Thursday’s Weather

I’ve had the glums for last few days – a combination of work dross, lack of sleep, a bad back and the interminably grey skies that have sat over the entire country like a giant pie crust.

What kind of filling are we, I wonder? Steak and kidney? Chicken and mushroom? Beef and onion?

I have no idea and as you can imagine pondering such questions has done little to improve my mood.

However, I can’t deny that there is something comforting about the featureless grey skies that have lidded my world for the last three days. Maybe I’m only saying that because I’m English and we English are secretly proud when our weather proves to be even more mundane and dreary than our European cousins think it.

For some reason it takes me back to my junior school days... huddling in the playground wearing a home knitted bobble hat and those annoying mittens tied together by a giant piece of string, watching the world go by over the other side of the school fence, thinking how lucky all the grown ups were to be able to go about their lives without having to be stuck at school all day...

I seem to recall that for a short period in 1980 there was a huge thunderstorm nearly every Thursday afternoon. Forked lightning and everything. It sticks in my mind only because the headmaster at the time – the evil Mr Enoch – informed us that Thursday was named after Thor, the Norse god of Thunder (hence Thor’s Day) and so the thunderstorms were all rather apt.

Sigh. I’m so glad I came out of school with something embedded in my skull (other than a thrown chalk rubber).

And now I sit at work, watching the world go by outside my window and think how lucky all the kids are to be attending school rather than sitting here behind my desk grubbing at interminable paperwork and trying to diffuse the latest plumbing disaster to hit the public toilets...

Is that amused hammering I can hear in the distance...?

No Bean Monday

Do you ever have one of those days when nothing major goes wrong, nothing especially disastrous occurs but nevertheless the day is a mega crap one?

I had one yesterday.

I didn’t get half an hour to myself at work – there was always someone around wanting something or needing my attention. Nothing particularly difficult or traumatic but I just didn’t need or want any of it.

I also found it difficult to be creative despite feeling in a creative mood. It took me nearly 90 minutes to “get into” my novel and then I only produced a measly 600 words. OK. It’s not going to be the end the world but it’s frustrating.

And then there was lunchtime.

Lunchtime summed up the entire day. I decided to treat myself by going to Mr Spud, the local purveyor of that fine English traditional meal, the hot potato. A nice hot spud with a chilli con carne filling was just what I needed to cheer me up and break the malaise of misery that had laid its broad hands upon my shoulders.

Only when I get to be served I get the dregs from the chilli pot. Instead of starting a new pot the seller merely tipped up the sparse remains of the old and slopped it all over my spud. The result was I was the only spud purchaser that day whose chilli contained not one single kidney bean.

And I love kidney beans. For me they are the highlights of a chilli.

Some days, it seems, it’s plainly not worth the effort of getting out of bed...