What...No Toys???

Tonight we enjoyed a really nice bar-b-q at our friends place down the road, the ones who live in the cool new pent-house apartment which we would have walked to if it hadn't been HOSING down all evening. Normally when we go out at night we get a babysitter to hopefully get the kids into bed on time, but tonight we thought we'd take them along. The bbq was starting early, about 4pm, and we could be home at a reasonable time so we thought sure, what harm could it do?
An added bonus was that we all went to Wild Wild Wet this morning which is a water adventure park kind of like Waterbom but about a third of the size. It's fun, the kids loved the slides, the wave pool, the groovy water playground, and we got back in the car just as the heavens opened and rain of biblical proportions descended upon us. So they were tired.
In my limited experience as a mother of two incredibly active kids, the key to stopping them turning a freinds lounge into a wrestling ring or using every cushion in their house to make a fort in the middle of the terrace is to bring along a) a pile of their favourite books b)a pile of their favourite toys c) a pile of paper and pens although if you are visiting chic pent house apartments the probability of getting ink on furnishings is so great as to outweigh any potential benefits, so we didn't bring those. Anyway I had a secret weapon hidden in my handbag: not one, but TWO new DVD movies. The first is a classic I fondly remember from my childhood, Clash of the Titans. This is the original monster flick with plastercine monsters and hand-coloured scenes. Brilliant. The second was Pirates of the Carribean which is a sure fire winner with any little boys.
So the bbq was progressing well except for...did I mention the rain? It's the tail end of a cyclone which just hammered the Philippines so was pretty impressive even by tropical standards.
As the Singapore skyline disappeared behind sheets of water we took the only reasonable course of action: battoned the hatches, closed all the doors and windows, and left my friends hubby out on the balcony to char the sausages on his own! Well, we did pass him a beer every now and then.
Halfway through the second movie, Carl goes up to my friend and tugs on her sleeve. Giving his best puppy dog impression he asked "where are your toys?"
"My what?
"Your TOYS. Where are they?"
Consternation all around as this is not a household with kids. "Ummm...we don't actually have any".
Carl looks at her as if she is a bit slow and says a bit more loudly "I said, where are your TOYS?"
"I'm sorry, we really don't have any toys".

The look on his face said a thousand words. No toys???? How is that humanly possible?
With a big sigh he slouched back to the sofa to watch the rest of the new movie, at the end of a fun packed adventurous day, with a tummy full of food which had just been cooked for him, obviously thinking to himself "do I have to organise everything for myself around here?"