Big Bro

And you thought Grit was scatter-brained.

Big Bro comes to see us today. He tells us about his last weekend, when he was invited to a 40th wedding anniversary dinner party in someone's house. That's someone he's never met before, by the way. But they've made a lot of effort making a lovely five-course dinner party for invited guests and their partners to celebrate a 40th wedding anniversary. 40 years! Isn't that special? Britney Spears can't even manage 40 hours, so 40 years is going some.

Anyway, Big Bro is driven there by partner Val. He has a glass of white wine, then a glass of red, because food is a while coming. And then someone brings round a glass of champagne before the eating officially starts.

Disaster!

Bubbles go to Big Bro's brain. He excuses himself to go to the loo. Which he does. Then thinks, I need a spot of fresh air in the garden, and off he pops outside. It's a very fine night apparently, and when you are in the countryside in the middle of Suffolk without any streetlights, then you can see the stars clearly. Except when there is a tree in the way. Big Bro walks around until he has a lovely uninterrupted view of the stars. Without trees. Or houses. Or cars. Or any distinguishing feature that Big Bro can recall. At all. Then Big Bro realises something terrible. He is lost.

Now Big Bro is aged 54 and should not be lost in the middle of Suffolk, without his coat, his phone, his house keys or car keys. But he is. He does the sensible thing, and starts walking across crop fields until he comes to a road, where he sees a signpost to villages he's never heard of before, and sets out towards one of them.

After an hour he arrives at a pub, staggers in looking like Piano Man and says 'I'm lost'. The landlord asks where he'd like to get to. Big Bro, being honest, says 'I don't know', not having visited these people before, not knowing their second name, and only able to say that the lovely dinner party guests are probably on their third course by now, wondering where their guest's gone in the middle of nowhere and whether there is a time tunnel in the toilet and if so, should they get it investigated.

Big Bro, fortunately, has a bank card in his pocket, so with an obliging cash-back landlord has another few drinks to consider his options. He eventually settles on a £40 taxi ride to break in to his own house somewhere near Bury St Edmunds and receive a big ticking off the next day from Val.

Now surely, Little Sis Grit would never do that. Which just goes to prove that Big Bro leads an even more chaotic life than me.