Home
It’s Saturday morning, and I’m finally home. The washing machine and tumble dryer are rumbling away in the background, the kids are out at football matches and school fundraisers, and I’m slowly pulling the house back towards some semblance of normality.
I arrived home late yesterday afternoon, after flying out of Frankfurt at lunchtime. The flight itself takes a little over an hour, but you still need to add on the journey to the airport, getting through check-in, security, and passport control, then security and baggage reclaim at the other end, followed by a couple of hours on trains to get home from the airport. You’re suddenly looking at six or seven hours, door to door.
On the way home I called my other half, who informed me that Miss 16 was supposed to be cleaning the house and washing clothes. I walked in on a scene of devestation – she hadn’t lifted a finger all day. I was beyond furious, and she knew it.
Anyway!
While waiting in the departure lounge at Frankfurt I picked up some presents for the rest of the family. Each of my daughters now has a small cuckoo clock – they are all attached to the fridge in the kitchen at the moment, ticking loudly, swinging pendulums back and forth. It’s reminiscent of the scene from the movie “Hook” where James Hook is surrounded by ticking clocks – or the scene in Back to the Future at Doc Brown’s house (where Einstein is fed automatically, and Marty plugs the guitar into the ridiculous amplifier).
A couple of hours after getting home we turned around and wandered to the nearby school, where the local radio station was holding a fund-raising “quiz night”. Our intrepid team started out with the best of intentions, but got rather drunk rather quickly. We came fifth out of sixteen teams. I’m amazed I have no hangover this morning.