Nicktor evening

I’ve posted before about how Carmen always guards the groceries when they’re delivered. She will lie on the parquetry floor of the hall and wait until I put them away. So, it was with little fear that I rushed in from the shops this morning, dumped the shopping in the hall then rushed to the loo.

The sight that greeted me shortly after, froze my blood and shocked me. There was Carmen with a sausage in her mouth, preparing to take it away, a second one about to follow the first, still attached. It almost looked like one of those old, classic postcards when the skinny dog is running out of the butchers shop, a long string of sausages trailing behind him.

Naturally I told her off. This doesn’t happen very often as she’s normally well behaved (too lazy to be naughty, I reckon) and, subsequently, her tail went down as she reluctantly dropped the snagged snags.

Whenever I have sausages, I make two extra for the poodles so they won’t be wasted but I rather prefer deciding when they have them. I wrapped them both in clingfilm, keeping them separate from the other, non-Carmenised ones.

She was in trouble for quite a while, no matter how many times she tried to get around me. Day-z had no idea what was going on.

After lunch I was sitting on the floor of Mirinda’s study removing countless little bits of bubble wrap from little glass balls and Carmen was still trying to say sorry. Of course, I’d forgiven her by then but I was still not happy with her.

The reason I was removing the bubble wrap was because Mirinda finally has a chandelier in her study. She’s wanted a chandelier for at least as long as I’ve known her. They have always been too ridiculously big for any room we’ve owned but, finally, she found an almost understated one at Laura Ashley.

It’s remarkably heavy and the style is, coincidentally, called the Carmen. Mirinda reckons that explains why it’s so heavy. However, as coincidental as that is, the reason it’s so heavy is actually because of all the tiny glass balls at the bottom of each strand, dangling from the top.

I haven’t counted them but there would be at least 50 of these little glass balls and every, single one had a small square of bubble wrap around it, held on with a small elastic band. These were a bit laborious to remove but it occurred to me, as I managed to find a bit of rhythm, that the poor person who had to put them on in the first place, must have one of the worst jobs ever. After all, I only had to do it once. And I was taking them off.

Anyway, I managed to get the chandelier up and it looked marvellous. I then discovered I’d missed one of the little squares of bubble wrap. I guess that was inevitable.

¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬¬
I haven’t managed to have a good natter with Dawn for yonks so, tonight, rather than have Nicktor come over, she visited for dinner and a movie. When she was leaving home, one of her boys asked if she was having a Nicktor Night. She said she was actually having a Nicktor Evening. When he asked what that was, she explained it was a Nicktor Night without the sleepover.

We had a lovely night. I cooked some Moroccan meatballs and couscous, we had a couple of beers and then settled down to watch Kath and Kimderella.

Dawn is a bit of a Kath & Kim groupie so she thoroughly enjoyed it (I don’t think I’ve heard her laugh out loud so much). It was my second time watching it and I noticed a lot of little things I missed the first time.

The other thing about a Nicktor Evening is that I manage to get to bed well before midnight and I’m sober. A nice change on the usual Tuesday night.