Game of life...

Blue skies today. I got up even later (9.00 am – shock horror) immediately thinking (worrying) about commencing with this new New Year and making a start on that huge list of requirements MCW has planned for me in 2017. I don’t actually need resolutions when I have her, or the internet to answer my questions, or any need for hobbies to fill my time, or even a requirement to think for myself come to that. 

MCW seems to always know exactly what I should be doing and when and why and who I should be doing it with at all times – which is why I spend so much time washing up I guess. Of course the BIG LIST (the one that contains jobs that have needed doing for twenty or thirty years or so) has now grown so long that they resemble the chains that bound Jacob Marley’s ghost and then some. Still, it’s a New Year and I have the love (and boot) of a good woman behind me, so it will all get done – just not today.

It was at this point that I realised that it was officially a Bank Holiday Monday and doing anything at all on a Bank Holiday was a crime against the great god Pan (my preferred deity of choice). So with a merry whistle (my pipes were unavailable) and a spring in my hooves off we went to the supermarket to buy the neccessaries. Today these consisted of some vegetables, prawns and biscuits for Princess Luna (who must be obeyed and fed prawns at all times) and of course our wine allowance for the day. It seems that my trolley driving has deteriorated over the holidays and I have become 'so bloody dangerous'. Fortunately MCW was with me to give me instruction and point out every tiny mistake I made or even was about to make 'if I wasn't careful'. Even so - careful as I was - I still managed to 'only just miss' a display of fruit by a very slim margin of about three feet.

I have to admit to making yet another mistake yesterday. The TV was rubbish last night - I know it’s hard to believe given that it was New Year’s Day and the fact that we have more than two channels to choose from – so we ended up watching a repeat of Endeavour which ‘we’ had never seen before. The mistake wasn’t so much that I had seen it before and for once remembered the plot clearly whilst MCW hadn’t. No. my mistake was pretending that I’d never seen it before and then going on to solve it half way through the program claiming that it was ‘obviously the wife’ and detailing the reasons that led me to this conclusion – the affair, the dress, the fake suicide (which was actually another murder) and the fact that any woman Morse has the hots for is always going to get locked up in clink – or dead - or both.

Of course I was ‘without doubt deluded' and really should stop trying to be 'so bloody clever’. Sadly,  I became even ‘bloody cleverer’ when ‘without doubt’ I was revealed to be right after all (well I had seen it before). I’ve always wanted to be called ‘a know-it-all, smartarse, so bloody right, clever little Andy’, and for once I got my wish. I expect my ‘to do’ list to grow even longer today.

Despite this tiny faux-pas New Year’s Day was generally okay for a Sunday. So much better than those of my childhood and youth. There was no ‘big light’ on in the living room, no ‘Sing Something Simple’ on the radio, and of course I no longer have to worry about homework or indeed work of any kind  these days apart from my list and an awful lot of what MCW describes as 'thumb twiddling' it seems.

We played a board game with MLD and her beau after dinner. Fortunately it didn’t include exposing your teeth through a plastic mouth guard or getting your face covered in whipped cream. It was more a souped-up Monopoly called Game of Life and I of course got the yellow car. Now who on earth drives a yellow car with so many other colours available? I also, rather ill-advisedly, won which made me an even ‘cleverer Andy’ apparently. Maybe yellow cars ain't so bad after all.

Oh well, I’ve been at this game of life for a long time now, so if I can’t win at that what can I win at?

Please don’t answer that.