After dinner, Friday, 12th September.

I am NEVER cooking anything ever again. It was a total and utter disaster.

I decided to do Hawaiian Pork Chops, because they sounded dead easy – just chops with pineapple rings sitting on top of them. Except that I bought pineapple pieces instead of rings by mistake, so I tried to join the pieces together to make circles, which was very messy and not all that successful. The chops got a bit burnt too, while I was trying to make swans out of the serviettes. I covered the black parts with pineapple pieces, but it didn’t make them taste any better.

Dad was great. He said it all tasted wonderful, and he ate every bit of his chop, even the fat, which I thought was really nice of him. He ate some of the rice too, even though it was extremely salty because I thought ‘tsp’ meant tablespoon instead of teaspoon.

Dad sure drank loads of water.

At least the dessert was OK – baked apples in the microwave with a dollop of Ben & Jerry’s on top. You can’t really go wrong with dessert as long as Ben & Jerry’s is in there somewhere.

Dad and Marjorie Baloney are going out to dinner tomorrow night, and I suppose whatever they get will be a lot tastier than burnt pork chops with broken pineapple rings on top, but as Granny Daly would say, IT’S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS.

Marjorie gave Dad a silver photo frame for his birthday, which I thought showed very little imagination. I was going to suggest that he put a photo of the family in there – meaning one of him, Mam and me – but then I decided it would be more mature just to ignore it. He hasn’t put anything into it yet anyway, which is a big relief.

I can’t wait till he meets Miss Purtill.

I’m still pretending not to see Marjorie across the street now, although she always waves over at me. She doesn’t even notice that I’m ignoring her. Some people are so unobservant.