A Series of Unexpected Events

What an exhausting weekend! All of the usual stuff to deal with - going out for a bit of shopping, cooking, sleepovers, walking the dog, etc, plus an unexpected bit of shopping. This is the story.

At Christmas my two nieces who live over the road got laptops. This upset my eldest, who wanted one even though he has a got really good desktop PC.

Time passed, as it tends to.

My dad (a heavy smoker) gave up smoking, resulting in a growing pile of surplus cash.

Last week, he brought round a 'briefcase' that he had acquired, which turned out to be a case for a laptop. Comments like "all we need now is the laptop" followed.

Next thing I know my dad has popped round and given my wife some money to buy a laptop. A half followed conversation had lead him to think that they were much cheaper than they really are (the price he heard actually referred to HAIR EXTENSIONS!), so I had to put him straight, offering to give him the money back as I could not expect him to pay the real price. Oh, no, he says digging into his wallet, have some more! Just how much had he been spending on cigarettes, I wonder?

So I then had to go to PC World and get the thing. Found a rather good bargain, fought off the sales people trying to sell me extended warrantees, anti-virus software, MS Office, wireless mice, printers, carry cases, blank DVDs, Windows Vista... NOT I JUST WANT THE COMPUTER! THAT IS ALL! AND I WILL NOT BE TOUCHING VISTA FOR AT LEAST ANOTHER YEAR OR SO, UNTIL THEY HAVE SORTED IT OUT SO THAT IT ACTUALLY WORKS, OK? I ALREADY HAVE A COMPUTER THAT DOES ALL THAT STUFF AND IT IS CALLED AN iMAC!

So, back home, I installed a bunch of software, the kids had a go on some games and then, shock, horror, my wife is really impressed with the new toy and says that she wants to learn how to use it! This is pretty much a first, apart from playing The SIMS on my desktop PC. She wants to write s story for a competition that she has seen. OK, so I sit her down and show her the basics. Soon she is typing away like a professional while I do the ironing. A couple of hours later she asks me to read the short story that she has written and it is great. I never knew she could write like that. Just need to remember to send it off to the competition now. Failing that I will start stocking up on paper for the manuscripts that we might end up sending round. Watch out J K Rowling...

Isn't it amazing how one thing can seem to lead to another?