Hiya everyone,
Another strange British superstition which was passed on to me by my mum, along with the thing about magpies, black cats and ladders. But the title of this post when uttered before any other word on the first day of each month bestows upon you good fortune for the rest of that month. I have secretly been mumbling this bonkers phrase for some months now and I will stand beside myself in amazement if it doesn’t seem to be working! Here we are at the end of another month and I’m still here! Delighted I am too as I have had yet another very pleasant day. When Louise commented that she didn’t know how I was doing it, I told her that she was primarily responsible and also referred her to yesterday’s post.

The first wonderful event of the day was that the man I went to see about the Wallabies actually had some this time, therefore I was considerably more comfortable than I was yesterday!

After lunch, Granny Rosie took Oscar for a walk for a few hours and as my mum had gone home for the day, Louisa and I had a bit of time to ourselves. We decided to spend it having a cheeky Saturday afternoon drink and putting together the photograph album I am leaving for Oscar. It’s a fun thing to do, whittling down one’s life into 48 pages or whatever it is and quite surprising how many 6 x 4 inch sheet of paper you can throw away (having insisted for the previous seven house moves that you absolutely cannot do without them!). We are assembling Oscar’s album so that it reads as his own, so Louise’s mum is called Granny Rosie, my brother is uncle Matthew and so on. I hope that this helps Oscar to take ownership of his family history as well as paint a fuller picture, albeit somewhat dubious in places, of me.

We also chatted about my funeral for a while, trying to decide on numbers, venue for the inevitable piss-up afterwards and whether or not I should be in the buff in the box (I’m a little worried about ruining a perfectly serviceable tailored suit!) I do find organising the biggest event in my life, that I won’t be attending in the fullest sense of the word, brilliantly entertaining. If you are coming and end up standing outside somewhere because I guessed the numbers wrong, quite frankly my dear I won’t give a damn! I’ve bought you your first half of Tetley’s and a quarter of a ham salad bap, what do you want from me!

When Oscar returned from his walk, he rapidly destroyed the quiet musings of his parents by emptying his toy boxes and bookcases into every corner of the living room whilst spouting another dozen new words. Brilliant. Especially when he and his mum were hiding under the blanket playing peepo-daddy!

Here I will leave you all to embark upon the journey through the minefield of bad taste that is Saturday night TV. Have fun!
Lots of love,
Neil x

I remember Neil and I chatting about the suit and his reluctance to ruin it at his cremation. I suggested that he could also ruin his dress socks while he was at it, which seemed to go down well. When we had bought Neil’s dinner suit, the previous year, I told him he needed dress socks to wear with it. His reaction was ‘Eh? What? Dress socks, there’s no such thing! What’s wrong with my normal socks? Socks are socks!’. Marks and Spencer seemed to side with me in their existence so reluctantly, and rather huffily, he handed over the cash… then I made him buy dress shoes, the socks were just an inroad.

I had been putting together the photo album that Neil mentions here as his Christmas present, but I had only had the time to work on it at night before I fell asleep so I didn’t manage to finish it. It was all I could think to give him for Christmas that would be of any use to him at all. I had been disappointed that I couldn’t finish it, but had realised that it might be something we could do together and he would be much better at commenting on some of the photos. It was a lovely afternoon and I think I learned a few things I would not have had answers to without going through these photos together. - Louise (2013)