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Phoebe has discovered the Uranus joke and did nothing but the Uranus joke for about half an hour this evening. She continues to make me the proudest father in the world.
It was the repetition that made it amusing for her. Every single time.
Ernie joined in, but I am not sure he gets it.
We took the Aged Ps up the Gorge for lunch. As with last time we did this I parked nearby to the restaurant in a spot that you were only supposed to be in for an hour. But I figured I could keep my eye open for traffic wardens and maybe squeeze 90 minutes out of the spot. And if I got caught I'd pay the fine. It beat parking across town like I did on another occasion. Last time we'd been in the restaurant for a couple of hours and no traffic warden came past and this time I hoped for the same. If I can pull this off maybe four times then the saved money will be more than the fine. Plus it adds a little excitement to a lunch. It's like being at a casino.
I got away with it again despite being in the spot for nearly two hours. Take that you Cheddar idiots.
We're staying in a holiday cabin as my parents' house is full at the moment and it's probably the best holiday let we've ever had. A really good size lounge/diner and two bedrooms, plus a hot tub, which the kids loved playing in, even though they're officially not quite old enough. We took my parents and my sister to see the place before heading back to theirs for dinner. I am pretty sure I locked the door and turned off all the lights, but when we got back I was surprised to see loads of lights on and even more surprised when Phoebe pointed out that the front door was not only unlocked, but actually open. Like a burglar or a Goldilocks had been in. I went to check the place was safe and that our possessions were still there, but nothing seemed to have been touched. Maybe we'd been burgled but the burglar had passed judgement on our possessions and decided nothing was worth taking. There were two computers and some expensive headphones on open display, so that burglar had some high standards.
I checked all the cupboards for murderers but there was no sign anyone had been there. The bolt on the door was in the locked position, but the door was ajar. Was it possible that we'd forgotten to turn off the lights (yes) and that when I'd locked the door I had somehow opened it and left it without noticing that. That seemed more unlikely. I am usually mildly obsessive about checking that doors are locked, turning handles, giving them a push and surely I'd have noticed that the door was ajar. But I have to accept that the most likely explanation is that I'd been distracted and locked the door without it being shut. It was one of those where you have to lift the handle to lock it, so it's plausible that I'd opened it at the same time. Then maybe one of the kids had been messing about and I hadn't checked my cack-handed handiwork.
Very unsettling though, whatever the explanation whether my own absent-mindedness or the work of a picky burglar.
Weirdly the boiler in the cabin, which had been working fine up til now, was suddenly broken. It was warm enough so it didn't really matter (until the morning when I realised that there was no hot water tank and we needed the boiler to work in order to have a shower), but it was another bit of spookiness. Had someone broken in to mildly inconvenience us on a warm October evening by preventing us from drying our swimming stuff and having to wash using kettle water in the morning? When you have eliminated the impossible….
