23 Boxes And A Long One!

What's happening in the Rhythmic life?

With thanks to David Blacker I'm living up to the "pimped up diary" thing. It's a perfect description of LLD and has given me a strange desire to chuck out a few words now and again to tell anyone who's interested what's been happening in these parts, which of course I always did, but now it's formal.

Two things happened to me yesterday that made me smile, chuckle and laugh, a bit like a supermarket own brand of Rice Krispies. The first of the two actually happened at the supermarket too.

Lunchtime was jam packed with my usual; a stroll over to Tesco and a sandwich of some sort. Wednesdays is my night to have the girls so the lunchtime stroll also involves buying the necessary ingredients for the evening meal.

The girls at work had suggested spaghetti bolognese for dinner so I found myself standing at a checkout with the necessaries and a sweets shop's worth of chocolate biscuitish things for the girls (my home ones) to munch on in the evening. My basket had eleven items so I was of course standing in one of the longer queues, not one of the ten or less items ones that I could have so easily have smuggled myself into were I that way inclined.

Then I saw it, or him, or them. It was the contents of the trolley of the chap in front of me that caught my attention. You know Cadbury's Flakes, not the ones we eat as chocolate bars but the half sized ones that ice cream men use in 99s? Well I learned that they are available in boxes of around twenty or thirty. I learned this from the fact that the chap in front of me had twenty three of these boxes in his trolley. I knew this was the case as I surreptitiously counted them. He also had one long French bread loaf in the trolley, which tickled me, though not in that smutty way you're thinking. That was it, there was nothing else in the chap's trolley.

I studied the chap. He was a Sikh, perhaps an ice cream man, but the French Stick was the sticking point. Twenty three boxes of Cadbury's Flake and a French stick was the type of trolley content that a good episode of Miss Marple could be made out of. I was mystified. Then the lightbulb moment came. Which reminds me, I wonder if the bloke who invented lightbulbs had a light bulb moment.

He must have been one of those weird food types, the sort who can only eat jam or who live on the contents of used tea bags. Only his particular fetish was French bread sandwiches made from Cadbury's Flakes. Presumably the sandwiches had to be cut down to size, which would explain why he wasn't using full sized Flakes. 'tis indeed a funny old world and I studied his complexion. There was no vast array of acne nor any visible evidence of his strange taste in food. I guess he was just lucky. I carried on with my day, content with the knowledge that I had figured out this mystery.

Then I picked up the girls in the evening and K came out with one of those phrases that made me proud and laugh.

We were walking along my road, heading back after popping to the local shop. K and A were in seriously high spirits. I think it's partly because they are still getting used to the whole new way of life and they're often a bit over excited when I collect them or drop them back. In time I'm sure they'll calm down.

As we were walking the excitement reached a crescendo of sorts and I asked both of them to calm down. A had been skipping like a strangely jerky Kangaroo and K had been squeezing a cuddly toy thing that was making a squeeking noise, as I'm sure it was designed to do. I asked them to calm down with some choice fatherly words:

"Will you two just calm down a bit now please?"

"Ok Dad" said K. "We will"

"In fact look at us now" she continued.

"We're now as calm as two monkeys in a baby's bath"

"You what? What did you say?" I asked.

"I said we're as calm as two monkeys in a baby's bath."

"That's whatI thought you said, where on Earth did you get that from?" said I.

"You know me Dad, I'm surprisingly clever, these things just come to me sometimes." the too smart for her own good eleven year old continued.

Well I do know her, she is too smart for her own good sometimes, but she makes me smile.

And those were two of the things that happened yesterday.