Disasters come in threes

Hey ho, we're ready and packed. Now we just climb in the car and face certain death on the M5 motorway to Hell. But wait! Because...

At 4pm we get an email. The email reads something like 'We are taking you to court'. I'd like to say it's from Big Bro who thinks sending me rude jokes by text is funny. Or I'd like to say it's one that suggests if we pay a shed load of money to some ex-president's wife now in refuge in Nigeria and who needs only a few thousand to help transfer her 60 billion US dollars, then she'll file court papers on our 10% behalf, and we'll get rich quick! But no. This is an email from people we do business with. Well, we tried to do business. We started production on their book. We just can't finish. Because they won't supply the missing pages. How hard can it be to supply the last pages of your own book? All we need is the pages they won't supply, and which we've asked for, hmm, let's see, is it six or eight times now? And when we ask them, they send us an email which goes something like the following:

Dave? Dave? Is this something for you?

And that's it. Why don't they just send the ruddy pages and we can get on with it? No. In these days, hiring a lawyer and taking us to court for breach of contract is easier. Much easier.

But that's not enough for Friday 27th, which should read Friday 13th, because at 5.30pm Squirrel starts rolling around the floor gripping her stomach.

It takes roughly 1 minute 23 seconds for the totally unqualified Doctor Grit to convince herself that Squirrel has appendicitis and will die without emergency medical intervention. So she air ambulances Squirrel in the Citroen Berlingo to the local health centre, runs straight in screaming See my baby NOW! And while we're waiting to go in for that emergency appointment, Squirrel whimpers I feel a bit better now mummy. Right now, suffocating her with my hand over her face seems a pretty fair option while I remind her that she did this to me over the meningitis. I tell her to shut up pretty quick because a girl with appendicitis does not start complaining in a loud voice that her sisters will eat her strawberries. Emergency doctor says it might be trapped wind. Then gratifyingly, he adds that appendicitis is a possibility.

9.30pm. Tiger howls she is not going to Cornwall in the morning at 9am because we have not planted out her vegetables.

After negotiation, she agrees to let me get up at 6am, go outside to the vegetable patch and cover myself in mud and cat shit and plant out six cabbage plants.