My wife and I were having a chat about our youngest daughter’s forthcoming sixteenth birthday. What we didn’t realise was that our eighteen-year-old son Neal, and our sixteen (going on thirty)-year-old younger daughter, were listening in behind the kitchen door.
The conversation went from a full scale party in fancy dress, then dinner for a maximum of ten at a decent restaurant, perhaps a night out in London and a show, with quite a lot of odd ball stuff in between. At some point in our discussions I made the fatal mistake of saying to my wife, jokingly, that, “Times are hard, and getting harder”. I wasn’t being serious: I had worked my way up from a tailor’s machinist when I was first married, to director of an international company. They had never known what it was like to be unable able to afford something.
The kids in the kitchen had heard the remark, and came into the lounge falling about on the floor in fits of laughter, with tears running down their faces. They went up to bed about ten o clock, while we were watching TV. We could hear a lot of unusual movements and a lot of giggling going on, but we took no notice; it was not unusual for them to have a bit of fun before closed their eyes.
At about eleven thirty, I locked up the house for the night and we started to make our way upstairs, and then it hit us what this pair of jokers had been up to. At the top of the stairs there was a 12 x 12in poster stating, “Please turn the lights off when you leave the room. Save Pa’s Money”. Then at ten inch intervals, more notices like “Please sleep three in a bed, and keep our fuel bills down,” “Try splitting the two-ply Kleenex and make them go further for Dad’s sake.”
On the bathroom door was another large notice: “This bathroom will be closed from 23.00 hours to save water; furthermore only one sheet of toilet paper will be allowed for a pee, and a maximum of two for more serious jobs. There was also a footnote, “Extra sheets can be purchased at reasonable prices from Big Daddy”.
They didn’t stop there. There was a notice on the shower unit which read, “Take a cold shower, keep the heating bills down, and most important, Save Our Daddy’s Dough.”
These kids had really gone to work on me. They had numbered every sheet of toilet paper and there were remarks on every single one, such as “Tut, tut, they are all counted, “Big Daddy is watching you,” “Times are really hard now, so steady on.”
There were seemingly endless very funny remarks all through the roll.
By now I thought they were probably through and called out Goodnight, kids. Walking into my bedroom, there was a note on the light switch, “Get undressed in the dark, it’s more fun, and it will save our inheritance money.”
The conversation went from a full scale party in fancy dress, then dinner for a maximum of ten at a decent restaurant, perhaps a night out in London and a show, with quite a lot of odd ball stuff in between. At some point in our discussions I made the fatal mistake of saying to my wife, jokingly, that, “Times are hard, and getting harder”. I wasn’t being serious: I had worked my way up from a tailor’s machinist when I was first married, to director of an international company. They had never known what it was like to be unable able to afford something.
The kids in the kitchen had heard the remark, and came into the lounge falling about on the floor in fits of laughter, with tears running down their faces. They went up to bed about ten o clock, while we were watching TV. We could hear a lot of unusual movements and a lot of giggling going on, but we took no notice; it was not unusual for them to have a bit of fun before closed their eyes.
At about eleven thirty, I locked up the house for the night and we started to make our way upstairs, and then it hit us what this pair of jokers had been up to. At the top of the stairs there was a 12 x 12in poster stating, “Please turn the lights off when you leave the room. Save Pa’s Money”. Then at ten inch intervals, more notices like “Please sleep three in a bed, and keep our fuel bills down,” “Try splitting the two-ply Kleenex and make them go further for Dad’s sake.”
On the bathroom door was another large notice: “This bathroom will be closed from 23.00 hours to save water; furthermore only one sheet of toilet paper will be allowed for a pee, and a maximum of two for more serious jobs. There was also a footnote, “Extra sheets can be purchased at reasonable prices from Big Daddy”.
They didn’t stop there. There was a notice on the shower unit which read, “Take a cold shower, keep the heating bills down, and most important, Save Our Daddy’s Dough.”
These kids had really gone to work on me. They had numbered every sheet of toilet paper and there were remarks on every single one, such as “Tut, tut, they are all counted, “Big Daddy is watching you,” “Times are really hard now, so steady on.”
There were seemingly endless very funny remarks all through the roll.
By now I thought they were probably through and called out Goodnight, kids. Walking into my bedroom, there was a note on the light switch, “Get undressed in the dark, it’s more fun, and it will save our inheritance money.”