Let’s do this together

We like to keep things traditional at Dark Lord Towers – and if you can’t stick nails through yourself at Easter, then when can you?

I know I approved an eyebrow piercing for The Dark Lord “in the summer”, but I didn’t realise she meant the minute the clocks went forward and we entered British summer time.

I was out on an exhausting 12-mile hike along The Hangers Way from Alton to Hawkley with friends and their crazy spanner dog on Easter Sunday, when I got a text from TDL, who was on a train coming home from Bristol.

I would have taken Bozza-five-bellies with us but as spring has been so wet there was a good chance, with his little legs, that I’d have lost him in the mud.

I suspected there might have been some latenight partying in a field involving TDL and her blue-haired mates the evening before, and in the hard light of day she realised she’d better ’fess up before she got home.

Also I knew something was up because she was being uncommonly polite. “How are you, mother? Enjoying the walk?” she asked.

I replied, “Well so far we’ve been chased by a nutter in a field who thought we were trespassing, I’ve slipped and fallen in a ford and badly grazed my leg, my boots are squelching and my pants are soaked – and there’s still five more miles to go before we get to the pub. What about you?”

“Yeah good. BTW, I got an eyebrow piercing. Thought I’d let you know so it’s not a surprise – a friend did it for free last night.”

Before I could reply, I lost my phone signal as we plunged back into the boggy valleys of deepest East Hampshire.

We’d barely got to the Hawkley Inn, soaked, broken and bloodied, and got access to wi-fi again when I saw TDL’s social media post with a three-inch nail through her eyebrow.

I knocked back an entire pint of ale before I was feeling strong enough to deal with it. I then messaged her to remind her of the school uniform rules which coincidentally had landed in my inbox two days previously.

“My fringe covers it pretty well,” she argued. “You wouldn’t notice if you weren’t looking closely for it.”

I replied, “But they ARE looking closely for it. The email says, ‘No more than one stud piercing per ear (no other facial piercings allowed)’. How are you going to explain a sodding great pole through your forehead?”

But there was no point arguing with the halfwit, and it can only be a matter of days before she goes into septic shock from the DIY piercing and ends up having to take it out anyway.

■ Email me at siobhan.mcnally@mirror.co.uk or write to Community Corner, PO Box 791, Winchester SO23 3RP.

Please note, if you send us photos of your grandchildren, we’ll also need permission of one of their parents to print them... Thanks!

Yours, Siobhan