I slept better last night than I had the night before; even
if I only had about eight inches along the edge of the bed on which to balance.
I didn’t hang around; with the plasterers coming at eight
o’clock I wanted to get the dogs out of the way so that they could set up in
peace. Admittedly the weather forecast was against us, but it was dry when we
set off. We got to Orlestone in some slight drizzle, but (as I said to the
dogs) “What are we going to do? Dissolve?” So we set off on our usual
walk. By the time we got to the third-of-the-way-round point the rain had
become torrential. At the two-thirds way so the thunder and lightning started.
At the point where the dogs go back onto their leads the puppies were hiding
under a bush.
We hurried home to uproar. Before new plaster can go on, the
old had to come off, and that was a very dusty job.
The dogs got a hot shower, and I wrung out my pants, put on
a dry pair, then had a little look at the Internet.
I had a friend request from some young lady with a rather epic
chest, but in a novel break with tradition, this one seemed to have it under
control. If not a triumph for morality, at least it’s a step in the right
direction. I downloaded bank and credit card statements to peruse over the next
few days, then set off in completely the opposite direction of work.
I headed off east up the A28, remembering all too well that
thoroughly miserable six years I had working at Canterbury. One of the more
trivial things I disliked about working there was the A28 itself. The speed
limit changes from national speed limit to forty miles per hour to fifty miles
per hour to national speed limit again, and all possible combinations and
permutations of those every few hundred yards. And at every stage is the very
real possibility of a police speed trap waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting
driver who didn't see the umpteenth change of speed limit.
On
Monday I mentioned that I was looking for a large reel for the pond filter's
hose. “Darcie Waa Waa TM”'s dad had sorted one out for me
from his work, so I drove to an obscure building site near Sainsburys where I
picked the thing up. As Big Jake and I hoiked it into the back of the car, a
bearded chap wandered past. He was the foreman of that building site. Big Jake
explained what we were doing; the foreman chuckled and asked if there was any
other rubbish I'd like. This reel really was going to get thrown away, and the
foreman couldn't work out why I'd driven miles out of my way to get what he
honestly thought was fit only for the bin.
I then checked my phone. Earlier I'd seen an email about a
new geocache going live in Whitstable. Whitstable isn't *that* far from
Canterbury... According to my phone it was eleven minutes’ drive from where I
was, and no one had yet found it. I set off, and eleven minutes later I had it
in my hand. No one else had found it. I was first. Go me.
From there it was a pretty much straight run to work... or
to the petrol station near work as I needed fuel. Petrol for the car and a
sandwich for me. I went to pull up at the petrol pump but in my world things
are never that simple. There was a chap standing by his car at the pump in
front of mine who was chatting away to whoever it was filling his car at the
opposite pump. And there was a rather dim-looking child (staring blankly
into space) standing exactly where I wanted (needed) to put my car.
So I waited. And waited. After a few minutes I beeped my hooter. The chap at
the car in front looked up, seemed genuinely surprised to see my car, swore
loudly at the dim-looking child, stopped his conversation with the chap at the
other petrol pump, and started putting petrol in his car. The dim-looking child
then blundered away, bouncing off of the petrol pump I wanted to use, and then
stood staring into space blocking up another petrol pump.
I went into work and had a relatively good day. But together
with everyone else I spent an inordinate amount of time checking the travel
news. There was an overturned lorry on the motorway. Had the wreckage been
cleared away? Could people get home up the motorway, or was everyone going to
be in one huge traffic jam?
I took the line that being on the late shift all the
traffic (jammed or otherwise) would have cleared by nine o'clock.
It had…
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