Can I spend the night with...?

No you can't.

Multiply that by one hundred.

That was last night.

Yes, the teenager is back. For a few days anyway.

And she is out with her friends, as teenagers are. But she wants to spend the night.

There are two problems with this.

One, she never actually spends the night where she says she's going to. So we cannot calculate odds and say, yes, that place is fine. Because we don't know where she'll end up.

Two, there has been a spate of teenage violence in Halifax in the last two weeks. A sixteen year old stabbed four security guards at a teenage disco last weekend and nearly killed one of them. Three sixteen year old girls attacked an elderly lady with iron table legs (for no apparent reason) at 9.30pm on the Commons and were set upon by the crusties who hang out there who held them until the cops came.

Plus all the usual swarmings etc.

Now, I'm pretty sure Kitty wouldn't stab anyone, or attack someone's granny with a table leg, but she has been known to throw rocks at her own house (there must be some Irish in her somewhere), so no, she can't spend the night.

Then she got home at eleven pm on a Thursday and started with the 'It's so crap having an eleven pm curfew. Nobody else has an eleven pm curfew' rant.

By eighty eight times.

I listed all the other sixteen year olds who have one.

They are all losers, apparently.

I have to laugh. It's all exactly the same as the conversations I had with my mother. Except this time the Queen Mother was sitting listening to me having this conversation with a sixteen year old. There's even an annoying little brother butting in.

Karma.

This week has been one of massive shifts and changes and it's all a bit unsettling.

I am currently spying on the new neighbours. Mike and Kate and Connor and Mika and the dogs left on Wednesday for Ottawa and the new neighbours are a couple with a baby who are teachers and triathletes at the weekend. They have just arrived on their matching bicycles sans baby and are now walking around the house checking every inch of the exterior very carefully.

I'm sure they'll be lovely.

Himself is despondent. Not without cause.

Craig and Lyse whom we love and who were the best neighbours ever left a month ago and were replaced by a nurse who is on disability which means she sleeps all day and moves furniture around all night and has the LOUDEST LONGEST SEX in the world.

Every night.

When she and 'Peter your Lover' (that's how he signs the notes he leaves on her door) are having loud energetic sex and we are in the garden we have to be sure not to look up at her windows because she often likes to have sex against the window.

It was poor Himself who copped that one night when he was putting the garbage out.

It's actually quite annoying.

At least we know it's not her back is causing her disability.

What's most annoying though is that Peter the Lover usually arrives around seven, so she has long, loud showers in the hour preceding that, which is when Himself arrives home from work covered in diesel actually needing a shower and as our pipes are connected, there's never any water for him.

He got so pissed off yesterday he turned the hot water on and left it to run while she was abluting.

I have never ever seen him do something vindictive. But all his male buddies are abandoning him, see, so poor Himself is upset.

We need a house in its own gardens with no neighbours, and a dog for Himself to play with. That's what we need.

The baby has arrived in a battered old station wagon (the baby is not driving it obviously).

Well, a battered old station wagon is usually a good sign.

And the D key has fallen off my laptop. No D, no K, and two of the cursor keys are now gone.

I possibly may need a new keyboard.

I hate the end of the summer. The Queen Parents leave tonight and then it's Labour Day weekend and then it's back to nose on grindstone for another four months.

The good news is that we will be in Ireland from 22nd December - 5th January.

Well, good news for some anyways.