it difficult to do them up.  His daughter meanwhile, was utterly disgusted at the sight of several yards of furry brown stomach on show and let her feelings be known which was a good thing because at least it got her out of bed.  The Shah tried once more to sort his clothing out, huffing and puffing and turning an odd mahogany colour in the process.  Eventually, he stopped trying to do his trews up (trews!  Ha!  Another word I haven’t heard in aeons – a bit like  ‘slacks’ – boy am I dating myself here!) Then he started to dig furiously in his trousers (sorry – TMI) and make exasperated noises.

“WTF are you doing?” I asked in a meek, wifely way.

“I’m, I’m trying to sort out my, um – oh what d’you call them?  PANTIES!”  quoth the Shah as I screamed with laughter, imagining the Shah clad in a pair of frilly unmentionables.   Unfortunately, the image stayed with me the whole day, but I didn’t feel I could share it with anyone at work for fear of starting unhealthy rumours.

PS - I thought I might add a picture to this post to liven it up a bit.  Take my advice.  Do NOT Google 'pictures of men in frilly pants' ahem.