Crazy Gran Is Just A Little Bit Crazy

My 50th Birthday Balloon

I am very, very lucky to be blessed with a whole plethora of good friends. None more so than the ones I went to school with, all those years ago. Having done so many years with these friends we have had some absolutely hilarious times when we all get together.

This account is how I ended up in Mablethorpe for my 50th birthday with Denise, Julie, Elaine, Teresa and Sandra. As we all turned 50 round about the same time and I am one of the youngest of our school year, (just saying Julie), we had already done a number of 50th birthday events by the time it got to mine. The girls asked me what did I want to do and I said I was just happy for us to all be together, I didnt mind where.

Denise and Elaine (sisters) also have two other sisters who at that time both lived in Mabelthorpe, so it was decided that we would all go to Mablethorpe to stay in one of their homes whilst they were away.

I have always been known in our group as the one with the bad taste in clothes. Well I dont think they are bad taste, just everyone else does. Denise made m walk five paces behind her on an outing to Margate once, just becuase I was wearing a lime green hoodie and black and white stripey leggings. So knowing my appaling taste in clothes they decided, unbeknown to me, the weekend would be based on all the bad taste clothes they could find me.

On the Saturday night we all got dressed to go out to the local holiday camp ground to have a few drinks and a game of bingo. (The bingo was at my request). I was all dressed and arrived in the living room wearing my coolest pair of bubble jeans and was really proud of them. All my good, long standing friends fell about laughing at my jeans, but I did not care, as far as I was concerned I looked the bees knees.

Before we went out they presented me with some pretty cool clothes, including a lovely wincyette nightie, a dress, socks and sandals which they all though wer bad taste and I thought were cool.

After the bingo we came back to the house where I gave them my rendition of the Huma Numa Dance and after more alcohol we eventually, early hours of the morning decided we ought to probably go to bed. On this occassion I am sharing a double bed with Teresa. Julie and Sandra are in the second bedroom and Denise and Elaine are on the sofa and a mattress in the lounge.

For some reason unknown to man, Teresa is in bed first (never heard of before or since) before I am. I go to the bathroom to clean my teeth and then get in to bed. It is all quiet throughout the house and then I hear the biggest bang right near me. I leap out of bed screaming, thinking I have been shot. Why on earth I would think that, I have no idea but that was my first thought.

Just outside the door I can hear Elaine screaming with laughter and everyone else is also in hysterics. It turns out that when I was in the bathroom, Elaine had run in to Teresa and given her a big balloon and a pin to put under the blanket with the instructions of ‘Wait till she is settled and burst it’

I am still all this time later plotting my revenge on Elaine. One of these days I will get even !!!!

Biker Crew Outing

By special request, I am going to tell you abou the time I went to the British Motorbike Festival at Peterborough many years ago.

I was asked by friends of mine to help out in their motorbike shop at weekends and although I knew nothing about motorbikes, I thought why not?, it would be a bit of a laugh? Along with the fact that I would be working with a very good friends and they were a good laugh, I was keen to say the least.

I was doing OK, getting down with the lingo, not calling a helmet a hat, not calling the visor the glass thing on the hat, looking the other way when biker blokes removed their leathers to try on new ones etc, when all of sudden the British Morbike Festival is upon us, and I have been volunteered to work it.

Now the Bike Festival just so happened to coincide with a very big exhibition on X-Ray equipment that I was due to attend as part of my day job the following week, so the idea would be, that I would go to the Bike Festival in Peterborough, stay there Saturday and Sunday and travel from there to the exhibition on the Monday in Birmingham. This meant that I not only needed my weekend clothes , I also needed three suits for the three days of the exhibition on the Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of the following week.

The day of the Festival arrived, I picked up my friends and drove to the hotel in Peterborough where we were staying that night. It was too early to check in, so I just grabbed a couple of things I might need, (lipstick as there are plenty of men at this festival and I am single after all) and then just left the car in the car park, hopped in a taxi to the Festival Ground to start work.

This is where things started to go a bit awry. Not sure if you have ever been to the Bike Festival but it is, (or was then) a very big drinking event and not to be outdone, I partook of the Jack Daniels variety all day long and all night long.

It got to 2am in the morning, it is bucketing down with rain and we decide thatwe really should be getting back to the hotel as we have another long day ahead of us tomorrow. So along with my very good friends Juliette, Ange and Pam. I manage to pour myself into a taxi.

In my defence I am very inebriated – I am just putting that out there first. I look at the meter in the taxi cab and it already says £14.15 and even though I am worse the wear for alcohol, there is no way I am letting this cab driver rip me off for £14.15 before we have even moved, even if it is after midnight. I proceed to give this a taxi driver a really hard time about the cost and although my three friends and I are already in the taxi ,I tell him he is not to move an inch until he puts the cost back to something reasonable. He turns round an rolls his eyes at me and says ‘Lady if you were not so drunk, you would see you are looking at the clock that tells the time, which incidendatally is incorrect because I cannot change it, not the charge meter!!’ 

We eventually make our way back to our hotel after what seems like a tour of Peterborough and I find my keys to the car to go and retrieve my suitcase. By this time I really need my bed !!

I heave my suitcase out with a huge flourish and this is where it all goes badly wrong. After grabbing my things from the car earlier in the day I had not done the zip up again. This means I have now thrown the whole contents of my suitcase across the hotel car park. Knickers, pyjamas, suits for the exhibition, all my make up, all flung across the carpark.

I look around to my three good friends for help and as all I can see are the three three of them doubled up with laughter. Thank you girls.  I love you.