On trying to be a smartarse....

Some people are not cut out to perform practical jokes, I am one of them.

 My Father, the inspiration behind my latest escapade, on the other hand is a master at it. From hiding in the airing cupboard when my sister and I were children - we had been really naughty and were not taking discipline at all seriously so he said he would flush himself down the toilet. We got hysterical until we found him twenty minutes later on a shelf in the cupboard. (No, he is not a dwarf but he is the reason I am traumatised by them!) - To putting small light bulbs up his nose and pretending he had sneezed. Hiding in the ivy by the kitchen window was a great favourite, this works especially well if you have eyes that get wider like Gonzo on the Muppet Show and a handy bare bit off window through which you can protrude those eyes at your rowing daughters fighting over the washing up. Oh and enough patience to wait until they turn round and see you, resulting in much broken crockery and screaming.
A lifetime of being leapt out at and quizzed by lateral thinking games, luckily has not left either one of us a gibbering wreck but we are prone to pushing people inside duvet covers  and thinking this is hilarious.
So when I discovered, on the one weekend I had my parents round for Sunday lunch, my father had escaped  I was thinking to find a picture of him ( another great favourite- slipping small passport sized photos of himself into the corner of picture frames, that don't get discovered for ages) but no. That night, after I had steamed up the bathroom having a shower, a message appeared on the mirror in the steam. From it's content I can only assume it was meant for my son, anyway it got me thinking, how very clever......hmmm...

Maybe I would get Miss Pankhurst back for her recent indiscretion. She had bought dried cherries and put them in the drawer at work, maliciously leading me into thinking there was something sweet behind there and when I stole one, it was no pleasure at all because it tasted like dehydrated rabbit pooh!

So I concocted a cunning plan. Only, there is no steam in work and when you run back and forth breathing on the makeup mirror it un-steams just as quickly. Apart from looking like a retriever with asthma, I also banged my nose on the mirror thus changing the message and had to explain my behaviour to a bemused floor manager.

That shall be filed away along with the time I thought I heard 'She Who Must Be Obeyed'  and Miss Marple in the service lift, so I stuck a carrier bag on my head and did a tap dance when the doors opened, only to see a lift full of unamused fashion staff who stayed there for a full thirty seconds until the doors closed.