A happy visit

I'm going to remember this day for a while yet. Because we have visitors. And not any old visitors, like the ones who dress in suits and carry an anaconda's smile and a Bible, nor like those types of visitors who are checking up on my oven or the gas meters, and neither like those who are knocking on the door because they are just doing their round and checking the registered owner of the vehicle parked outside without a tax disc. Oh no. None of those types of visitors. These are real, proper, nice visitors that I can ask proper nice things of, like 'do you take tea?' and 'do you have milk?' and think, thank goodness you do not take sugar because I had to hide it from Squirrel, and right now I can't remember where I've put it.

Anyway, I'm going to remember our nice visitors for a while yet. And not for the fact that within seconds of our nice visitors arrival, I've managed to blow the lights. Nor is it because I scream in panic and threaten them that the only way I know how to break the circuit between them and the electric wiring is to hit them with a rubber cosh or the wooden handle of a broom, so don't touch that, and don't touch that either because I got electrocuted on Christmas Eve and it isn't nice.

No, I won't remember any of that. Our visitors are exceptionally lovely, and behave very properly at all times. At tea-time, even though it is a bit of reheated pasta Grit has scraped out from the bottom of a pan along with a reduced price quiche bought two hours earlier in a panic from Tesco, our visitors behave very nicely and eat everything up, properly. I am almost minded to point them out as examples to the junior Grits, who are spilling drinks all over the table and squealing about dinosaurs jumping off cliffs.

And what behaviour our lovely visitors show! Junior visitor does not once lie down on the floor and squeal or hang on to the banisters. And the grown up visitor goes to the top of Tiger's tip-top fan club because all the stuff about falling off a cliff and being taken along tunnels by dinosaurs is listened to very politely and nicely. And, if that wasn't enough to elevate our visitors to tip-top slot, then there's the violin and ballet torture which our nice visitors smile through, all the way, and then they even clap.

No, I'm probably not going to remember any of the above. I'm going to remember that when they go home, Tiger has been made happy. Michelle has listened to her violin and her story and to her tittle-tattle of this and that, and Chloe played with her and laughed. And after our visitors go, for a few brief hours, I have a still-smiling Tiger, happy right until bedtime.

Please visit us again soon Michelle and Chloe!