After my stepson’s graduation we took my husband’s parents to Scotland to visit cousins who live there while we headed to Aberdeen to visit friends of ours.  The following day we picked them up and flew to London.  We were eagerly anticipating seeing the show War Horse that had received heaps of accolades in the press both in London and back in Australia.

My father-in-law was paying for the four of us plus his grandson, his grandson’s girlfriend and my husband’s ex-wife who was there for graduation and to help my stepson organize getting all his crap back to Australia after 5 years at university.  I wasn’t too sure about the show choice.  I would have preferred a musical but the ex and my stepson were really keen to see this War Horse play.

The show is about a horse (obviously) as a young foal and all that happens to him as he makes his way towards becoming a war horse in the first world war.   Joey is an imposing puppet (full size freakin horse puppet) made of bamboo, nylon, bicycle chain and leather, and its three human operators are clearly visible, but not long into the show the horse ceases to be a puppet and is perceived by everyone in the autidence to be a living, breathing force onstage.

Well, the only thing fantastic about the play to me were the puppets.  Horses and a funny goose caught my eye.  The actual play I thought was pretty ordinary.  So here I am sitting with all the family thinking, “it will be awful if I’m the only one to think this is less than stellar writing.”

The play ended and my father-in-law (remember he’s 90 and he’s paid a fortune for the 7 tickets) comes out of the theatre and everyone is raving about how fantastic the puppets were and Rob says, “the puppets were ok but the whole thing was pretty ordinary if you ask me.”

Turns out, it was the only thing on the whole trip that we really didn’t enjoy.  Watch for the post on taking him to the Moulin Rouge!

The trip to Europe with “the olds” as we lovingly call John’s parents was a spectacular success, with only a few small hiccups.  The first day, just getting to Australia to pick them up, John lost all the train tickets.  Train tickets are like cash, you lose, you really lose.  So $4000 later and a dash to meet someone from the ticketing agency at the airport in Melbourne, we had new tickets.  Only $4000 dear, it’s only money, we can claim it on insurance if we lost them or they were stolen.  (Notice how I said we when we both know HE had the tickets, but then he was stressing and worrying big time.)

Off we went to England.  The main focus on the trip was to attend my stepson’s graduation at Reading University in England.  It all went off perfectly and everyone was happy.  It had been 9 months since John had seen his son so he couldn’t wait to catch up at dinner that night.  Now John’s dad is 90 and he’d been flying from Australia to England and he was exhausted.  Sure we had flat seats to lie down on but he’s still pretty old.  He insisted on going to dinner anyway but halfway through he started feeling very uncomfortable due to arthritis.

We drove back to our hotel and I took the olds up to their room while John went around the block and through the village to get to the back of the hotel to the parking garage.  When he got in I asked him to ring his parents and check to make sure his dad was ok.

“Not until I have had my shower!” he said.  He did ring their room and there was no answer so I started getting concerned.  Why didn’t I go? Ummm..  I’d collapsed on the bed and well, they are HIS parents after all.

When he came out  of the shower I asked him to check again and still no answer in their room.

“Put your pants on and go check on them or we’ll never be able to rest tonight,” I begged.

Off he went and he was gone about 20 minutes.  I figured he was having a chat with them and he’d be back and I was so tired that frankly it didn’t matter.  He was dealing with them and I could relax.

20 minutes later he comes in the room and he’s laughing.

“I rounded the corner and there there both were wandering the hallway in their jammies.”

“Why?”

“When I rang the phone, dad was in the loo and he knew that mum couldn’t hear the phone so he hurried out to answer it.  He came out the door and turned left and opened the door to the room instead of turning right and going around to where the bed and the phone was.  He knocked on the door but mum couldn’t hear him, so he started looking for our room but he couldn’t remember the number so he was wandering around hoping one room would look familiar.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“When mum realized that he wasn’t in the room she thought he was having a senile moment and had taken off so she ran out of the room and then heard ‘click’ when the door closed.  She decided to worry about that later and find him first.  She went up and down all 4 halls and finally found him and when I got there, she was scolding him merrily and it was all his fault that they were outside in their jammies.”

“So what did you do???” I asked again.

“Oh, I went downstairs and asked for a key to their room and the guy asked me if I had any ID and I said no and he said he couldn’t help me without ID for that room.  So I told him my parents, dad is 90 and mum is 84, were wandering the halls in their pajamas and could he send someone up to let them in their room.  They didn’t have ID either.  So he gave me the key and I let them in and settled them down and they’re fine.”

That was day one.  It was a great trip, although taking really old people on a European holiday is like taking little kids. You can’t yell at them and you can’t hit them.