A series of Christmas vignettes

I figured that rather than bore you all with the whole "I did this, and then I did that and then I went there..." rendition of Christmas, I would simply highlight for you the most entertaining segments in a series of amusing anecdotes. This may or may not continue for several days, depending on how much I can actually remember!

The one where we ate the cat:
On Boxing day I ate lunch at my friend Ali's the same as I did on Christmas day. Her brother and his girlfriend were there. In an attempt to steer the conversation away from what may have been an inappropriate topic for dinner conversation (I honestly can't remember what), Ali's mum turned to her and said, "How's the cat?"

She was, of course, referring to Tilly, the cat owned by the people Ali (and I, sort of) was housesitting for. Ali's brother, however, in a moment of incredible quick-wittedness that I can only envy, poked the meat on his plate gingerly with his fork, looked up at us with eyes full of concern and said, "The cat?"

The one with the SPLAT!
Boxing day evening Ali and I got the munchies and headed down to the BP garage to stock up on goodies. We were looking at the selection of crisps and trying to make a decision, factoring in several special offers. "Well," I said, "I like Doritos, but if we get Doritos we have to get dip, and I don't like those Doritos dips. Do you think they'll have fresh ones?"

"I doubt it," was Ali's cynical reply.

Well I headed off over to the chiller cabinet and there they were: a selection of 4 dips in little plastic pots, stacked and then surrounded by a cardboard sleeve. "Aha!" I said to Ali. "They do have fresh dips!" And I picked up the cardboard sleeve and brandished the dips at her.

At which point the bottom pot of dip slid out of the cardboard sleeve and landed with a resounding SPLAT on the floor.

After we had recovered from our hysterical laughter, Ali and I grabbed another pack of dips and ran away to pay for them. Yes, I am the type of person who makes a mess in a shop and then pretends to have had nothing to do with it. I'm a bad person.

The one with the song from Friends:
At my mum's I noticed a funny smell. The cat was winding itself around my legs at the time, but I expressed incredulity at the fact that the cat could stink so bad that I could smell it from there. My mum said its teeth are really bad and she should really take it to the vet, that it should have really had yearly checkups, but it hadn't, and now it had the worst cat breath ever.

Later that evening, I caught a whiff of the cat's halitosis again and commented on it, at which point my brother started singing 'Smelly Cat'. I joined in and we sang the song in its entirety. My mum told us to stop, "You'll give him a complex," she said.

"We can't give him a complex, he really does smell," I said. "You won't take him to the vet, he's clearly not your favourite pet."

"Shut up," my mum said, obviously feeling a bit awkward. "We can't afford to take him to the vet."

I looked around at the shiny new cabinets and the gleaming metal of the stainless steel hob. "Well, obviously," I said, "a new kitchen is far more important than your cat's teeth."

"Kolin," my mum said to my brother. "What would you like for dessert, because Laura's not getting any now."

The one with the reminiscent vomit:
We were talking, for some reason, about my mum's ex-boyfriend and my brother reminisced about the time he threw up all down himself whilst they had been staying at my mum's then-boyfriend's.

"I think it was the first time I smoked puff. I'd been drinking and then all [ex-boyfriend's kids] friends were there offering me this joint, so I was all, what the hell, why not. And then I was sick. A lot."

"You really were," my mum interrupted. "We had to put all your clothes in a plastic bag to take them home because they were so covered in sick."

"Yeah," said my brother. "And I was only 6 years old, mother, what kind of parent are you." He paused for effect and my mum gave him a look. "Not really, I think I was fourteen."