Pre-party preps

It's Mr Grumpy's birthday tomorrow (65, since you ask) and I've bought him a card featuring a sneering cat with the caption, 'Hee-hee. In cat years you'd be one hundred and eleventy-twelve.'

Originally, he said he didn't want a party as it was too much work, so I began organising a surprise one with his friend, the one who has five boys, the youngest three being all under three. She is a professional caterer so I had run the menu by her when she suddenly rang me last week and said, 'Guess what? He's decided to do his own 1950s party.'

'What do you mean?' I asked her and my guts lurched in horror when she replied, 'Steak and kidney pud, steamed pudding, spotted dick, rice, sago and tapioca.' Well, get me to a sick bucket! Of all the foods in the world, this kind of stuff that we used to have to eat for school dinners was going to be served up at his party. Not only that, but he was going to cook it all.

'What about the kids?' I asked. 'They won't like all that stodge. Can I at least get some sausage rolls and crisps?' The reply to that was that crisps didn't exist in the 1950s. (I'm sure they did, plain crisps with those twists of blue paper with salt in them.) I was relieved when he gave in and came back from Sainsburys with a monster bag of crisps and yes, some sausage rolls. Phew! Though how do I know the kids won't dive head first into the monster steak and kidney pie and trough the lot, then through sago at each other?

Despite feeling as if he were going down with a lurg and hobbling painfully around with his plantar fasciitis (I've given him exercises to do, a machine for stretching his toes on, soft gel insoles - but will he use them? Men!!! My brother in law has it too, and since doing the exercises, he's a lot better), Mr G started the preparations yesterday. The only thing he'd let me do was clean and chop the kidneys for him. The fox sat outside the patio doors the whole time and was finally rewarded with a bowlful of leftovers.

Then he had a call from his friend A with the five kids. Mrs A5, I shall call her. Son no. 4, aged 19 months, had got a terrible temperature and was burning up and she wanted to take him to A&E but, as she was lumbered with childen 3 and 5 as well, she needed Mr G to go with her. The cooker was turned off, bowls and saucepans were covered up and four and a half hours later, Mr G returned as A's husband (whose name also begins with A so I shall call him Mr A, had finished work in his shop and was able to take over.

I've just texted them. Child 4 is still unwell but the doc said it was a virus, and Mrs A5 has made the birthday cake I ordered, in the shape of a 2-fingered salute, Mr G's favourite gesture. I hope I get a chance to take a photo before it all disappears!

PS. I brushed and vacuumed the kitchen floor, which measures a whopping 20ft x 16ft, and continued right through the ground floor of the house, de-cobwebbing as I went. I'd just had my back tweaked at the chiropractor's and shouldn't have been lugging heavy Henry Hoover around, so at the end of my session I felt I had wasted £35 and needed to go for another appointment. I went back into the kitchen to put out some suet balls for the birds. One of them was in bits, so I took it out of its little netting bag and carried it out onto the bird table.

On my way back to the kitchen cupboard, my foot scrunched and skidded in something that felt slightly bulky. 'Oh b*****r! I've dropped a suet ball,' thought I. 'Now I'll have to sweep it all up. Grrr!' But alas, it was far worse than that. Next-door's cat. Chi Mimi, who has a very delicate digestion following a stomach operation, had scoffed a load of Flad's cat food and biscuits and thrown up the lot, in a great, undigested, crunchy heap and I had trodden it in my velvet slippers and smeared it all over my recently cleaned floor. It had even gone down the grooves between the floorboards. Nice! Hot water, kitchen towel (lots) and disinfectant spray and I got most of it up.

Yesterday evening, I thought I'd earned a nice glass of wine in front of the telly. Mr G went to bed at 10, leaving me bellowing' Jerusalem' and 'You'll Never Walk Alone', as it was the last night of the proms. Suddenly, something large and black came scuttling under the door. The eyes of two cats were rivetted on it. My blood ran cold. Cockroaches! OMG! I thought of them running all over my clothes in the wardrobe and infesting the kitchen cupboards. I'd never seen one in the house before. This truly was the beginning of the end. I was leaving. Now!

I galloped up the stairs, shakily bleating for Mr G. 'Whorrissit?' barked his sleepy, cross voice. 'There's a c-c-cockroach in the lounge.' He clomped down the stairs with a torch and illuminated the thing that was starting to climb up the wall. 'It's just a big, black beetle. You woke me up for nothing. I'm going back to bed.'

He left me with the monster. It wasn't as large as the stag beetles you've seen on my wildlife blog. It was longer and kind of in sections, or ribbed somehow, and jet black. 'Kill!' I ordered the cats. 'Huh,' they said and wrapped their tails round their noses in a decisive gesture. So, using the old tumbler and postcard method, I shook it out into the garden and watched it scuttle away under the hedge. It does make me wonder what else is lurking in this house that I don't know about. I still don't know what Mr G is keeping under that loose floorboard in his office which I saw him replace very hurriedly once, when I came in unexpectedly. He's screwed the board down and I don't know where he keeps his screwdrivers. A bag of diamonds? A gun? Gold bars? Dare I even investigate? Well, buying my own set of screwdrivers would be a start.