Robbie does talk rubbish at times. Last night we finally sat down to eat our meal just before 9pm, because we had been food shopping. For no obvious reason he started to talk about the packaging and merchandising of Smarties - do I care? Robbie wasn't bothered about boring his audience, it obviously mattered him and he was going to make the word pay attention. Apparently the familiar Smartie tubes are a thing of the past and the new packaging is hexagonal. My first reaction was that it would make them more stable and easier to display but Robbie disagreed. According to him the manufacturer has not taken account of the problem of merchandising Smarties on board (he means on trains). I am sure he is right, after all onboard sales would be a negligible fraction of their market! According to Robbie it is a huge problem and they have to find a solution. I pointed out that Cross Country seemed to have made a reasonable start to the new franchise, but maybe they should concern themselves with issues such as punctuality, overcrowding and customer service rather than the merchandising of Smarties. I don't think I will lose any sleep over the Smartie problem, but you never know, it could make the headlines in the next issue of Rail Magazine!!
Robbie does not have a monopoly on obsessing over trivia. Sam came home and asked me if I knew the correct name for the plastic tags on shoe laces that make them easier to thread. I don't know, what is more I have got through this much of my life very well without needing to name the ends of a shoelace, so it probably doesn't matter! Later on he asked if there was a specific word for someone's hair going grey overnight after a shock. I wasn't convinced that such things really happen, but Sam pointed out that Alistair Darling may have suffered such a fate because his hair is white and his huge eyebrows are very dark. I suggested to Sam that the word he was looking for was stress! With Robbie and Sam in my life I do have a passing acquaintance with stress - and I also have a few grey hairs!
I do love Sam, and yesterday he brought a big smile to my face. He was telling me about an oral Spanish test that he did which involved describing his parents and siblings. He confided to me that he'd had to lie because he couldn't count high enough in Spanish to give my age accurately so he said I was 32 - I wish! I am not sure what the teacher would have thought about a 32 year old having a daughter age 18, but it was nice to be young again!
Robbie left home very early this morning to go to a model railway exhibition. I must admit to a bit of a fascination with railway modelling myself, but at 5.30am if forced to choose between my bed and getting up to go to the exhibition my bed would win hands down! I got up at a much more civilised hour when Emily arrived home, it was lovely to sit and chat with her about university, Christmas shopping and countless other things. She headed off to town to meet up with Laura, who was already in town, she takes shopping seriously and had made an early start. Robbie rang to tell me that the model rail exhibition was great, he was very impressed because he'd had a chat with Pete Waterman!
No comments:
Post a Comment