The One With The Wine, The Trolley And The Knicker Elastic.

Poor old Grandad Atu hasn't been too well recently. He's had a nasty chest infection that he just couldn't shake and as a result he and Nanny P haven't been able to have the boy over for a sleep over since early December.

Not that I'm complaining you understand. The support and childcare help we get from my parents I consider to be very much a privilege and not a right. I just needed to set the scene as to why I was drinking at lunchtime.

And the reason I was drinking at lunchtime was that my Dad's chest and bouts of coughing were much better in the daytime so my parents had offered to have the boy last Saturday in the day to come over and play. Quite frankly they were missing him, and he was missing them, and the visit would perk my Dad up, but at this stage an overnighter was a step too far.

Lovely we thought, we can run some errands and, in the absence of a night out in recent weeks, we'd go for a sneaky pub lunch instead.

So the microwave that had gone ping, quite literally for the last time that week, needed to go to the dump as did the bottles for recycling. Then we drove to a nice pub out in the countryside and had a very agreeable lunch with a cheeky couple of glasses of red for me as hubby was driving.

Then we stopped at Sainsburys to do the grocery shopping on the way home.

This is where it all started to unravel.

I was a bit giggly and woozy with two glasses of Merlot and a big lunch inside me (prawn cocktail and scampi and chips for those interested in my 70's retro fest). As I was tipsily weaving my trolley around I realised that not only did the trousers I was wearing quite clearly needed a belt and were falling down but underneath them my knicker elastic had gone.

Picture the scene; me giggling like a loon, pushing a trolley with one hand and hitching up my trousers and pants with the other, whilst trying to hold a shopping list and select items to buy with... well no hands at all. 

I'd like to say I managed the situation with class, dignity and aplomb....but we all know that just wasn't the case don't we.

I hobbled around like old man Steptoe,with my hand permanently jammed down my pants, fudging about like they'd cost me a pound and 99p of them were up my arse. 

And where had I bought this garment from in the first place?

Sainsburys, that's where.

Bolstered by the effects of the wine, thank god I wasn't wearing a skirt or I'd have whipped my, quite frankly useless, 'apple gatherers' off and taken them over to customer services to make a complaint, 


'These don't stay up. Can I exchange them for a pair that I don't have to wedge up the frozen aisle to stop me exposing myself please?'

Don't let me drink at lunchtime and go shopping in sub standard knickers again or I could get arrested......