I have to concede that the posture improvement gadget I gave her last week didn’t go down well. It was placed perfunctorily and unopened on my desk and the air was a little frosty as we all got into the car and went out for dinner at a nearby pub. Note to self for next year though you would think I should have learnt this by now. It never pays to underwhelm Sophie with her birthday present. The point is my birthday follows quickly after hers. It was yesterday since you ask. She gave me a box chest freezer and half a side of a pig.
Hey ho. Do you find a visit to Dublin brings out the worst in you? It took my mother, when I was telling her that Lottie had been in Ireland earlier this week, to point out that it seems to do something to us Sandisons. I might have told you before about the weekend my brothers and I spent there some years back when we went with our father – I think he was 73 give or take a year or two - to play a couple of rounds of golf and watch Scotland v. Ireland at Lansdowne Road. It was tempting to leave him there, in a beer hall after the rugby match, at 2.00 in the morning dancing and singing raucously along to “Living next door to Alice” which was blaring out of the loud speakers. A couple of hours later, after we had managed to find our hotel and the four of us crammed into our shared room, I wished I had. Instead, I spent the few hours sleeping time available to us, repeatedly stretching out of bed to rap him on the head with my Titleist driver, in a futile attempt to stop him snoring.
As I was saying, our youngest, Lottie, ( Miss Perse Upperself ) has just returned from Dublin where she’d been on an English literature field trip arranged by the school. I remember wincing at the cost of this one when we agreed to sign her up for it towards the end of last year, but she wants to read English at University and persuaded us there was an interesting and full schedule including visits to museums, libraries, the James Joyce Centre and two theatrical performances. It would be an invaluable educational experience she insisted.
She blew into the house late the other night in terrific form apart from the bags under her eyes. “I had the most fantastic time.” That’s as maybe say I, but did you learn anything? “I learnt a couple of things actually Daddy. 3 million pints of Guinness are brewed in Ireland every day and 3.5 billion pints of Guinness are drank around the world each year. And I had three pints one evening, but to be honest I prefer Harry Sparrow.”
Kung Hei Fat Chow and although we’re heading into the Year of the Dog I have to ask could life get any better for our pack of hounds??
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