Annual Loto shot

Collège loto tonight.  I was very un-keen on going.  CarbBoy was very keen on going.  He won.  And then tacked on an extra double-win by persuading me to drive completely out of my way to pick up a friend whose parents couldn't be bothered to go.  (I drew the line at a last minute request to drive 20 km in the exact opposite direction to pick up another kid....)

Anyway, we didn't win, but my 12 year old neighbour who we were sitting with won big time - 3 really good prizes (hundreds of euros worth).  Meanwhile, I mostly chatted with his dad, and a guy I presumed was a friend of his dad but turned out to be a complete stranger, about MoTs, arthritis and lack of job opportunities for the young (have almost never felt so old).  I made the mistake of having a coffee - normally at these events you just get some warm sweet brown water, which suits me fine, but this was a cup of something very zingy, with a hefty dose of robusta.  As a result I am absolutely wide awake and it's nearly 1am.  It will take a lot of In Our Time podcasts to get me to sleep tonight, I think.

Earlier, a quote for car tyres was less ruinous than I expected; our landlord is still not responding to our increasingly plaintive requests for a refund of our deposit (on Monday such requests will quickly get litigious, I fear); and I made lots of successful cakes to be sold at tonight's loto.

The 'bingo callers' (yes, I'm back to the loto - I don't get out much so it's a big occasion for me...) were brilliant.  CarbBoy's history teacher did it most of the time and kept testing the kids' history knowledge (although 'what year did the Americans land in Normandy' drew a slight protest from me) and whooping them all up into a frenzy.  (He was also able to be very sternly teacherly and actually get them to shut up when he needed to.)  And CarbBoy's maths teacher did a little stint too - giving all the numbers as sums: "square root of 400" seemed to stump more kids than I thought it might.

Anyway, apart from all that excitement, it mostly rained.  I am a bit over rain now, though I imagine it all bodes well for lots of powder on Mr B's boys' ski weekend in Andorra.