a good time had by all

Jen, Dad and Mam

the family get-together on Saturday was great fun as it's not often that I can meet up with all three of my brothers at the same time.  Dad was in the dark about going out for a meal, he's quite a shy man in many was and if he'd got wind of it he would have done a runner (well, gone for a long walk with the dog, anyway!), so we had to present it as a fait accompli!

I thought he might have twigged when we arrived in our gladrags at 3pm (for heavens sake I was wearing a dress! that almost never happens!) but he didn't cotton on , and I'd warned my kids not to mention it at all.

To be fair, he was more engrossed in hearing about Jack's trip to Kenya. Jack is the first person on my side of the family to have done anything like this (and hopefully not the last), and the first in a long time (more than 60 years) to have travelled to Africa. My Mam and her sister Jean lived in South Africa for nearly two years when they were young children in the 1940's, and Jean is now in Australia, but no one else has been outside of Europe. (David's family are different, they've been all over the world, with only South America untouched).

So as Jack was telling everyone all about his trip I got to hear about it too. So far I haven't been told much, other than it was good and not to give him any beef stew. But this time I heard about him thinking he'd lost his passport 3 times, spiking his hand with a giant thorn, hearing the mozzies buzz past his ears during the night, helping the masaai to give tick injections to their sheep and goats . Apparently the sheep put up with it, while the goats screamed like they were being murdered, and carried on screaming for ages afterwards just to let everyone know how violated they felt!  And he fell asleep on the safari and missing most of the animals- except when everyone went really quiet as a cheetah padded past their truck and they could have almost stretched out and touched it, and the silence woke him up!

Then at 5pm Mam went to change and out out Dad's suit and tie and told him to get changed too, leaving him no chance of escape. The meal was booked for 6pm to allow the seniors ample time to digest their dinner, to prevent teenagers passing out from hunger and so that we would not be too late when we headed back to Scotland.

The local pub is in new hands and half of it has become an Italian bistro and it is building up a good reputation for posh-food-at-not-posh-prices. Italian cuisine is about the only foreign food Dad enjoys, he doesn't like spicy stuff, stirfries, too much sauce or food that looks at you from the plate, so Italian is generally a safe bet, and he loves minestrone soup and the various chicken dishes in the italian repertoire. And of course there's pizza/pasta for the kids and fancy stuff for us. I had sea bass steamed in a paper wrap with clams and shrimps and it was delicious! Mark had panfried lemon sole, David had tuna "meat balls" with tagliatelle and Jack chose lemon sole goujons.  At one point the waiter turned up with osso bucco for Jack (beef stew! hah!) and he was convinced that we had arranged that to wind him up! We hadn't, but the look on his face was priceless.

So it all went well, Dad did enjoy the meal out, Mam can relax now the secret is out, and all nine of us had a lot of fun.

It would have been nice if our team had won today, but we almost snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and had to settle in the end for a draw. Oh well, football is a funny old game!