HobNobbing with the stars

 Urg. A morning of manual labour at The Parents' constructing a flat-pack desk from IKEA wasn't quite what I had in mind for my day off. Luckily, I had another appointment this afternoon, so I left the desk slap-bang in the middle of their living room (and the various bits of some matching storage units on wheels - Micke I think it's called?) and made my escape.
  

  Within the hour, I had arrived at Alfred Centuri's for afternoon tea. Betty Stromgren was already parked in the Queen Anne wing-back with a rather large glass of sherry, and just as Alfred was letting me in, Anne Tarés and Allan de Baran turned up together. Now, this was rather unusual as Anne's place is most definitely not on the way to Alfred's from the de Baran residence. After some blunt-force questionning from the half-cut Betty Stromgren, the - rather spurious to my thinking - reason for de Baran's wild detour was that Major Arthur Canis was supposed to pick Ms Tarés up, but he was detained at the Sol-Sirius border as the daft old coot had forgotten his Passport! 

 Anyway, after we'd subdued Betty with another half pint of Alfred's best cooking sherry, we set to with tea and a packet of HobNobs!