so the plan was to go to finlaystone country park and have a family bbq to celebrate the fact that our current batch of birthdays take us to the accumulated age of 101.

we'd begun to not mind that our party clashed with someone elses and had got ourselves sorted for a low hassle afternoon.

then we heard a clunk in the front wheel of the car

so we went to the petrol station to check it out and decided we ought to fill up while we were there.

i could give you my, by now well rehearsed, story about why i filled up the car with unleaded not diesel (starting with being worried about the clunking, and leading on to the fact that i'd had an unleaded hire car last week) but i wont.

so we stalled on the M8. luckily everyone was slowing for some road works and a kind bloke pushed us on to the hard shoulder.

we then spent 45 mins on the hard shoulder phoning everyone we'd invited to our party telling them that we wouldnt be there.

having been rescued by the aa and the police, we came home, regrouped and kicked off the bbq at home. only three lots of people had our party without us - and two lots of them came back to our house later anyway. it turned out to be a great afternoon...

which ended in 11 kids and 2 adults watching dr who while the rest of us drank in the kitchen