Grandad August 5th, 2009
I went into town yesterday.
I hate going into town because of the lack of parking and the stench of Skobies, and I was dreading going in as I had a lot to do and this entailed trying to park in different parts of town.
Something very strange happened.
At my first port of call, there was a parking space directly outside. I put this down to an anomaly in the Space Time Continuum and went about my business.
Having finished there, I reluctantly left my neat parking space, and drove to the other end of town for my next port of call. I really began to question the reality of the situation when I found a grand space there, exactly where I wanted it.
I had a few places to visit, so set off. The first port of call was an office supplies shop to get some ink for my printer. For the last couple of weeks, I have been forced to print all my documents in red or blue or some strange combination, as my black ink cartridge was empty. For some reason, people give you strange looks if you present them with an official document that is printed in pink. I have this strange knack of buying printers that are the only ones whose cartridges are impossible to buy. The usual response is that they have every known cartridge known to man in stock except for the one I’m looking for. When I told the bloke in the shop what model printer I had, there was the usual sharp intake of breath that I know so well.
“I’m sorry, but you’re out of luck on that one. We don’t have colour cartridges for that model, and only one black ink cartridge left.”
Once again, my luck was holding out so I bought it.
The next thing I had to do was get some things for the car for driving in France. I wandered into the motor factors and got my beam benders and a couple of other things. While I was there, I decided to try my luck which seemed to be holding out remarkably well. For a couple of weeks now, I have been looking for a fine, single core insulated wire, to complete my electric fence to stop Sandy wandering. I need about fifty meters of it. I had called into a couple of places in the past and they always tried to flog me three core mains cable or telephone extension cable or even television co-axial cable. Do they think I’m daft?
“I know this is a long shot” I said to the doddery bloke behind the counter, “but do you sell wire? I need fine single core insulated wire and a lot of it.”
“I don’t think we have anything like that, but I’ll have a look.”
He wandered over to a stand and started muttering to himself. Eventually he announced that they didn’t, but while he had been doing his mutterings, I had been poking around in a bin and what did I find? I found a reel of fine, single core insulated wire that is apparently used for earthing car speakers or something. It was on a reel, and stamped on the side of the reel were those three glorious letters – 50m!
I had a coffee and a smoke then to celebrate my successes, and mused upon my day. I contemplated buying a lottery ticket, but decided that I didn’t need that much money. Then to my amazement I realised that I had only seen one Skobie the entire trip. She had come into the motor factors to borrow a funnel as her car had run out of petrol and she needed to fill it from a jerry can.
She just stank of petrol.
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