In Which All Modes of Transportation Are Full of Gremlins

 

Fiona came today.  She has a week off* so we had these insane plans of getting started on time.  When she first suggested this I emailed back, what is on time?  I don't remember any more. 

            It didn't matter, because we didn't.  It's too HOT to sleep, and so neither of us did that either, and thus got up . . . rather late.**  She arrived*** as I was about to take prospectively, poised-to-become-instantly hot and cranky hellhounds out into the furnace, and I left her doing . . . uh . . . never mind what she was doing . . . and hurtled down the front stairs.  Agggh, said hellhounds, are you trying to KILL US?  Where is that nice cool swamp you were talking about yesterday?  We don't mind things crawling down our shirts.†

            We were about twenty minutes on our overheated way when Pooka started barking.  I assumed it was Fiona, having failed to find something because I told her it was in/on/at x but that was at the old house and it's now in/on/at y and I forget where y is.  But it wasn't Fiona.  It was Peter.  My bus hasn't come! he said.  And I have to make the connecting bus to get me to the dentist in Fantootlington!  Where are you?

            I'm out hurtling, I said, but I'm in town.  I could get there in about ten minutes. 

            Oh, could you? he said in relief.  Thanks.

            . . . It was more like fifteen.  But I threw hellhounds in the back of Wolfgang, told Fiona I was going to be another half an hour, and shot off to the bus stop.

            Peter wasn't there.

            Aaaaaaugh. 

            So I wasted most of half an hour cruising all the other bus stops in town, thinking I might have the wrong one, and then went back to the mews, thinking he might have somehow ended up back there—and walked in on a Bruegel-the-Elder-scape, one of the really cheerful ones, of about 1,000,000 big fat flies buzzing round the kitchen.  I think I've told you that in #1 The Mews he's up against farmland, and farmland run not very well by a hobby farmer who can't be bothered.  Something has clearly died, and this is the result.  So I was hammering flies and howling, and Pooka started barking again, and it was Peter, whose bus had come very late, but fortunately his connecting bus was also very late, and he was now on it.  And he was sorry to have messed me around, but he hadn't been able to get a phone signal, and . . . and it was a good thing that he was about twenty miles away at that point. . . .

            So I went back to the cottage and Fiona, and collapsed.  I'm still on the thin edge, and the adrenaline spike that would have got me (and Peter) to Mauncester and his bus drained away to no purpose, leaving a hellgoddess feeling more hellish than usual in a number of ways.  I couldn't think, I couldn't finish hurtling hounds, and I couldn't make decisions. . . .

            So we did the sensible thing.  We bagged our responsibilities and went to the art supplies store.  Which is half across the country anyway—clearly people in Hampshire do not draw—and you can't get there from here, especially with a SatNav that hasn't had a crucial update.††  Fiona has Billy Connolly programmed to do the talking, so there were periods rife with Shut up, Billy.  Shut up, Billy.   EFF YOUR BLOODY GOB, BILLY.  I know all the jokes about clueless morons blindly following their SatNav's directions into bottomless lakes and so on . . . but it's not quite like that, at least not if you're directionally challenged anyway.  The SatNav is not only supposed to be telling you (accurately) what to do, it's one more frelling thing to keep track of. †††  If navigating takes all your attention at the best of times, you can't obey the SatNav and look at a map intelligently.  Also, we were talking, which meant there was perhaps the occasional lapse of focus leading to the missing of crucial turns etc. . . .

            We got to the art supplies store (eventually).  They had some very nice things to make marks with although no A6 sketch pads, arrrrgh‡.  I was saying to the nice man behind the counter that I haven't done any real drawing in what must be fifteen years, and I'm busy thinking I haven't got time to add drawing to the LIST. . . .‡‡

            Oh, we stopped at the yarn store again.  It was almost on the way home.‡‡‡  Well, sort of.  Shut UP, Billy.   

 *  *  *

* From her day job as forensic scientist with a speciality in the carbon dating of chocolate.  I bet you didn't know there was any chocolate 60,000 years old.^  But the archaeologists were utterly stymied by the conflicting clues about the age of the (astonishingly) ancient city of Gweep^^, which could not possibly be as old as the fossilised cement mixer found on site suggested.  But the last queen buried before the glyptodon stampede flattened the city^^^ had a large bar of chocolate wrapped up in her grave clothes with her.^^^^  The archaeologists who made the discovery didn't immediately know it was chocolate, but one of their number, a menopausal woman, reached out her hand, as if hypnotised, broke off a piece, and stuffed it in her mouth.  Oh, they said.  It must be chocolate.  So they rang up Fiona. 

            There actually isn't much call for carbon-dating chocolate for some reason.  So Fiona moonlights as quality control checker in a yarn factory.   They search her every night before she goes home . . . but this is only partly successful.  The yarn addict is resourceful. 

^ There wouldn't be in this house.  Ha ha.  You saw that coming, right?   

^^ Those Aztecs were such parvenus.  

^^^ A glyptodon stampede just about could.  http://dinosaurs.about.com/od/mesozoicmammals/p/glyptodon.htm 

^^^^ I understand this.   

** I used to wonder how I got along without email.  Now I wonder how I got along before I acquired Pooka and learnt how to text.  

*** Fiona came through the door with a brand new knitting project bag over her shoulder.  It was black with pink roses.  Oooooh! I said, seizing it before she finished coming in the door.^  Lust!  Ow!  Want!

            What a good thing the shop had two of them, she said, with fully justified smugness, and pulled the second one out of the first one and handed it to me. 

^ Leaving her more at the mercy of hellhounds.  Usually I try to sort of beat them back, like the lion-tamer with a chair, when visitors arrive, but you can't let me be distracted.    

† No alligators please. 

†† Fiona's been having computer problems, and . . . 

††† Using it—and then finally turning the freller off, take THAT, Billy—reminds me a bit of the awful moment when you stop reading your handbell lines off the bit of paper in your lap and go it alone.  Reading the lines lets you do stuff you wouldn't be able to do any other way—but they are also an excuse not to engage your brain if you're not careful. 

‡ So I thought, okay, fine, I'll just order some on the WH Smith website.  The WH Smith website doesn't list them.  I'm sitting here with a 'WH Smith A6 Sketch Pad' in my lap, and the website is saying 'no matches'.  I have wandered into a Max Ernst painting.  Eeeeek.  

‡‡ I'll give you an update on the auction tomorrow.  I don't foresee well anyway, especially if whatever it is concerns logistics and organisation, and by taking into account what you lot are willing to spend money on some of my alternative plans rely on publishers getting back to me promptly which isn't happening.  But I have a New Compromise Plan, and if I don't hear from any other publishers tomorrow, we'll use this one. 

‡‡‡ This one:  http://www.lisswools.co.uk/

Which I wrote about here:  http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2011/04/13/i-told-you-i-was-knitting/