Vulture’s circle overhead, wolves howl at the moon and a plague of frogs infest the neighbourhood.

    Yes, the mother-in-law has arrived back home.

    Rather than avoiding air traffic control and coming straight through the front door on the wings of a demon, she decided to take a commercial flight and was collected from the airport by my brother-in-law. This gave me extra time to straighten out the mess that was once the living room.

    Although the decorating isn’t finished yet, at least the place is not a complete shambles for her first inspection. Most of the wallpaper is up, the floor has been diligently vacuumed to remove any trace of the ceiling mishap and the cat thrown out in case it did anything awful as a welcome home present.

    The wife made a wonderful Sunday dinner to acknowledge her arrival and we sat down for what was supposed to be a civilised meal; but I guess that depends on your interpretation of ‘civilised’.

    A Mozart sonata quietly played in the background and Mrs. Snowman chose a wine that nicely balanced the meal.

    I was actually having quite a nice time until mother-in-law started speaking with a mouthful of food. You may think this is a revolting image but when she starts choking on a particularly stubborn baked potato and you get sprayed, it sets a whole new definition. Normally, this would be enough to define the boundaries of decency but they were pushed back even further when her false teeth fell out into her meal.

    How the hell can things get worse?

    Easy, she fishes around in her food and puts the dentures back in her mouth…then smiles at me.

    Considering they were encrusted with a selection of semi-digested food I think I did well not to faint. The wife found it hysterical and did that thing that only women can do: laugh, cough and fart all at the same time. It sounded like the opening bars of the ‘Star Trek’ theme.

    I’ll probably need electric shock treatment to erase my memory so that I can eat again.

    You’ll forgive me if I don’t dwell on this episode, even though I’m sure it will remain embedded in my memory to my dying day, but I’d rather explain today’s poker. As it is I probably won’t sleep for a week.

    I didn’t win anything in today’s freerolls, my best performance being 151^st in the $500 event and only 21 places outside the money, but I did quite well on the 1c/2c table. I used $2 of my hard earned winnings and found a six-seat table. A lunatic dropped me down to $0.56 after a couple of insane calls but it wasn’t long before his erratic play backfired. Three successive winning hands put me into profit and I bided my time, trying to make 10% on every round. It worked well and by the time I cashed out my winnings totalled $1.10. A thirty per cent increase on the day.

    I’m happy with this and will try the 2c/4c tables tomorrow after the lunchtime freeroll. With any luck I’ll have good news in tomorrows entry.

    Obviously I’m aiming for a repeat of the poker win but not the denture incident; so I’m currently sat here waiting for the mother-in-law to drift into sleep so I can sneak upstairs and superglue those teeth to the roof of her mouth.

Starting bank:  $0