Noisy

There have been some strange noises round the house since we arrived home from holiday, and not just the poor washing machine groaning under the strain of all the laundry.

Lately each night is punctuated by a persistant rattling, whirring sound coming from Pickle's bedside table. It started on Saturday night after the new hamster, Lucky Hamper, suddenly discovered his hamster wheel and decided to get busy with his own nightly hamster marathon. Yes, we got the hamster. No sooner had the plane landed in Hungary than the 'when are we going to the Pet Shop?' mantra started, so Lucky joined our family the very next day.

So far he has been very lucky to avoid becoming Tiggy's morning snack. The poor dog is overcome with interest in the little creature and sits shivering and licking her chops whenever Lucky is dragged out of his cage for a cuddle. And he's dragged out quite often, considering all he wants to do is kip all day long after his nightly runs. But Pickle has other ideas, keen as he is to stimulate the animal with interesting sights and activities. Lucky has variously been seen exploring a sprawling, custom-built Lego fortress, the inside of Pickle's trouser leg and the underside of his wardrobe. When tired he is perambulated about the bedroom in a miniature shopping trolley by Action Man and Barbie. It's really very sweet.

Poppet's room, on the other hand, has been emitting an eerie silence for almost a week. She's been at Kangaroo Kamp by the lake with a dozen friends from school. It's been really weird without her, though we've talked a LOT on the phone after I decided to get a new simcard for the spare mobile and let her borrow it. I think that was almost as big a treat as being staying away from home for five nights and she's getting through £10-worth of credit pretty rapidly. She's also convinced I gave it to her for keeps... Hmmm.

She arrived home yesterday laden down with armfuls of arts and crafts -shortly afterwards I was sporting four necklaces, three bracelets and a couple of woolly plaits in the my hair. I then had to undergo a masterclass in plait-making and then try to untangle the additional twenty or so necklaces she produced from her pockets. By all accounts she's had a wonderful time; the teachers presented a slide show of photos from the week including shots of Poppet digging in the mud in her bikini, Poppet collecting baby frogs and Poppet's team of snails.

At the weekend while all was relatively quiet in the house, I heard music coming from the basement. That's where we keep the Wii and I happened to know that Pickle was in his room exercising his hamster at the time so I tiptoed down the stairs to see what was going on. There was Nobby, Nun-chucks in hand, drumming along to Britney Spear's 'Toxic' while whacky 'Raving Rabids' rabbits cavorted across the screen.

He was pretty good actually.

One sound we haven't heard much while Poppet's been away is the TV. Though we've lost all our 'free' channels via the dodgy Digibox over the summer as the rogue Romanian satellite has finally been switched off. We're going to have to go legit. Personally I have had a new toy or two to play with. Firstly my midnight blue Ford Focus, bought for a song from Nobby's company's ex-salesman stock. We finally tired of playing musical cars whenever Nobby has to visit the out-of-town site or drive out to meetings and I know Nobby will prefer driving from garage to garage in the Volvo during the winter than trudging through the snow to the tram.

We've also all played with the 'bong' / hookah pipe that Rose bought for me years ago, after picking up some apple-flavoured, nictotine-free bong-tobacco during our Turkish holiday. It really works! You never saw anything so funny as Nobby, Pickle and me sitting round the dining room, playing cards and passing round the hookah pipe. We also bought some Turkish coffee which works quite well in the percolator. Nobby even dug out a very old tape of Turkish music which we had blaring out of the stereo at the weekend to relive our fortnight in the sun.

Actually, Turkey was so hot we could have really been holidaying on the sun. That's what you get for not doing your homework when you book a holiday. We knew that Hungary would sweltering during July and we'd need to get away. But we didn't check that Turkey would be 15 degrees HOTTER. One afternoon there I left a bottle of water in the sun beside my pool-lounger. By the time I retrieved it the water was hot enough to make a cup of tea. Still, we all came back with super suntans, despite using factor 50 and staying in the shade as much as possible. And I learned how to belly dance (nuff said).

This week I am setting up my new classroom, which finally has desks and chairs in it but very little else. Poppet is going to help me decorate a bit to make it more colourful while Pickle is at football camp all week. You know, on Monday both camps overlapped for one magical day. I had NO kids all day long.

It was very quiet.