Day 2

Wednesday 3rd July 2013

Different tactics today.  Starting with Des's absence from work this morning so I downed a gallon of Diet Coke to give me energy for the uphill walk to work (I don't do uphill very well, which I blame upon certain body proportions - if not all of my body proportions) when Simon, the gardener from work, knocked on my door to remove the broken and dilapidated fence panels in preparation for new ones.  Naturally, I cadged a lift up the hill from him.  I'm not as daft as I look!  He wasn't even heading that way but obliged, bless him.

In all, my journey time today from work to home was a mere 50 minutes.  Almost worth a celebratory glass of wine, don't you think? ;) Erm....Cheers!

Because I needed to visit the local Post Office to post work mail, I left work at 4.20pm and walked to the Post Office (less than a mile away) and sorted the mail out.  Uncannily, the Post Office is housed inside a general store, which sells wine, so I purchased a token bottle whilst I was there, thinking it would be so rude not to.

I walked to the nearest bus stop.....about 5 minutes away.....checked the time and the timetable, and noted with a degree of disappointment that I'd missed a bus by 5 minutes and the next one was due in 18 minutes.  I sighed, and accepted that this would be 18 minutes of my life I would never get back.

Luckily for me, and my interminable wait, I spotted a large snail on the fence of the house across the road, which I decided I could watch, for 18 minutes, and see what it did.  I called him Sidney the Snail, and willed him to do something remarkable, like move a millimetre. 

The fence in question, for anybody interested in fences, was a 6ft x 3ft Vertilap.  Not your common-or-garden Waverley edge (I may well have just invented that name but it sounds right! Although it also sounds like a suburb of Manchester?)  And Sidney the Snail had claimed it as his own.

Whilst I was awaiting some kind of signs of life from Sidney, my eyes drifted to the neighbouring house.  I believe it may have been No.75, due to the number 75 on the front door, and the 75 on the brickwork.  I observed that all of the curtains were closed in all five road-facing windows, which in my book either means that somebody has died, or they are on holiday.  If it was due to the former, then my deepest sympathies.  If it was due to the latter, then the burglars must love them as it's such a big giveaway and I implore these people to refrain!!!!  It's almost like they have put a huge sign on their front door saying 'We Are On Holiday This Week - Help Yourself To Anything Worth Nicking'

Update : Sidney the Snail still hasn't moved, and a young girl I'd say around 12/13 yrs old has joined me at the bus stop, wearing a nice pink hoody which matches the pink on her trainers.  I watch as she fidgetingly (new word - make a note please, English dictionary people) shuffles her feet and tidies up bits of tree debris along the kerb and have to bite my tongue to stop myself from saying 'stop that, you'll scuff the toes of your trainers' as my mum would have done and quite probably her own mum too.

We watch a couple wander past walking 5 Labradors between them and smile and say 'Ahh' at each other.  We have bonded now, me and this girl-child, purely through the trauma of waiting for a bus.  (They weren't really Labradors, they were Shitzu's but I can't spell that!)

18 minutes is a long time when you are stood waiting for something.  I began to imagine that if I were on a plane, I could be over a third of the way to France in 18 minutes.  I imagined how else I could happily spend 18 minutes but that imagery is censored for your own good.  (You really don't need those images).

I'll tell you something though - Sidney the Snail did bugger all in 18 minutes! What an incredibly lazy snail.  I'm tempted to report him to the Snail Entertainment Bureau for not being entertaining enough.  I'm now doubting whether he actually deserved his esteemed position on the Vertilap.

Good news!!! The bus arrives bang on time, and I have the ticket to prove it, and when I disembarked at my stop the young girl said 'bye' to me and I know that I have bonded with the youth of today, and am hip and savvy and all of that!

And I sincerely hope that Sidney enjoys his retirement, bless his little shell.