1.Sure, shopping is an important part of life, but so are the you're supposed to have with people. just that the relationships i seem to be having with other people are a fairly fragile prospect, especially if those involved are from another planet, or another generation entirely. And boy do they like to get involved.In his heyday Grandpie errol, as i call him, worked as a scientist. sort of a scientist i'm not sure. science is such a fuzzy thing. He retired twenty years ago, so i guess that means he has had a good twenty years of not being a scientist, although he tells people he still has an interest in things that are Cures for diseases and holes in the ozone layer and that sort of thing. He is still a member of the Royal sciences Club. When they were younger my Grandpie and Grandmoo (as i call them) used to go there for what were called dinner dances. one day i hope an anthropologist will explain the ritual significance of the dinner dance.I am fourteen. it seems i have been fourteen forever. i have my own life. Visiting my grandparents with their smells and yellow toenails and bandages does not figure greatly in it. they get bruised quite easily. even bumping into furniture will bruise them, and they are always doing that. their house is like a cross between a hospital, a creche, and a mausoleum, what with the walking frames and handrails in the shower and photos of people from the past all over the place. it is all i can do to be nice, but i am, because they are the parents of my mother. in the diplomacy of parent-child relations advantageous to be on the good side of the mother. she's the one who controls the purse strings after all.One day my father comes to me with a stern expression on his face, one of those indecipherable expressions that speak of the impossibility of knowing the depth of feeling inside another person. there, that doesn't sound like a fourteen-year-old speaking, does it. that sounds more like a textbook. i suppose i am good at things not scientific. Waff ling, for instance. He says that Grandpie errol wants to have words with me.What for? i protest. What have i done?Nothing, says my dad. it's a good thing. i think.Then why do you look so angry?I'm not angry at you, denise.Then what?It's an in-law thing.So i get on the phone and talk to Grandpie. this is what he says: He says that he's been a member of the Royal sciences Club for over sixty years. He says that as such a loyal member they have offered him and others like him first dibs on the adventure of a lifetime. do i understand him? the adventure of a lifetime.Already i am starting to feel a little bored. Also suspicious. has this to do with me? i think back to the time when Grandpie deliberately let the battery in his electric wheelchair run down while he was on his way back from the shops, and then expected me to push him all the way home. As mum explained, he may well have thought it might be an endearing moment between grandfather (him) and granddaughter (me) to give him a push up the hill. But it wasn't. it was revolting. i said to mum, there's no way i'm pushing that gross old man up the street where everyone could see me. instead, we went and got him in the car. that was a while ago now and i have learned to swallow my pride. the flat battery was probably just a mistake.Grandpie says the sciences Club are going to charter a 747 and f ly to Antarctica before it all disappears. How about that?That sounds great, Grandpie, i say.Yes. i've already bought the ticket.Well, don't forget to take a scarf.Not so fast, Missy.He explains that one clause of the insurance policy states that he has to have a check-up. Well that's sensible. You don't want to send a bunch of geriatrics off to bobsled across the Antarctic if they're not up to it. …