Something To Look Forward To

Yesterday Daughter’s college had a premonition, accurately forecasting snow when a lot of weather forecasters didn’t and announced they wouldn’t be open today, which was to have been the last day of term. Although they were right, we still get very little snow, certainly not enough to stop anybody getting anywhere but if the teachers have left their Christmas shopping this late it’s hard to see what else they could have done. Daughter is ecstatic obviously but I’m not sure there’s even sufficient covering to go sledging on.

Despite the 2mm high drifts, Trent Barton’s buses are excellent again. I was tempted to bus and run but wasn’t sure the buses would be on time but they were. I was reading on the Trent Barton website about a couple of their drivers; one who walked a remarkable 11 miles to get to work and another who walked some 8.5 miles from his home to the depot during the early December snow. Even I think that’s above and beyond the call of duty but it does show the work ethic they’ve managed to instil there. Some of which wouldn’t go amiss in the teaching sector or in our postal service. When I queried our lack of postal deliveries, their head office confirmed that there had been ‘no known problems’ in our area, which I assume means our postman simply skived off.

L announces sad news. The end of the beautiful, if occasionally turbulent, relationship between herself and her credit card. All good things must come to an end and all that. I take it her Christmas shopping must be complete then.

She says that over a very large glass of wine tonight, she will hand it over to me and I’m not to allow her to have it back unless she pleads on bended knee and gives me a damned good reason why I should return it. Sounds like something to look forward to. I will take some persuading. Then she tells me about the short skirt she bought in a last ditch blow out. Hmmm, so she’s already ready and armed with weapons that might assist her in re-attaining the card. Sneaky.

After work I head into Derby to meet a couple of old school friends for a pre-Christmas beverage. We have a few in the Brunswick, where we have a slight disagreement with a staff member, who is extremely diligent in collecting empty glasses but won’t remove a solitary stray chip that has been left on our table. Does he think that someone might be coming back for it? Oh for a dog to hoover it up. In the end we slip it into an empty glass, which means he has to collect it but he’s not happy about it.

We move up the road to the Viceroy Indian. It’s a good meal, although expensive and it takes us twenty minutes and three times of asking to get the bill which means I know I’m going to miss my bus. I throw a tantrum at the manager. Causing one of my friends to practically hide under the table in embarrassment. So the manager brings us a round of complementary brandies to calm me down. Suddenly my friend is happy again and glad I complained. Sometimes it pays to be a pain in the rear.

Still, not only do I miss the Red Arrow but also the next slow bus. Then I eschew all the other slow buses as it is only a fifteen minutes wait until the next Red Arrow, which would still get me home quicker. It is fifteen minutes late. Had it been this late on its last circuit I would have caught it! That’s over an hour waiting in a cold bus station. My night is rapidly going downhill.

I’m not the only one. When it eventually turns up I get on, along with a lad who is having trouble prising his sobbing girlfriend from his shoulder. Through floods of tears I overhear that her last bus to Ashbourne hasn’t turned up, she can’t afford a taxi and her phone battery is flat. As she hurriedly tries to ring her father on his phone, he takes it off her, wishes her goodnight (no kiss) and gets on the Red Arrow, alone. Awwww, young love.

When I get home it is to find that Doggo has chewed a massive hole in my eye-wateringly expensive best running socks. We are so not speaking.

(Wednesday 22nd December)