Ripples

My Friday didn't go too well looking back. I'm not a very artistic person, by I am quite good with colour. The living room is the final room in the house that needs my attention, and the reason it was the last room to be done is that the colour it was already painted was ok, as opposed to the unpleasant browns and snot greens of the rest of the house. It was my intention to select a colour quite close to, but a little brighter than the current colour and I did. However it didn't work, so having painted one small wall I sat disconsolately looking at it as though doing so might coax it into being acceptable. It hasn't worked. In the cold light of the morning it looks like a delicious deep raspberry milkshake, which isn't what I want on my walls.

The other bit of bother we had yesterday involved my wayward son Laurence. On a Friday he often goes into town on his way back from work, has something to eat and goes to see a movie. So I wasn't too worried until midnight came around and there was no sign of him. Then one o'clock and we realised the buses had stopped running. Two o'clock and I am so far past my sell-by date that I am almost propping my eyes open with matchsticks, but now wet snow is falling and the streets are empty, so I drove the bus route back into town, circled the bus stops and came back down the road that I would walk were I coming back from town by Shanks's pony.

The last time Laurence didn't come home all night, you may remember, was because he was in the Hemel Hempstead nick, so I had visions of Mounties at the door. Yeah, no, not those kind of visions.

Finally at 2.30, Laurence rolled in. Annoyed of course that I had been worried about him and unable to sleep. He had done some overtime and caught the late showing at the cinema then had to walk home, I had missed him somehow. Pointing out that if I were expected back around 11.30 and wasn't getting back until gone 2, I would have phoned only went so far towards convincing him. But like the parent of the Prodigal son, I was just relieved that he was safe, not mugged, not run over, just back.

I want to wish my very dear friend in Britain, Karen, a very happy birthday today. Karen and I have been friends since we were five years old and that friendship has survived several moves, life crises, watched each others kids grow up and I think and hope that we'll be friends until one of us shuffles off.
Happy Birthday Karen, may there be many more.