Just cycled back through bluster and unseasonable cold from L’s house where I have been looking after her 2 terriers. They are sweet little things when curled up asleep:
but Lor! that isn’t very often and the rest of the time they are so extremely busy, play-fighting, and play-growling and rushing about pulling your arms out on a walk. It’s like they live on speeded up time. They're on Terrier Time.
I was rather out of sorts. I was on Nauseated Sloth Time. My ear was blocked and my sinuses shot, and my Time is not yet with us, and I thus was demoralised so was happy to sit on the comfortable sofa and watch hours of Will and Grace and American Idol as well as – yes – both entire omnibus editions of Home and Away. (My poison of choice. I confess it freely, bots. Of course you are robots and not a priest, which makes it easier).
At one point I had the brilliant idea of going to the new house to clear out the old post and put it in the recycling. And so it was. Except when I was there, I left the back doors open and the wind! it blew through! and slammed shut the rubbishy flimsy porch door which is normally very hard to shut at all. Who could have forseen such a thing!
I had one of those NOOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo! moments, while my thoughts flailed like dying fish and a voice in my head robotically intoned: This is a disaster. Now what are you going to do?
I thought quickly. On my feet! as it were! And went to the neighbour’s house proposing to jump over the low wall between our gardens at the back. Of course at this point they had no idea of the half-wit that is their new neighbour. I introduce myself and as it happens don’t even have to be charming, since they themselves are so charming. (it was as if the Charm Quota for the few square metres around them was already fulfilled. There could be no more charm. All excess charm was simply dissolved, vaporised, and neutralised.)
Larry asked me if I could climb and brought me through to his wife (Actually, now I think of it, I am presuming this wifely role. For all I know, she is a live-in wild animal handler), who shook my hand most sincerely (a long long shake, I noticed. I had to extricate myself gently in the end, bots. I could hold hands no more. I was stared down in the shake, know what I mean?). I managed to leap over the wall to cries of “Well, you’re young! It would have taken me hours to get over that!” and they offered any other help we might need.
And for the final proof that, yes, the new neighbour was definitely a half-wit, I told them my surname was: J*nkinson, but my husband’s name is H*gan, we’re not married that long! Ha ha! (inane, ingratiating laughter).
So that’ll be Hog*n then, said Nuala.
(Illustrations to follow)
