Opportunity Knocks...

About six months ago we were having Sunday dinner Chez Bailey (our house) with our two favourite nieces and our favourite nephew, one of the nieces is a very fussy eater and she was heavily pregnant with her first child,   We got to talking about food and her terrible, terrible eating habits or lack of,  when  It suddenly occurred I had a sudden flash of something which made me suddenly ask her if she would like to learn how to cook, I really don’t know where this came from and my pleasure when she said “Yes” was immense.  We arranged to have a cookery lesson in a couple of weeks and shepherds pie was the order of the day.

When Billy and I arrived at our niece’s house on the day, we were very impressed that already she had a cookery book and was eager to get on, my immense pride in her is super increased because since that day she has had 2 dinner parties that I know of and one of them was for us, me and Billy, she served a 3 course meal cooked from scratch and it was absolutely brilliant.  I awarded her a ‘Come Dine with Me’ 9 because there is always room for improvement (I was teasing) she deserved a 10+ at least….

Not many months later she served up a Christmas dinner for at least five people and when she told me that if it wasn’t for me she wouldn’t be cooking, it was the best ever Christmas present I could have asked for.   All because instead of laughing at her, I offered her a way forward, what are Aunties for???

Tis the Season to be Jolly...............

Boxing Day at our house is always fun but this year when my 80 year old Mother in Law joined in playing Killer Darts it was the best yet.

Every year we ask out nephew and nieces to join us for fun and games, this year there was the addition of great nephew known as our Grephew, Henry and both my Mother and brother in Law joined us.  The drinks were flowing and everyone was in fine spirits and we began with a game of Hang Man upstairs in the guest bedroom where there is a large blackboard screwed to the chimney breast, we all sat around on little stools and the rules were

1)     You must use a Christmas theme for all words

2)    You must stand up and wave your arms if you think you know the answer

It was unbelievable that every time food words were used I got the answer before we started shouting out letters ha ha ha…. Henry grephew amazed us all playing quietly with his rattles and other toys that Santa had left for him. 

After almost 2 hours of this game, we all agreed to break for food before commencing with Killer Darts.   The rules here are

1)    Hit a number with one dart using hand you DON’T write with

2)    Become a killer by hitting landing in this number  with dart by using the hand you DO write with

3)    Each player has five lives

4)    Kill of your opponents five lives by landing in their number throwing darts with hand you do write with

5)    Regain one life only, by landing a dart in your own number at any time before being killed off

Stephen (brother in law) insists that when you’re dead your dead and you shouldn’t be getting any lives back.  However, no sooner was he down to 3 lives than he insisted on regaining one with much hilarity.  Shirley (mother in law) is only very small and she was killed off before she hit the dart board at all (the floor boards took some punishment) and then we all began systematically picking each other off.  In the second game Shirley managed to survive to the last two players, the other being her oldest son (my husband, Billy) and can you believe he did not spare her!! He had to win oh Billy, Billy…… anyway we had the best time and we are all looking forward to Billy and my BBQ in July where we will organise some BBQ tucker trials…….

Happy New Year Everyone and I hope you all have as much fun as we do Chez Bailey!

Bitterness and Other Things

You!  Yes, you who killed our son/brother, with your Honda Civic car.

Do you still have restless nights, thinking about how you mowed him down and then fled the country for a year?  Do you wake up suddenly believing him to be still here on earth?

Do you still get depressed, miserable and cry longing for it never to have happened?

Do you throw money at your misery trying to cheer yourself up, missing him, wanting to buy him a Christmas gift, a Birthday gift a gift for the hell of it?

Wonder what size shoes he would wear, would he have grown past five feet two inches?

Do you sweat and have panic attacks, suffer from remorse, pray for forgiveness?

Why, why did you never come and say you were sorry, for the pain and loss we still bear and shall do so for the rest of our days?

forget me not