2. We play a mad game based on the Jerry Springer show -- we have to guess the story (you persuaded your gay brother to try women... and he stole your wife; your girlfriend has no idea that you're married, and she's no idea that you're also gay) on the back of our cards by asking the other players questions, and allowing them to give us a piece of their mind in the characters of parents, siblings and other guests.
3. Right at the end of the visit, PaulV shows me his tiny garden. It reminds me rather of Mole's garden in Wind in the Willows:
The Mole struck a match, and byits light the Rat saw that they were standing in an open space, neatly swept and sanded underfoot, and directly facing them was Mole's little front door, with 'Mole End' painted, in Gothic lettering, over the bell-pull at the side. Mole reached down a lantern from a nail on the wall and lit it, and the Rat, looking round him, saw that they were in a sort of fore-court. A garden-seat stood on one side of the door, and on the other a roller; for the Mole, who was a tidy animal when at home,could not stand having his ground kicked up by other animals into little runs that ended in earth-heaps. On the walls hung wire baskets with ferns in them, alternating with brackets carrying plaster statuary--Garibaldi, and the infant Samuel, and Queen Victoria, and other heroes of modern Italy. Down on one side of the forecourt ran a skittle-alley, with benches along it and little wooden tables marked with rings that hinted at beer-mugs. In the middle was a small round pond containing gold-fish and surrounded by a cockle-shell border. Out of the centre of the pond rose a fanciful erection clothed in more cockle-shells and topped by a large silvered glass ball that reflected everything all wrong and had a very pleasing effect.
