The Narsty Thing ate my new jeans

Wednesday was my dad’s 78th birthday.  He is not a sociable type, but does enjoy coming for a meal at our house- he doesn’t do ‘public’ eating, so restaurants are a no-go area.  As long as we make sufficient effort to persuade him, he happily agrees and makes his choice of menu.  This time it was fish pie and pear tarte tatin[Yum]

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4778/pear-tarte-tatin

I make this without the cinnamon stick and brandy, but with loads more cardamom…and I grind the seeds, I don’t use them whole.  It is beautiful [nicer than in the picture] and delicious.  My dad adores it.

This is why I was trying to get the Narsty Cat finished for them to take home with them on Staurday night.  [Please, please take it out of my home…]  Unfortunately, I spent most of Saturday in the kitchen, being a bit of a domestic goddess as my daughter was visitong with her friend.  This left little time to fix the Narsty thing.  I started by cutting all its limbs off, and the tail and the dirty little pillow his grimy head rested on.

It’s too rotten to take apart and re make properly, so I decided to just sort of appliqué things onto the corpse, mummifying the Narstiness. 

OH swears that if we took it completely apart it will have bones inside…

I honestly wouldn’t be surprised.

As if things weren’t already busy and complicated enough, DD had a very complex couple of hours making and re-making plans for her night out, which resulted in a second friend arriving and plonking herself in our very small living room.  Then OH arrived home with a cat.  She’d been to visit her cousin, who had decided to re-home one of her Bengals.  He’s utterly gorgeous, as are all Bengals, but this was not the best time to have a nervous moggy in the bedroom, and the two cats we already have made nervous and yowly.   Then the olds arrived, and altogether was not the calm relaxed evening we’d planned. Sigh.

Somewhere in all this, my ma and pa expressed huge delight at the progress so far with the Narsty:  he now has eyes, and the body has been re-covered.  I’m using various scraps of jersey, as it’s more forgiving for moulding over the existing monstrosity.  I can’t do anything much with the head, but there you go.

ew

I used black nail varnish to paint his eyes back more or less as they originally were.  The limb lying next to him is a front one…His remote control dangling pocket thing will be re made in a bit of old corduroy.  Good grief this is a horrible thing!

The youngsters finally left, planning to return for breakfast.  The olds settled to the meal, all was yum and sociable and lovely.  OH drove the olds home at about 103o.  I ambled up to bed at about 1115, and was immediately brought back down by DD’s phone call.  They’d overdone the sun and wine in my garden during the afternoon, and could they come back after all?  I pointed out that they were an hour’s taxi ride away, but hey ho.

OH returned shortly after, and was unimpressed to know that the ‘girls’ were on their way back again, which meant we couldn’t settle down to sleep.  At 1245-ish, a text message:  ‘we’re still waiting for a taxi’ .  OH flings book across bedroom.  They arrived at about 2, and much shushing ensued until I got them settled and quiet again.  Then the new cat came out from under the bed for some attention.  Eventually we slept.  Then cat #1 got upset by new cat #3 and considerable yowling and hissing took place.  Eventually we slept.  Then cat #2 upset new cat #3, more hissing.

Sigh.

A new day, DD and friend have been breakfasted and despatched.  Mummy points wre gained by letting them take the remains of a large chocolate cake, a tub of home made soup and a big ripe Brie.  And now I’m staring at the Narsty thing and thinking I need to finish it so it can leave.

So what’s all this about it eating my jeans I hear you ask?  [Unless you lost the will to live partway through reading this.]  Well, while I was snipping away excess bits of dead Narsty and fabric scraps, the ultra sharp and efficient Ernest Wright shears snipped a neat little V into my very recently made ‘Misty’ jeans.   Poop and snot as OH says.

I’ll have to patch them, but that never looks quite right in stretch wovens does it?  Ah well.

What do you think?  Would you waste your time on such a Narsty?  Are you going to try the pear tarte?  Go on go on go on go on

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