Danger

While away we got to talking about times in our house. Two stories bear repeating here.
We used to entertain quite a bit, but this has been seriously curbed by the cost of everything.
When we moved in, we got it into our heads to invite all and sundry for a fondue in front of the fire.
This was a good plan, until we lit the fire.

So here we were, all of us sitting on pillows in the lounge around the fondue pots, with piles of food strategically placed in the middle......then slowly, very slowly , we realised that the person across from us had become very hazy. All the better for stealing someone else's fork, as by this stage it was getting increasingly difficult to make out the colour coding on the forks anyway.
But hubby was not going to admit defeat so easily.
He opened the balcony door which fueled the open fire even more and that was that.
Luckily we were all close to the floor anyway, so not too much smoke inhalation damage was done. We giggle now, but hubby was mortified.
I had recently been married, and as a joke, got a superman suit made up for hubby...no really, it was as a joke. That's my version and I'm sticking to it.
A friend of mine took it upon herself to lighten the mood and we disappeared for a few minutes while they doused the fire, when we reappeared she flung herself into the room in this suit, with a pair of socks in the area that women can't fill.......
This brought the house down. We had a few really "uptight" people there, but even they loosened up after this.

The second incident happened on Xmas day. Hubby's mom is in her mid 70's but still pretty sprightly. As the family were leaving we were all walking down the stairs in dribs and drabs, some family standing on the balcony to say their goodbyes. Hubby's mom was being escorted down the stairs by two young nieces, who decided that they would twirl grandma down the last few stairs.
I missed it, but hubby still laughs hysterically at what happened next.
In his words she turned like a top, and just kept turning .........down 3 steps, onto the driveway (which is at about a 35 degree angle) and on she twirled.
Straight into our flower bed.
To understand this , picture the driveway at the angle that drops off and gets steeper the more you go down, the flower bed lines the driveway on the other side, but the drop off there is about 65degrees straight onto the road.
By the time I got there my husband was bent double with tears streaming down his face. She had landed face first into the bed, with her feet and hands still in the air. In one hand was her handbag and her glasses were in the other.
You could only see feet from where I was standing.
Hubby's younger brother had to come down and help her out of the bushes.
Hubby was utterly useless for about half an hour and the first words out of his mouth were "do you realise that had the plants not been there we would have had to fetch you in Alberton" (this is a town 2 km away). We live on the top of a hill so he planted a really funny vision with this statement.
The next thing he asked was had she seen what she had done to the flower bed. To this day (3 years later) there is still a gap in the foliage where she plunged, and he never fails to point this out to her.
She laughs
Now.
It took her a while to get over the shock.