Airbeds at midnight

Surely one of the best things about having friends to stay is watching them trying to sort out their sleeping arrangements at midnight when everyone is shattered and has seen the wrong side of a couple of bottles of wine / port / Aldi's Booleys and whatever the mini-bar had to offer.

Last night was no exception. Tony is a practical kind of guy, so watching him trying to make a valve out of an old inner tube so that it would fit a rusty foot pump was a pleasure. He spent a good twenty minutes making his valve and was very pleased with himself. Then we spent another ten minutes trying to find the butter so that he could un-rust his foot pump - to the tune of his wife saying, "well, I told you not to leave it outside". Then we spent another twenty minutes giggling helplessly as he had to push and pull it two inches at a time with his hands (if you used your feet it would only push). It would have taken three days to pump up their de-luxe king size airbed.
Then he got so hacked off with our giggling and smug comments, that he dissapeared in a huff and went on to blow it up by mouth. After another 15 minutes, he had hyper-ventilated and fallen asleep. They spent an uncomfortable night lying on a slab of rubber.

A fine lunch at Llanafan's Red Lion followed, the best place to go for a good feed and a smug comment. (We went on Father's Day and the landlord, from his book of Landlord's Witticisms, said to Huw, "Christ, she hasn't told you that you're the father, has she?"). Charlotte went to the toilet fifteen times and Maude got ice cream headache from eating her pud too fast. So did Huw.

Then on to an Open Garden at Llysdinam, which shows how old I am becoming as I went by choice. Luckily, I know the head gardner, so she gave us lots of grapes from the vines and necatarines from the trees - I didn't like to tell her that I had already pinched enough for the week. It made me determined to get on with book number two as we'll never be able to afford a head gardener otherwise. I was quite sad when I got home and surveyed the woodland where our lawn used to be.


Lesson of the day has to be: sort your sleeping arrangements out before you drink three bottles of wine and eat enough to floor a horse.