“Yes, darling. Of course, my love”, said Terry warmly, distractedly trying to separate the fingers of his right hand from the ballpoint. “My love, certainly, I do, I do.” He hung up, desperately shaking his hand until the chrome Sheaffer flew off like a bullet to leave a small round hole in the window.
“Miss Roode, could you call Maintenance back?” He looked worriedly at the phone. Not Adelaide from the insurance, not Jill the bank manager. Certainly not Nurse Walter with the mustache, nor Nurse Johanna who looked-like-she-would, and did, but at 22 was too old for his taste.
The secretary, caught his confusion: “Mrs. Hardparcel?”, she cued him. “God no”, he shuddered. “When´s maintenance coming?” he added evasively.
Technical had already been to the office earlier to do maintenance on his desktop, copy some of his secret files, infect it with new trojans and short-circuit the mouse. As an afterthought they left the usual chewing gum on his chair.

From: "the hardparcels" <hardparcel@pmail.com
To: <friendslist>
Sent: January 29th  16:29 PM
Subject: Still not sure

Dear Aunt Toby and everyone,

            Well, it was a long hard struggle to get the badger out of the deep-freeze, but it was long underdue and I finally managed it. I did tear my blouse and a ligament but all’s well that ends.

            We are still not sure about the holiday bookings and are inclined more and more towards Romania. No-one ever seems to go there, I can’t think why. Did you know they still have over 4,000 wolves? We have always loved nature, red in tooth and nail. Especially Keith.

            Love,

            Angela (Hardparcel)

The Gazette-Advertiser, Exchange and News, January 18, 2013

Page 7, Column 4.

Local boy detained!

By Alistair Kenzie McWhiskie

A 16 year old boy has been detained for taking and driving away a car without the owner’s consent. A silver Renault 18, belonging to Mr. Terrence Hardparcel of 31, Manioc Avenue, disappeared on Tuesday evening and was recovered at 9 p.m, damaged. On detention the teen was found to be carrying over £1,000 in cash, which he allegedly said he had “saved from odd jobs” and with which he offered to pay for repairs.

                Interviewed later by the Gazette, Mr. Hardparcel, a prominent fertilizer producer, reluctantly laughed: “I’m getting used to it.”

 Sergeant Cressida Lamprey, of Tollwood Police Division, courageously captured the miscreant after a chase in which a police car was also damaged and the driver suffered whiplash injuries at the notorious speed bump on the corner of Manioc Avenue and Margaret Thatcher Drive.

                    Late Football and Racing Results page 8

Austin Auchinlosser, more than twenty years a probation officer, ran his hands across his head, staring at the police report six inches under his eyes. His good-will was running as thin as his hair, but he forced himself to look for a bright side. The boy could perfectly well, he reasoned silently and weakly, have unreported income from odd jobs, and offering it to the police officer could have been a perfectly genuine offer of reparation and not the attempted bribe reported by the sergeant. “I must stop using 'perfectly' as a qualifier”, he muttered to himself, “I have a perfectly good English degree”.

"They be another cleaning strike for sure", nurse Mkebi nodded to herself, locking up the pulse-oximeter, tympanic thermometer and other small, high-value items that seemed to vanish when Keith or Nigel was brought in, and pulling on double latex gloves. "Ogúm and all the Orixás protect us!"

Still whimpering through lips like bloody bicycle tires, Terry was anxiously shepherded into Casualty by Angela with Keith and Denise in tow. Johanna, the nurse who-looked-like-she-would (and did), stared in surprise, and hustled him ahead of two very pregnant teens with bright red and blue striped hair and a black leather boy nonchalantly bleeding from several stab wounds, and shouted out: “Doc, doc! Third degree burns to the mouth!”

Dr. De’Ath poked his head round the door of Triage; “Hold him a minute, I still have a foreign body in a rectum here . . . oh my god almighty!”

Other heads popped round corners to look. Miles the-always-exhausted-orderly emerged from his torpor with a slow: “Wow!”

Keith, in passing, rubbed up against Johanna, though without letting go of Denise.

She slid deftly away – the pustulent acne was off-putting: “Only the patient and one family member”.

Sgt. Clarissa Cranberry was flat on her back in Observation in a rigid protective collar and, under a disposable blue hospital gown, a chest brace that prevented her from turning to confirm what she distantly heard. The opioid analgesic that Dr. De’Ath had generously applied, mostly to himself, was not enough to dull a spasm of horror at the sound of Terry’s voice trying to make his muffled explanations understood through Angela’s interruptions.

Clarissa struggled to sit up. “Don’t let him near you”, she explained to the failed suicide with bandaged wrists in the next bed, “Or you’ll really wish you had succeeded.” Grunting and puffing, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed and pushed herself upright.

Angela and Terry had been maturing a special hot sauce for almost a year in two-litre wine bottles: black peppercorns, onions, sliced bell-peppers, coriander and garlic steeped in oil and rum with the red, yellow and green chilis and ‘Special Jamaica Hot Powder’ from the Caribbean market in the centre, tiny Brazilian needle peppers and some from Thailand (or Japan: they weren’t sure). Terry pulled a bottle down from the top cupboard to examine the luminescent liquid inside. “Perhaps we should test it?” he mused indecisively, then taking courage and the cork in both hands he eased it open, spilled a drop onto a teaspoon and lifted it to his mouth.

“Eeeehshitfuckingshitchristhfuckfuck!” He dived for the sink to wrench the tap open, soaking his jacket as he forced the jet into his mouth. It was the hot tap, which seemed to intensify the agony. Steam trickled from his nostrils and his whole body twitched.

Angela fussed hopelessly behind him, picked up the spoon from the corner where he had hurled it and noticed there was now a hole in the electroplate.

As the blisters on his lips grew too huge even for obscenity, Angela decided she should call an ambulance.

“Oh god in heaven and satan on earth”, moaned Dr. De’ath, “I suppose we have to, though I’d happily sacrifice a good ambulance and driver to put them all over a cliff.” He washed down two Valium tablets from the drugs cabinet with a splash of antiseptic alcohol in 5% glucose solution.

From: "the hardparcels" <hardparcel@pmail.com
To: <friendslist>
Sent: January 24nd  12:19 PM
Subject: Wondering where to go

Dear friends,

We are already wondering where to go for holidays this year, as last year’s were exciting, but perhaps a teeny bit TOO exciting with the strafing and the ‘hostage situation’, as the foreign office called it. And we are certainly not going back to Thailand after what happened last time. The beaches were, true to say, absolutely beautiful and cleaner than a baby’s bottom, apart from the drunk Germans, but turned quite disgusting after the terrible tidal wave. We lost both cameras, all our suitcases and Keith’s shorts and had to live on nothing but coconuts for three days. It was quite dreadful and Terry wrote a very strong letter to the travel agency. Poor Keith has been frightened of water ever since and is rather difficult about his baths.

So we are thinking about somewhere more European this year. Has anyone been to Bulgaria or Romania? We‘re eager to hear your ideas!

Love from Angela (H)

From: "the hardparcels" <hardparcel@pmail.com
To: <friendslist>
Sent: January 22nd  11:21 AM
Subject: Mixed emotions

We don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed --  getting ready to be grandparents, quickly organising a nice lunch and registry-office wedding, and wondering what they see in each other. I am a proud mum and love my Keith, but he isn’t really blessed with film-star looks. Even so I would have hoped for better for him. I mean Denise is very sweet, but her glasses are rather thick and so is her waist. But they love each other and that’s what counts, which is more than she can.

The wedding was set for last Tuesday. We arranged to be introduced to Denise’s parents over a big blow-out at the Angus Steak House. I had proposed to cook a good lunch at home, but Terry said he didn’t want funerals as well as a wedding.

Denise’s dad turned out to be French-born and the UK correspondent for a Paris radio station. He said he had been their war reporter for a while though he didn’t actually go to any of the wars he covered, for safety. He is quite thin and is always taking off and putting on his glasses, though he says it doesn’t make much difference as he can’t see either way.

Fanny LeTimide is a bit plump and doesn’t say anything. Anyway, we had a jolly time over the lunch and bubbly, Keith looked quite human in a suit and tie and Denise looked like a Swiss roll wrapped in white nylon. After the brandies we went out to find the cars and drive to the registry office.

Terry, Keith and I got there spot on time, aunt Toby and the cousins were there and the registrar was all ready. But Denise and her parents had us all walking up and down, looking at our watches and tapping our heels until the registrar joked: “Well, I’d better let the next victims go first, if you don’t mind waiting outside.”

So we waited for another hour, and finally Fanny, Marcel and Denise turned up. They had taken a wrong turning at the lights and ended up in Roehampton. Marcel blamed the brandy and Fanny blamed Marcel.

Eventually we shuffled in again and presented the required proofs of identity and residence and the registrar was putting in the details on the form, when Denise began to look a bit strange and asked to sit down. I knew just how she felt. The same thing happened to me when Terry and I got married, all the emotion just runs to your feet and you can’t stand up.

Then she said with a big smile: “I think it’s arrived.”

“Impossible!” I said, “You’re only two months pregnant.”

“No, my period.”

Keith said something very rude and unprintable, pulled off his tie and walked out.

Terry, Marcel, Fanny and I agreed we needed another brandy.

After the second one we went back to look for Denise.

What a pity she can’t count. She could have saved us all a lot of trouble and her parents an unwanted trip to Roehampton.

Still, I was almost looking forward to a baby. Even Keith’s!

Love from Angela (Hardparcel)

Terry arrived home hoping for a peaceful evening.

Angela carefully prepared dinner, peeling tomatoes to fry with garlic, onions and pinches of marjoram and ground black pepper in good olive oil; thinly slicing courgettes, leeks, sausages and bananas; putting spinach and peas in the steamer and then the blender. The stew turned out as always with the colour, texture and odour of pond scum.

         Keith ate his with vigour and vile slurping noises. Terry, with incipient nausea, waited till Angela was ladling out her bowl-full to swing sideways and quickly lower his own to Flotsam who, at least, was silently greedy. Sitting opposite him at the shiny-topped table Denise spooned up hers and asked for more. “Christ!” thought Terry, “But I suppose she has had something more disgusting in her mouth.”

After pudding, a strange fruit pie with an accidental hint of Marmite, as evening ennui began to threaten, Angela passed round the biscuits. Her eyes wandered over the mantelpiece and the autographed picture, inherited from Terry’s father, of Winston Churchill, cigar tilted and making a two fingered victory sign. She brightly announced: “I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with . . V !”

“Voluptuous”, smirked Keith at Denise. “Venereal disease”, said Terry, looking pointedly at his son. “Vicious”, trilled Denise. Angela smiled round at them vaguely: “Van Gogh?”

“Vapid and vacuous”, groaned Terry.

         If fuzzy logic could be applied to management, Terry did.

His office appeared to the naïve to be brilliantly retro-furnished with ‘70s Formica-surfaced desks, shelves and filing cabinets, furniture he had inherited after the golfing accident of his father, the well-liked Dr. Donald Hardparcel, designer of a synthetic appendix and the first British physician successfully to complete an axillary hair transplant, but failed in his attempt to reverse the human alimentary canal and whose paper on the subject was rejected by the British Medical Journal. An army surgeon during WWII, after euthanizing his brigadier on D-Day he was cross-drafted to a light anti-aircraft unit and credited with shooting down a Messerschmitt 109 and a Spitfire

Ranged along a shelf opposite the window was part of Terry’s collection of antique light bulbs, in pride of place an intact Lane-Fox from 1888. He treated clients to enthusiastically detailed explanations of the development of extruded carbon cellulose filaments that lost him innumerable sales.

Behind piles of invoices and unsigned letters the telephone rang insistently. Once more he reached forward to answer but it was still stuck. Virginia Roode, his secretary, ducked her head to smile. “Miss Roode, can you get maintenance to fix this thing?” It rang on. He stared at it a few moments and turned in his swivel chair to ask her again. The central column was jammed and while five out of six wheels were well lubricated one was stuck so that it spun sickeningly on the axis of the locked wheel. He grabbed at his desk for stability and picked up his coffee cup, which would not come free from its saucer. “Anyone might think elves had been at work with superglue”, he muttered and swallowed with difficulty. She swallowed a giggle.

He got dizzily to his feet. “Just going to the bathroom”, he informed her as if it mattered, “then the morning round.”

The plant stretched over three acres and employed nearly 90 people, including administrative staff and Keynes the accountant with the recurring error. Terry enjoyed wandering through the maze of immense stainless steel vats, valves and seamless 12 inch pipes, the engulfing roar of pumps annulling his amiable interrogations of engineers, operators and maintenance technicians.

The sheets on his clip-board had stuck together. It was either the steam or the glue epidemic.

“Pressure stable at 115?” he queried the engineer on vat # 4, who under his hard hat was wearing ear protectors against the thunder of the pump four feet away, thus could hear nothing and just grinned broadly and nodded. “Good, good”, said Terry. He tried vainly to separate the pages to make a note, wrenched in frustration and ripped the top sheet in half to expose a sepia-toned ten year-old, wearing only a beribboned sun-hat and high-buttoned boots, simpering shyly at the lens. The engineer grinned more broadly.

Adelaide packed her equipment for the offensive, swigging occasionally at the Sandeman and muttering ancestral Romanian curses. Which was, she still occasionally remembered in flashes of lucidity, odd, as her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents had been born in Kent. As Adelaide slipped into delusional psychosis South-east England and Transylvania blended into seamless unreality.

Terry foggily looked at the paper while squeezing oranges, making coffee and buttering toast. “Anything else, Angie?”

She smiled gratefully, “You’re wonderful, and solicitous!”

“No”, he shook his head. “No lawyers”.

They looked up at each other in incomprehension. He wiped marmalade off his sleeve onto the economic news, stared at the toast, decided against reading or eating anything and got up to leave for the plant.

The Gazette-Advertiser, Exchange and News, January 6, 2013

Page 7, Column 2.

Tollwood Hospital Strike!

By: Alastair Kenzie McWhiskie

Hospital patients are being turned away since yesterday when Tollwood Hospital cleaning staff struck: ‘It’s a blow for our rights’ said union secretary Violet Mudhaven as she manned a freezing picket line to block the entrance to Tollwood Hospital Casualty Department. “We are sick of this mistreatment by management, medical staff and patients and the insanity in psychiatry.”

Ms. Mudhaven said the union list of grievances also includes demands for increased overtime pay, better quality mops and a hardship allowance for attending members of the Hardparcel family. She explained: “There was vomit on the ceiling and one of our members was nearly killed trying to get encrusted nastiness off the walls of Casualty.”

Flotsam knocked over a pot of Angela's famously venomous bean stew and wolfed it down, with three days of asphyxiating results. Even Keith eventually noticed it wasn't him, lit a Flotsam flatus and set fire to the sofa. After Terry's call to the insurance company, the manager, Adelaide Swarthy, tore up their household policy, resigned and went home to Cheam to drink a bottle of sherry.

Adelaide was awoken later by her overweight tabby cat, Flabby, rolling the empty bottle across the floor. Through the fog she gradually remembered that she had left her job with six years of mortgage still to pay in a bad labour market, and to blame for her unemployment and sherry nausea was the Hardparcel family. With a flash of blinding clarity and an ancient Carpathian oath she swore vengeance. Their never-ending claims supported by those

fake police and fire reports signed by the obviously invented Officer Rabindranath and Sergeant Cressida added up to a vicious persecution aimed at ruining her peace of mind and undermining her whole life. But why the conspiracy? What had she done to them? Was it some deep inter-family curse she knew nothing about, from generations ago? Could Hardparcel be an Anglicisation of some old Romanian name, were they really Arteni-petrescus from Piatr-Neamt? Oh god, would she suffer their savage attacks on her mental health even after quitting the insurance company? Would driving stakes through their hearts even stop them? Where does one buy stakes in London?

She dragged on her rubber boots and staggered out into the south London blizzard to look for somewhere that would sell her cat-food, garlic, a crucifix, sharpened staves and more sherry.

From: "the hardparcels" <hardparcel@pmail.com
To: <friendslist>
Sent: January 5th, 2013 12:02 PM
Subject: Fire

Dear All,

When we called to say Nigel was back Sergeant Cressida drove over as fast as she could. She should have remembered the speed bump at the corner and had a terrible nose-bleed. It was most unfair to blame us.

We finished putting ice up her nose and looked for Nigel but he had gone out of the kitchen door and across the neighbours’ garden. Flotsam got out too and was soon back to digging up their roses.

So we hadn’t time to ask much about Manchester, though he did pay Terry for the Renault, £50 notes in a bundle thicker than Keith! We forgave him.

We thought it best not to tell Nigel’s mum and probation officer. And the insurance company, but they won’t talk to us at the moment, so why should we?

Sergeant Clarissa came to fetch her partner and seemed a bit hysterical. I didn't think police were supposed to use that kind of language, but she had just been over the speed bump, so it’s understandable. Nigel’s mum shouldn’t have replied the way she did either. Mr. Auchinlossiter, the probation officer, said he was sure Nigel has a good side to him. Sergeants Clarissa and Cressida both laughed out loud which made Nigel’s mum crosser and Flotsam got into the fray barking and going for ankles. That was a three ring circus and a half!!

Luckily the fire alarm started ringing so loudly no-one could hear themselves scream. It was the same electrical fault as before, but it did send an automatic call to the fire-station and within minutes our usual fire-engine was here.

We must write to the council again about the speed bump! Fire Officer Rabindranath was a bit put out, and one of his teeth, so I told everyone to sit down while I made tea. This time the electric kettle sparks reached the kitchen window curtains and it was a godsend the fire-engine was already here. Officer Rabindranath swung his fire-axe rather energetically and I am afraid the insurance company may be shirty about it all.

Love from us all,

Angela (Hardparcel)

From: "the hardparcels" <hardparcel@pmail.com
To: <friendslist>
Sent: January 4th, 2013 10:21 AM
Subject:

Hello everyone

Silly old me, I misheard his name. It is Nigel not Dustin.

To be perfectly frank he does have a teensy bit of body odour. They haven’t found him yet, which might be a good thing as once Terry saw the remains of the Renault and the insurance company hung up the phone on him, he made some quite nasty threats. Unfortunately Nigel’s mum had come over again and heard him. So then we had a child protection officer round, which wasn’t good news at all in the light of Terry’s little problem in the ‘90s. And Terry certainly shouldn’t have warned the CPO what he thought of doing. Luckily when the police-car came it was Sergeant Cressida driving and she probably remembered us fondly from Guy Fawkes Night because when she saw who it was, she did a U-turn and drove away. It was such a pity she went over the speed bump so fast and concussed herself but it did take attention off Terry’s difficulty, and the police car looked almost as bad as the Renault.

Happy Twelfth Night!

Angela (Hardparcel)

“The next time that Hardparcel woman calls for an ambulance”, said Dr. De’Ath, “tell her she’s got a wrong number.”

            Tolwood Hospital was collectively traumatised by the most recent family food-poisoning and in dread of the next. “They got vomit on the ceiling! The husband sleepwalking into paediatrics, and the delinquent friend of that revoltingly priapic son . . just how in hell did he open the controlled drugs cabinet? ”said De’Ath out loud, but secretly hoping the boy would break into the narcotics box again to cover up the newly pilfered morphine ampoules.

Nurse Mkebi, writing a report with one hand, the left struggling eternally to make an XL uniform close across an XXL chest, said something soothing in Yoruba. The doctor, who spoke only NW1 English, understood nothing and, like most of the hospital’s heterosexual staff and some of the gays, found his eyes drawn uncontrollably into the immensely undulating brown cleavage.

Babies screamed futilely in the waiting room. Miles the always-exhausted-orderly pushed a cart over-loaded with medications and supplies past the nursing station and with a despairing burst of energy rammed the swing doors open, side-swiping Mrs. MacLeish’s crutch from under her arm to topple her with a fading shriek amidst a cascade of catheters, bags of saline and sterile swabs. A roll of cotton gauze unwound slowly along the corridor.

Nurse Mkebi leaned forward to push the clip-board into its tray. Dr. De’Ath groaned.

Sister Walter looked up from the medications tray and gave him a cyanide smile that would have sent anyone sober to the morgue. “It’s the change”, thought De’Ath. “She was nicer as a man.”

Along the other corridor in Sterilization the autoclave finished its cycle: flashing LEDs and a buzzer made sure everyone knew. Eventually Miles the always-exhausted-orderly dragged himself in, turned it off and started slowly taking out the sterilized minor surgery and obstetrics kits. The last green paper-wrapped packets came out from the lower tray still hot from 120 degree high-pressure steam, revealing a single, and well-cooked, human finger pointing straight at him.

 Miles stared back at it, wiped his eyes, wondered if his pills might have side-effects and looked again. He tore open a suture kit for a tissue forceps. Sterile it might now be and he had certainly seen and handled worse but this was something he just didn’t feel like touching. He lifted it to the light. There was dirt under the nail and a ring with a square green stone on the proximal phalange close to where it appeared to have been ripped from its owner’s hand – a shred of tendon had been withered by the heat.

“I’d better check the geezers in the freezers”, he thought, “See if anyone’s missing anything.”

From: "the hardparcels" <hardparcel@pmail.com
To: <friendslist>
Sent: January 3^rd, 2013 11:27 AM
Subject: What a week!

What a week it has been!

Keith’s best friend came to stay and I must say that even by his standards Dustin is a little strange.

However, least said soonest mended, just like Terry’s car. How did he start it without the key? Anyway, they found most of it near Manchester and the tow truck brought it back on Wednesday. We are not sure if the insurance is going to do the right thing and they were really quite rude on the phone.

Dustin’s mother was also a little difficult when she came to look for him, but luckily she didn’t stay long. We can probably thank Keith’s lizards for that as Dustin seems to have let them out.

I thought the probation officer wasn’t as calm as he might have been, but I suppose that as Dustin hasn’t been seen since Monday he had a right to be a wee bit worried.

We hope you have all had a nice start to 2013 as well.

Love, Angela Hardparcel

From: "the hardparcels" <hardparcel@pmail.com
To: <friendslist>
Sent: January 2nd, 2013 11:17 AM
Subject: Rabies.

Well, I do think it was a bit much of Denise. She caused quite a spot of bother when she filled in the hospital dog bite form saying she didn’t know if poor Flotsam has been vaccinated against rabies.

Of course he has. Unless it was Keith?

From: "the hardparcels" <hardparcel@pmail.com
To: <friendslist>
Sent: January 1st, 2013 11:21 AM
Subject: Don’t worry.

Happy New Year!

In case you were worrying this is just to let you know that we are all fine and out of hospital.

What a Christmas it was!

Perhaps I should have taken more care to read the date on the frozen turkey giblets, but anyway we all lost a lot of weight as a result and are looking very trim. I was doing them in the electric wok that was dear Terry’s present and after the smoke cleared from the first attempt it all seemed to be fine. Oh dear, only a couple of hours later. . . thank heaven we have three loos, though Keith never got there quite in time and I had to put all his clothes in the wash, right down to his socks.

The washing machine blew up again but I’ll get the hang of it soon.

Keith’s girl friend Denise was with us. She has a bit of a sight problem (to be honest, with his spots, it is better if she can’t see too much), couldn’t find her way to the loo and had an accident while running up the stairs, which led to complications.

Poor Flotsam was quite overcome by the excitement and bit her rather badly.

We hope you have all had a wonderful festive season too.

Love from the Hardparcels, Terry, Angela, Keith, Flotsam (and Denise).

From: "the hardparcels" <hardparcel@pmail.com
To: <friendslist>
Sent: December 20, 2012 10:01 AM
Subject: End of Year Newsletter from the Hardparcels.

End of Year Newsletter from the Hardparcels.

Well, what a thrilling year it has been! Right up to the excitement of Angela’s December accident putting up the frieze of plastic reindeer, the high speed ambulance ride to hospital with siren blaring, the tremendous collision at the roundabout with a dustcart and the strange skirmish in the casualty waiting room that went on for hours. But Sister Walter was marvellous and says Angela should be able to walk again in three months and go to the loo by herself.

The year started with a bang, of course, with the left-over Guy Fawkes fireworks. Who would have thought that a lawn-mower spark could start a volcano? Still, the insurance paid out in near record time and we had the new roof on by July - after the big thunderstorms, but you can’t have everything. And the insurance is paying for most of the flood damage.

We had tried to save on the summer holidays by booking a package tour two years in advance and so we had to cancel part of the Syrian trip, though not before seeing some fantastic recent ruins. The Syrians were mostly charming and hospitable, even if we are not quite sure what they did with the other members of our party.

The Somalia leg was also most colourful and we got the best out of it with an extended stay until the ransom was paid.

That’s when we made our contribution to science with Keith’s discovery of what may be an unknown species of Somalian coral snake. At least that’s what they thought in customs, and the TV news was full of how Heathrow immigration had to be closed when it escaped.

Back home again we needed to rest from our exertions and spent a quiet few days going through our old photograph albums. How we chortled at the pictures from the seventies when Angela was still in the home, sitting on Sir Jimmy Savile’s knee.

Keith’s GCE results were a little disappointing, but we are sure he can pass one next year. He has been trying so much harder since he stopped the medications. Third time lucky!

And so to the end of the year with all the traditional festivities, not forgetting November 5^th when silly Keith started the lawnmower too close to the fireworks again. There can’t be many families who get two new roofs in one year! And of course it was the howling gale in the living room that made it a bit difficult to put up the reindeer frieze.

So, we wish you all a 2013 just as much fun as was our 2012.

Love from Terry, Angela, Keith and Flotsam the dog.