The Chronicles of Ma and Pa.

I promise that I will finish the A to Z of Facebook soon, in fact I have already scribbled most of it into my lovely suede bound cream journal but I want to tell you about my day.

Mum and Dad have been away for the last 3 months, they have been visiting the Australian Rellies. These include my brother Greg and my sister Jax. Thanks to you both for giving them such a good time x.... Anyway they flew in from Singapore yesterday, where Greg now lives. They boarded a coach at Heathrow after a good flight (there were 200 spare seats on their Quantas flight home), rang me to say they were on the coach but going straight through to Camborne which is about 35 miles from where I live in Bodmin. They usually stop off at Bodmin but they were shattered and wanted to fall over gracefully when they got home. I knew the coach was coming through Bodmin and hurriedly put together a food parcel of Bacon, Eggs, Milk, Bread etc..., filled a flask with hot tea and wrapped a bright orange pashmina around myself. I went to meet the coach, hoping that it would stop at Bodmin and stood in the icy wind, my carefully styled hair blown to bits. The lovely driver did spot me and stopped, asking if I had a Cornish Pasty about my person. I gave them a big hug and a kiss and sent them on their way. They looked tanned and exhausted but promised to see Joshy the next day.

I had a phone call from Pa at 9.30am this morning. They got home to utter chaos. The car wouldn't start, slurry was backing up into the washing machine (they live in a Barn Conversion in the wilds of Cornwall) and the house was stinking of damp with mould up the walls. I said no probs, I'll drive down and we'll get the car started and everything else will follow. I duly drove down to find that Pa had managed to start the car with a neighbour, who (thank you Elizabeth) had also cooked them a hot meal the previous evening and brought a dehumidfier for them to use.

I followed Pa to Truro to buy a new battery and to make sure that he could restart the car whilst filling up with petrol. Job done, or so I thought. We drove to my daughters in Truro and I went to park the car. Oops, small problem as my passenger side electric window refused to close. I rattled it a bit and with a huge 'thunk' it dropped neatly into the door frame. Oh Bugger! I drove back to Siany's and summoned my father. Now lets just pause for a minute and consider the fact that my 70 year old dad has flown from Oz to Singapore, spent 5 days in Singapore with my brother, experiencing a very fast five days of fun and frolics, boarded a flight to Blighty, stepped onto a coach for 7 hours, come back to domestic chaos and is now blearily considering my broken window - WIBBLE!

I drove to Staples, in the hope they may stock some clear plastic to temporarily shut the window as it was raining quite hard. Dad sat shivering in the passenger seat as I ran into the store. I found a load of Muppets discussing their love lives at Customer Services. 'Clear Plastic, nah, the computer says no'! Arrgghhhh..... I resisted the urge to throttle them and ran back to the car. Next stop was Homebase. I fully expected to find more persons similar to Kermit but found a brilliant bloke called Robin and explained my predicament. We hummed and haaa'd over a few options and then I saw a big light bulb go off above his head - PING! He dashed through the 'Staff Only' door and returned with a huge roll of cling film 'pallet wrap'. It was the cling film equivalent of the stuff you use to wrap someone up if you are an East End Gangster! He proceeded to turf a stunned Dad out of the car and between them they "clinged up" my door until it resembled a well wrapped sandwich!

I have to say here that it is not often that I come across the 'Robins' of this world. I am one of the 'Robins' and was delighted to discover another. It doesn't take a moment to help someone and have discussed this before under the heading 'Random Acts of Kindness'. Thank you Robin for your RAK, it was so appreciated when I needed a little TLC during a long day.

Back at the daughters it was decided that Dad would drive me home in his car and Mum would drive my clingy motor back to Camborne, where Dad would spend the weekend mending my window. My heroic dad then drove me back to Bodmin and set off on a dark rainy night back to Camborne. So here I am explaining it all to you but it needed a mention because how many Dads would do that? Here I am riding in to help on my little Micra White Charger and my dad, despite his exhaustion and fuddled brain has dipped deep into his reserves and become (once again) my Hero.

I am such a Lucky Girl.