10 on the 10th October

Ten things that have scored a point. Let me explain. Sometimes you can make a remark and someone will say something that really makes you laugh out loud. Not one of those namby pamby little LOL laughs that aren't really a laugh out loud but an involuntary spasm of the chuckle reflex that sometimes causes  coffee down the nose or crumbs across the table. If someone in our family makes this happen they can score a point. We are pretty stingy, especially Mr M but I have scored a few over the years. These days the Divine Miss Em scores the most but that's to be expected as she is six and just discovering life. Here are ten things I remember (well, some I remember and some from my journals)

1. First rule of car driving grandpa, you're not allowed to go to sleep! (said by Miss Em when she was only just six)

2."Oh look, The river mouth, what's it called?" "The river Exe" "Ah, that'll be why the town is called Exmouth then" ( we chuckled for two miles)

3. The lady in the chip shop in St Austell in 2006 who was standing at the back of the shop staring at the ceiling. When she was asked what she was doing she replied "I'm not watching the kettle so it will boil quicker". We awarded her a point cos she made us laugh

4. "I'm too young me" said Miss Em, in 2008, sitting in the back of the car as we waited our turn to collect some ex-battery hens. "Too young for what sweetheart?" I asked "To look after geese, Grandma". She was given a point, her first one.

5. Many years ago when my three children were just about getting to double figures for age, we went to Abergavenny market. We lived not far away and it was a regular thing for me to go shopping there on a tuesday when the outside market was open. As we were squeezing through the crowd a woman going the other way said in a very loud and exasperated tone "No! you can't have a gas mask!" My eldest son thought this was such a good phrase that he has held onto it for more than 30 years and said it to me when we were walking around a supermarket recently.

6. When Mr M says things to me he usually turns his head away so that deaf old me can't hear what he is saying. As he bent towards the fridge in our holiday flat in Cornwall in 2008 he said something. I said "I beg your pardon?" so he said it again louder but still with his head in the fridge. I asked again for a repeat so he said loudly "Have I told you that I'm crackers?" "Probably," I said "but you probably had your head in the fridge then too, so I didn't hear..." He had the grace to award me one point.

The right road can be seen bottom right

7. August 2009 heading for Northumberland up the M1. We were in the queue for the A1 junction and Mr M was shouting at the man in front for letting in a car that had overtaken all of us. "That car was in Birmingham when I joined this queue!" he shouted. I laughed for five miles.

8. On the same journey I scored a point after reading the Google instructions for most of the way I decided that I couldn't be without my map for a moment longer - my new map, the old one having disintegrated. I opened the book to the correct page, looked at the google instructions, looked at the map and said "I know exactly where we are --- we're on the right road!" Mr M was relieved to know this.

9, A kind of chinese whispers thing went on, again in Northumberland in 2009. I thought Mr M said something about squashed baby birds and got quite upset incase I saw them, so when he said it again I begged him not to show me the "poor dead birdies"
"LADYBIRDS" he enunciated very clearly, "dead Ladybirds, everywhere!" (I think he probably had his head in the fridge again)

10 At my youngest grandson's christening party the house was full of people who hadn't seen each other for a while so the hum of conversation was constant. there came a moment in the afternoon when everyone paused for breath at the same time. Everyone except one person. Into that silence was dropped the following "....and she said she had a terrible accident with her tongue". I spent the next few minutes scurrying around trying to find my handbag because that's where my notebook is and I had to write that down before I forgot. The strange thing is that out of the people in that room at that time only my son and I heard the remark clearly. Yes, he collects things like that too

This is part of the 10 on the tenth thing that starts with Shimelle. take a look