I slept like a log last
night; the aftermath of a night shift is a wonderful cure for ongoing insomnia.
I eventually emerged from my pit and over brekkie I had a look-see at the
Internet. The edit I did on Wikipedia yesterday had survived; I’d had a message
out of the blue asking if I could do something for a friend of mine. I was
happy to do the edit on Wikipedia. It is easy enough to do, but more often that
not, every time you change something on Wikipedia, someone else changes it back
again.
With little of note on
Facebook, and not even LinkedIn sending me an email, I took the dogs round the
park.
As we walked along the
path we had a rather nasty set-to with some stupid woman. She and her seemingly
idiotic child were cycling along the path. Not on the bit clearly marked for
bikes (with a bike painted on it) but
on the bit for pedestrians (with a person
painted on it). This obnoxious cow cycled straight at Treacle who was on
the non-bike bit. She stopped and told me to put the dogs on leads. I told her
where the cycle path was. In front of her kids she told me to f... off. I
complemented her on the fine example she was showing her children.... and
that's when it all got a bit nasty. The more angry she got, the more polite I
got, and my being polite was *really*
boiling her piss. In the end I wished her a good day, and I said that I hoped
she didn’t go flying over her handlebars face-first into the tarmac. (That last bit was a lie, but I think she was
too thick to spot the sarcasm)
We came home, and just as I’d loaded up the car with
rubbish to take to the tip my phone beeped. There was a new geocache about half
an hour’s drive away. So, thinking I had a few minutes to spare, I set off
chasing the First to Find. I found it, and just as I was doing the top-secret
geo-ritual my phone rang. It was "Daddy’s Little Angel TM".
The nursery had phoned her to say that "Stormageddon - Bringer of
Destruction TM" was ill. She was in Ramsgate – could I go
get him?
I
set off to the nursery; taking a rather convoluted route as the roads of half
of Ashford are currently dug up. As I drove down Willesborough Road I was
reflecting on "Stormageddon - Bringer of Destruction TM"
being poorly and how you never know what will happen next in life.
It
was at this point that my car stopped.
I
say “stopped” – it didn’t actually
stop as such; the engine stopped making engine noises and the thing just
fizzled out and eventually came to a rest at a bus stop. I pressed the starter
button. It made all the starter noises but didn’t actually start.
I
phoned the breakdown people and spent a frustrating fifteen minutes being
messed about by their automated switchboard. Eventually I spoke with someone
who was helpful, and told me that a rescue vehicle had been dispatched.
I
stood with my car watching the traffic jams that my breakdown was causing, and
half an hour later rescue arrived. After a little farting around and my
explaining the problems I’d had with the petrol leak in the car last week, the
nice breakdown man had an idea. He explained how the fuel gauge in my car is
computerised. It tells me how much petrol I have left based on my average fuel
usage. Last week’s petrol leak wasn’t “average
fuel usage”. He opened the car bonnet, squirted WD-40 into the fuel lines
and asked me to start the engine. It started.
We
went to the petrol station at Tesco, filled a jerry-can with petrol, took it
back, poured it in the petrol tank and the car started instantly. I’d run out
of petrol. Oh, how I chuckled.
I
drove to Tesco and filled up with petrol; my car has never taken so much petrol
before.
I
eventually got to the nursery five minutes before "Daddy’s Little Angel
TM" did.
The plan for the day
had been to walk the dogs, do a tip run, a bit of shopping and to be working in
the garden by ten o’clock. What with First to Finds and running out of petrol I
was now three hours behind. I went to Tesco to get dog biscuits for Monday, and
then to the fishing tackle shop to get a *huge*
float. I then went to the tip and unloaded the rubbish, then popped in to
Matalan to get some trousers.
It was nearly two
o’clock by the time I sat down for lunch, and over an episode of “Trailer Park Boys” I remembered all the
other shopping I’d forgotten to get.
I settled the dogs and went back to Tesco, where "Daddy’s Little
Angel TM" phoned me. She’d taken "Stormageddon -
Bringer of Destruction TM" to the doctor’s; he had a heat
rash. It is odd how he comes home from that nursery with bumps and bruises that
the staff there don’t notice, but the same staff lay an egg over a heat rash.
I came back home via
B&Q; paint is expensive stuff.
Once home I ran out the
hose pipe and started topping up the fish pond; a job I’d intended to get
started at about ten o’clock this morning. By the time I’d mowed the lawn and
cleaned the fish poo out of the pond filter it was gone five o’clock. I shall
pressure-wash and paint another day.
Today was a rostered
day off. I had planned to get so much done… God laughs when we make plans.
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