The Show Must Go On (Part Two)

/ crazytraintotinkytown

It’s been a while so here’s Part One for those that missed it!

The rain continued to lash down so regrettably I wasn’t going to get the opportunity to wear my oversize vintage Givenchy sunglasses purchased for the princely sum of £2.50 from the charity shop after all. Fat and full from the bacon buttie I’d troughed, I noticed that things seemed a little busier upon my return and a little tense amongst my car parking colleaguesdad 008 with a lot of walkie-talkie action going on. Erin identifying Tommy’s dulcet tones had grabbed hold of our handset and screeched across the airwaves “Tell Tommy I love him”. Yes Erin, I rather think he got that but there again so did the residents of the next county.

Throughout the afternoon the lovers whispered sweet nothings at each other over the airwaves until a little while later when Erin spent a little too much time chatting with one of the fit firemen. Suddenly the kissy kissy love chat and innuendo was quickly replaced with heated accusations.

“Big Wheels Postie to Car Park Princess, could you ask that fireman to take his eyeballs out of your cleavage”.

“Roger Big Wheels Postie, it’s nice talking to a man whose idea of romance isn’t spending a night in playing Mafia Wars whilst I defrost his freezer”. And so it went on.

It was during the lovers quarrel that my iPhone buzzed alerting me to a text message from Serial Shagger which just simply said “Miss Me”? Immediately followed by a YouTube clip of Adele singing what I had thought was “our song”, although in hindsight “Go Your Own Way”dad 009 might have been more appropriate. Clearly, he had been informed of my glamorous job role and breathtaking appearance by Nauseating Nigel. For a few moments I hovered somewhere between anger and embarrassment but then I looked at my calloused hands which had spent countless hours stripping & painting walls of our former home and which had been destroyed by him in a fit of spite.

So I took a deep breath and text back “I’m not Adele. I don’t wish the best for you and neither do I want to find someone like you. I do, however, want to set fire to all your worldly goods” and promptly switched my phone off.

Fired up by my heated exchange with Serial Shagger and with my tolerance level at an all time low I snatched the walkie-talkie from Erin and in the words of Bootilicious Beyonce, I told Tommy quite firmly to put a ring on it. Well if you’re going to walk on thin ice you might as well tap dance across it!

As Tommy and Erin enthusiastically reconciled, I felt that my work as a peacekeeping & matchmaking kick-ass ninja was done so I made my excuses and headed off in the direction of the marquees, as I wanted to catch the awards being presented. I got there in time to see Sid’s marrows earn a bronze and Ernie a silver for his runner beans. However, I think we were all pleasantly surprised when my Dad won a gold for his Dahlias.

In my Dad’s acceptance speech, he declared that it was the proudest moment of his life. My mother looked less than thrilled as she had been under the illusion that she had earned that accolade on the day she married him and later when she endured hours of painful childbirth to deliver his offspring.

And the winner is ......

And the winner is ……

Clearly, my Dad had either been partaking in his own homebrew or had developed a taste for sleeping with one eye open and would most probably now be restricted to muesli breakfasts for the remainder of his natural-born life. His prize was a bird feeding station and my Dad handled it as if it was a religious relic.

As we all trudged back to the car park, my Dad was deliberating where to put his prize; if he continued to talk about it that evening whilst my mother was trying to watch the X Factor, I was pretty sure she would be able to help him with that!

As luck would have it, our car had become entrenched in the sodden earth. My Dad reckoned he could ease it out of the mud if we all gave him a push. We assumed the position at the rear of the car, my mother throwing me under the bus, by insisting I stand behind one of the rear tyres and Ernie the other whilst she was better and safer placed in the middle. For some reason unbeknown to us, as the wheels spun, mud was splattered in the directionality of my mother so she was coated head to toe in Devon’s finest fertile soil. As she looked like she’d spent the afternoon mud wrestling, Ernie offered to rinse her down with a bucket of water he kept in the back of his transit van for such an occasion but as she was sporting her cherished Jaeger coat she just gave him one of her withering looks that could dissolve steel. Ernie recognizing a force of nature when he saw one wisely jumped back into his van and hightailed it out of Dodge leaving us to face the impending storm.

51 thoughts on “The Show Must Go On (Part Two)”

  1. Dear I am not Adele Tinker Bell….Yay you! haha. Kudos to Daddio’s Dahlia and (pops…bad form on the proudest moment…a tip to remember for next year’s run!) I can more than imagine your Mother’s steely look…I believe ALL mothers have one, mine included, and as I’m thinking about it, I think they are passed down to the daughters as my sons would be more than willing to toss my steely ‘mom look’ into the ring. xo

    Like

    Reply

  2. Is all well with you, Dallas? I’m hoping you’ve just been busy with “real life”. I’ve wondered a couple of times, then I spotted a comment from you on another post this morning, and thought “ah-ha!” I meant to chase you up, but you know how it is, and now here you are 🙂
    Lovely dahlias!

    Like

    Reply

  4. I have missed your wonderful storytelling, hope all is well. Your lovely exchange with Serial Shagger was far more polite than I could have been, kuddos to you for keeping your temper so firmly in place. Your da won for his lovely flowers and you should them, marvelous. Mud on your mother, how rotten.

    Like

    Reply

    • Not been the best of times for me recently but am going to try to keep up with the blogging but it may be a bit hit & miss for the next few weeks. Isn’t it funny how the thins you love the most are the ones to be shelved when the pressure’s on!

      Like

      Reply

  5. Absolutely loved your response to Serial Shagger, did he by any chance respond to that? He was probably at a loss for words!

    And at least your mother’s cake wasn’t destroyed this year right? If it makes her feel any better, I got Coca-Cola all over my beloved blue trench coat the other day when I collided with another young man who was carrying a plastic cup of it (with no lid, which seemed a bit dangerous in mid-town Manhattan but oh well). It was totally my fault since I appeared out of nowhere behind some signs trying to take a shortcut to get to the sidewalk and ran right into him. In the end, the coke wasn’t that visible once the coat dried and I threw it in the washer machine when I got home, so it all turned out fine!

    Like

    Reply

      • Yeah I think carbonated beverages are relatively easy to get out of fabric. Once my coat went through the washer machine, it was as good as new. Probably helps that it is a dark color.

        Wine is a bit trickier though. We had a family friend spill red wine all over my mom’s velvet chair in the living room and some got onto the rug as well (which was super expensive, and put in after we renovated the living room). We had to have professional cleaners come in (needless to say our friend felt incredibly guilty but honestly the way she knocked it over could have happened to anyone). The wine mostly came out of the chair (you can tell where it spilled though because the fabric is darker) but it did not come out of the rug, so we had to flip the rug around and hide the stain under the sofa.

        Like

  6. Ha ha ha….”if you’re going to walk on thin ice you might as well tap dance across it!” I need to conjure up an occasion to use that one! Glad to see you back again!

    Like

    Reply

  10. Adele would be proud of you!!!! I can only imagine your father’s acceptance speech – wish I had been there…

    “I have insecurities of course, but I don’t hang out with anyone who points them out to me.” Adele

    Like

    Reply

  12. So glad to see you back Dallas. Wonderful that your Dad’s Dahlias took the gold – they’re gorgeous. And I do love your hilarious quip about your Mother helping him find a “location” for his prize 🙂 Welcome back. ~Terri

    Like

    Reply

  13. Great to have you back, Dallas … you and your brilliant sense of humor. Priceless .. for everything else I have MasterCard!!!!! Congratulation to Dad and his gold medal!! Stunning flowers!! Maybe this sleeping in the garden shed … has something to do with it.

    Like

    Reply

  16. What a riot from start to finish. 😀 Your mom’s “withering looks” are, I’m sure, the result of a lot of hard practice over the years. Love your response to that Serial Shagger cad. What an a/h!!

    Like

    Reply

  18. Ah, another great adventure… and I love to read the names of some of the participants. But what a joy it is to see the occasional reappearance of Serial Shagger in your stories. Perhaps you should build a saga around that very special character.

    Like

    Reply

    • Hello to you! I’ve fractured my foot & only have my iPhone for company so forgive me for not being able to catch up with you all but will do so when I get home. You’re right he’s one “special, limited edition” kind of character

      Like

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Google photo

You are commenting using your Google account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out /  Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s