The Retreat

My Dear Princess and Dear Friends,

Caro and Loulou arranged between themselves that Loulou would come over for takeout food and chat tonight.

This made me happy. I like Loulou. Also takeout food.

And Loulou was on excellent form, despite having had a bad week. She has been in and out of hospital with her mum, who had a pretty bad health scare.

"I just want a year AWAY from hospitals!" sighed Loulou.

Not only that, but she had a "fart in a lift" debacle. I mean. I wasn't SO bad. It was her own fart. But she was trying to escape it. 

"I could smell it THROUGH my mask!" she exclaimed. "It was so bad I decided to walk away from it before someone decided to check me into the hospital."

But the fart FOLLOWED her! She went into a lift and sniffed and the fart was in there with her, bouncing off the sides. 

"I thought I had got away with it," she said. "But just as the doors were closing, an arm appeared and they re-opened." 

The horror.

Our takeout food was so good. We have recently acquired a decent curry shop. After FIVE YEARS. It is cause for massive celebration in our house. I thought we would have to switch to Thai food but now we have the option of a decent bhuna also.

Loulou also enjoyed her food, and told us about her weekend plans. Tiger is away for a few days so she is going on a yoga retreat. 

"It's in my house really," she told us in a conspiratorial whisper. "But I WILL be doing yoga. I have built a whole schedule on Notion*. And because I have told my parents I am on a yoga retreat they assume I am going away somewhere and will not call me."

"I'm not technically lying," she protested. "My dad asked me where I was staying, and I told him that I'd got somewhere."

"I'm going to hide my car around the back just in case," she added**.

Not that her lovely cottage is so much of a retreat these days. There is still construction work going on all around her. As you may recall, her horrible next door neighbour tore down all the trees for a nine-property development on the land adjoining Loulou's. 

"But they've been digging the same hole for the past three weeks," said Loulou with grim satisfaction. "So I assume it is not going well."

However, apparently she is feeling more mellow these days and the construction noises are not disturbing her as much as they used to.

"There's a digger that goes BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP and another that goes AAAACK AAAACK AAAACK AAAAACK," said Loulou. "But I'm able to tune them out more at the moment, because I'm feeling happier."

"I still call my neighbour a C*NT every time I drive past her house though," added Loulou. 

I mean. Of course. Just because you've adapted doesn't make your neighbours less c*nty.

But Loulou even seems to have adapted to the confrontation. Normally a self-described people-pleaser who dislikes confrontation, Loulou relishes telling off noisy workmen and sending pictures of inconsiderately-parked vehicles to the council. 

And there are a lot of them. Loulou's immediate neighbour has been joined by a couple of other near-neighbours in starting major projects. 

"I said very loudly in front of them that it is like the Arsehole Olympics round here," said Loulou, proudly. "They probably all hate me, but I don't care."

Any such hatred must be offset by just how much we LOVE Loulou. The end of her visit came far too soon and once again I regretted not taking notes when she spoke, because she makes me laugh so much.  

I DID remember to get a picture of her Kitty Badge on her way out though. "Ooh! It's a double honour to be the subject of the blog AND the picture!" she said. 

The honour is all mine, Loulou. I hope you know that.

S.

* Notion is an organisational app that Loulou is VERY excited about. And because I am a super-nerd, I also need to research it. The other BA's will be so envious. 

**  I subsequently got a text on Friday. It read thus:

Feck. Dad keeps asking questions about my retreat and my powers of obfuscation are fading!