Are you sure it’s not Friday the 13th?

 

I have a DEAD CAR.

I have a DEAD WASHING MACHINE.

I am SUPPOSED TO BE STREET PASTORING TONIGHT*, but I can’t, because I have a DEAD CAR.  This means I’ve missed TWO MONTHS IN A ROW.**

I probably won’t get Wolfgang back till the end of next week . . . which among other things means I WILL MISS MY VOICE LESSON ON MONDAY.***

I will also MISS MY MONKS TOMORROW NIGHT.†

And the DEAD CAR means I have no way to schlep my dirty laundry to Peter’s washing machine—and New Arcadia is way too small for a Laundromat, aside from the question of how many machines one person with three hairy dogs can blow up in a single application.††

AND I—finally—bought a new phone answering machine†††.  Which I spent two hours over this afternoon, trying to figure out how to make the sucker work.  I HATE TECHNOLOGY.‡  This object is such a piece of rubbish in so many ways.  You have 1,000,000,000,000 frelling menus of obscure acronyms and impenetrable icons . . . and an ‘instruction book’ that fails to instruct.  For example:  it keeps saying, you press this little arrow till you get the listing you want, and then you hit ‘okay’.  IT NEVER TELLS YOU WHERE YOU’RE GOING TO FIND THE OKAY, AND OKAY DOESN’T APPEAR UNTIL YOU’VE DONE SOMETHING RIGHT ALREADY WHICH YOU WON’T HAVE BECAUSE YOU HAVE NO CLUE WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR.  Frelling icons are frelling Rorschach blots, every one of them meaning:  YOU’RE TOTALLY SCREWED HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.‡‡

I think I finally got the date and time set up‡‡‡ and a basic message recorded . . . although that I am speaking through clenched teeth is pretty obvious.  Leave.  A.  Message.  After.  The.  Beep.   I have no idea what most of the superfluous crap on all those menus is . . . but this frzzzzzblggggng thing has only TWO ringtones, both of them nasty.  And this thing cost money!  It cost real money!  I’ve been putting off buying a new phone machine because BT stopped making the cut-rate plastic toy model that I used to use, which was not a total loss because they were SO cruddy they only lasted about a year before disintegrating like one of those cornstarch shopping bags . . . but they were simple.  I could use one.  Mind you, if you’re asking, I’d say they were overspecified too:  all I want is something I can record my voice on, so people ringing me know they’ve got my phone number—among my many, many pet hates is robot-voice answering machines so you have no idea if you’ve reached the right person/number or not—and that will record any messages.  I don’t want a phone machine that can make hollandaise sauce and tutor me in Russian and mechanical engineering!  I ONLY WANT TO RECORD MESSAGES, PLAY THEM BACK, AND THEN ERASE THEM.

. . . And now I have to shoulder my heavy knapsack§ and hike home . . . with three hellcritters gambolling delightedly in my wake.§§

* * *

* So this entry was supposed to be a stub.  It may yet be when a crevasse opens at my feet and the table falls into the centre of the earth, which would be about par for this day’s course.  I may or may not catch the laptop before it disappears forever, but my four knitting books from the library, at present lying on the table, will be goners.  Even knitting books are out to get me:  there is ONE pattern out of all FOUR of them that I can imagine knitting, and this includes two books by a designer I usually like.^

^ There’s also a yarn sale going on on a Web Site Near You where one of the listings is for £17 skeins of luxury yarn . . . at eight pence off the usual price.  Be still my heart.

** Last month was The Night of the Tempestuous Tempest, when the cops were telling us to stay home unless we HAD to be out.  And I was looking at all the raging torrents that used to be roads and gardens and sitting rooms and so on and thought, staying home, above the flood line, that’s a good idea.

*** I may end up hiring a car—NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO—but not till I’ve talked to the garage again on Monday, which will be too late for my lesson.  They’re ordering parts tomorrow, so some of my fate is riding on whether the gloppendorkenflurgetruder^ arrives on Monday.

^ Well, Wolfgang is German.

† Buckminster thinks he can find me a ride to St Margaret’s Sunday evening.  He hasn’t said anything about ‘if you promise not to sing’.^

^ I will miss my monks worse.  I like their music better.

†† I think I’ve told you that the hellterror is an astonishing producer of loose hair.  No wonder she eats so much.  Has to keep her strength up for all that intensive fur growing.

††† Delivered by an unusually delightful carrier, who put a postcard through my door after a failed first attempt, saying that they would try again the next day, any time from seven a.m. to six p.m., and upon a third failure the item would be returned to the warehouse and I would be issued a refund.  WHAT?  How does the seller stay in business with a system like that?  And as I’ve said—often—before, any blasted carrier who puts a postcard through my door saying they tried to leave my package with a neighbour is either lying or terminally lazy.  My neighbours are all either retired or work from home.

As it happens I was waiting in, and waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for the washing-machine man—the appointment was for ‘after nine’.  Well, it was certainly after nine:  in fact it was after noon—and I was therefore available at 11:45 when Delivery Attempt #2 happened—and I ran after him and pulled him down and snatched my parcel away from him before he could get back to his truck and lock the doors. . . . I should have let him keep it.

‡ The favour is, of course, mutual.

‡‡ I am reminded of the old joke which I’ve seen somewhere very recently, did someone post it on the forum?  Having no car and no washing machine is having an unfortunate suppressive effect on my brain.  So, this shrink shows a patient a Rorschach blot and says, what do you see?  And the patient says, a man and a woman making love.  The shrink shows the patient another blot and the patient says, that’s a man and a man really getting it on.  And looking at the third blot the patient says, and that’s two women having a very, very hot time.  The shrink says, I see that you are obsessed with sex.  The patient says in possibly justifiable outrage, that’s rich, coming from you.  You’re the one with all the dirty pictures.

‡‡‡ Which I will have to reset every time there is a power outage, and we have brief, settings-blowing power outages kind of a lot.  My old el frelling cheapo phone machine, you put a BATTERY in it and it HELD its settings through power cuts.

§ Having seriously damaged my back and shoulders hauling dog food in the other direction

§§ This is a rant for another day, but I’ve basically given up taking all three of them out together—the Off Lead Dog problem is too severe, and I’m at just too much of a disadvantage with three of my own.  The only time I’ll risk it is after midnight, like now. . . .