Those of you with more acute memories will remember that Ms Playchute returned from her travels in the far east with half a dozen silk Chinese lanterns. Her intention, all along, has been to string together a number of light bulbs and hang the lanterns along the trellis at the back of the house of an evening. Along with “that damned hat,” these became known, unsurprisingly, as “those damned lanterns.”
Unbeknownst to me, she had communicated with Adam and Sugar before their arrival that she would really like another forty-seven lanterns and, although they failed to deliver the quantity she requested, they did arrive with eight more, bringing the grand total to fourteen.
For two years now I have been successfully ignoring her requests for a string of light bulbs to be strung along the trellis. Naturally, our two boys were only too willing to become victims of her latest scam and, like Tom Sawyer's colleagues in the great fence painting scandal, Ben and Adam spent much of their time together diligently preparing a fourteen light-bulb, trellis hanging contraption which had its inaugural performance recently.
