Old Enough To Know Better Really

When we walked into our [semi-local] supermarket today, the boys asked me, as they always do when we shop there, Mummy can we please play our spying game?  And I answered, as I always do, All right then, just be careful of other people.

Immediately they disappeared from my sight and then, with extreme stealth,  proceeded to stalk me as I made my slightly erratic way round the aisles.  The purpose of this game is that they spy on me without me seeing them.  I think recently they upped their own ante, so now if I do see them they lose one of their three lives.  This whole game is one they made up, so my involvement is completely minimal, ie. I just shop as I normally would.  It's quite peaceful really, and a little bit funny to see the flash of their heels as they disappear up the other end of the aisle I've just entered.  They magically reappear when I need to pay, which is when they claim their Supermarket Good Behaviour Prize of a Freddo Frog apiece.  Harmless and fun.

Anyway, this afternoon, I don't know, the whole stealthy thing became infectious after I spotted them once or twice, and before you could say James Bond, I found myself lurking in an excellent position where they'd never be able to stalk me without being seen (I'm not revealing the location in case I need to use it again, it's no use nagging me Climber).  But the location was so good that of course they didn't find me at all, so I soon got bored and decided to resume shopping. Then I remembered I needed to go right back to the first aisle for a last minute item.  The upshot of all this was that I realised that I had very likely confounded the children, because they hadn't seen me for so long, which seemed to trigger an instant regression of thirty-odd years in my maturity.  Next thing I knew, I had dumped the basket of groceries and snuck down one end of the aisle where my excellent stealthiness was rewarded with a completely sprung Climber, giving me a very bad case of the giggles in the yoghurt aisle.  Then as I emerged up the other end of the dairy aisle I spotted Cherub, looking left and right by the fruit and veg, an absolute sitting duck.

And seeing as my intellectual and emotional age level was now approximately that of a 10-year-old, I immediately ditched the groceries and went sneaking up on him.

Quite fast.

In fact, in contradiction of my own sensibly issued previous advice, I ran in the supermarket.

Which is why, when I tripped over in the supermarket, I then went soaring past the Cherub's head in the supermarket, and landed, with a very undignified splat, sprawled all over the floor and up against the deli, in the busy, crowded supermarket.

The look on Cherub's face as his mother went sailing past him in mid-air was actually worth the pain though.