Thwarted

Thwarted by recent winds and a general lack of enthusiasm for gardening, I've been staring at our patch of scrub with the forelorn hope it would magically transform itself into a Chelsea Flower Show winner.  The shabby remains of my tomato tent has flapped like Buddhist prayer flags these past months leaving only the zip holding it all together.  And the buffeting we took the other night shook the car so badly, the service clock reset itself from 12,500 to zero, which the receptionist at the garage assured me couldn’t happen.  It did and a service will follow next week just in case a bit's dropped off.

Post garage, I hauled myself back to Job 2.1 with depleted enthusiasm, arriving in the naïve hope that a quiet afternoon would follow, until the phone rang.  The harassed caller confessed to being a local florist  and asked,

“Is there a Mrs Hollybush-Wicklow on your ward?”

“That’s confidential information. Sorry.”

“Is she in your hospital or not?”

“Either way I still can’t give you the information you require.”  Yet she ploughed on regardless.

“But I’ve got these flowers going off and I want to deliver them to the right address.  Would you like the postcode?”

“Not really because we share a postcode with the surrounding mansions and it could be any of those dwellings that require delivery of your flowers.”

 “So is she there or not?"

“Love to help but you could beg me for a week and I still can’t give you confidential information.”

 “How am I going to deliver them then?”  And why was she making this my problem? I muted the handset for a moment while I thought the process through.

“You’ll have to go back to the person who ordered them and ask for more details.”  She gave this enormous sigh indicating thwarted-ness.

“You’ve wasted a lot of my time.  I should report you."  She was starting to get right up my beak.

“If you insist but then we are all bound by NHS governance and confidentiality rules.  Thank you for calling.”  Five minutes later, the phone rang again.

“Hi Raven, it’s Reception. Have you got a Mrs Hollybush-Wicklow on your ward?”

One thing bothering me is that I’ve been thwarted in my attempts to 'work less and earn more.'  My talents as a medical secretary are in real demand and I genuinely enjoy a day’s audio-typing and helping patients get their impingements dealt with.  And fundamentally I’m not bored.  I mentioned this in passing to management and, for some unfathomable reason, I’ve been unable to return to the serenity of the MedSecs office with no hope of rescue in sight.  Not only am I working late hours again but I’m worse off.  Seem familiar?

I was mulling over my bank balance yesterday morning when the toaster turned up its toes in spectacular style and fused all the downstairs appliances minutes before I was due to leave for a funeral. The eternal dilemma – should I be embarrassingly late or defrost the entire contents of the freezer.  Common sense won and so I found myself legging it into church just before the coffin arrived.

On the way home, I browsed the toaster collection in John Lewis and however flushed with cash I’m feeling, there was no way we’re parting with seventy quid.  So I hopped down to Argos and bought what I thought was a bargain.  It came in an enormous box so I had no doubt it would deal with a chunky slice of Gregg’s finest.  When I got the toaster out, there was no need to plug it in because I couldn’t get so much as a pop tart in the slot. I'd bought a Toaster designed for a Wendy House.  Back it went and I exchanged it for a more expensive and bigger box.  Was the toaster any bigger?  No.  And this went on until was on first name terms with their customer service advisor “Wendy" [at Belgrave Gate store in Leicester who is excellent by the way] and happy to give me a full refund because I've been thwarted.  I decided that since the gas bill will be horrific anyway, I’m grilling my bread the old fashioned way.

According to television’s, Paul Hollywood, really good bread should be eaten fresh from the oven and ‘au naturel’ with butter but I may starve long before that happens.  You see Alphonse has come over all 'Pilsbury Dough Boy' and brought flour, yeast and a set of Salter digital scales with a 25 year guarantee, and I’m guessing it’ll be a full quarter century before I get an edible loaf out of him.  Odd though, when I came to putting my 50 year old mechanical scales in the bin, I couldn’t help but shed some emotive tears at their parting.  The internal spring had gone, any accuracy was dubious but they came from my Mum’s kitchen.  She made dubious cakes and solid buns and so I learned to cook in school for self-preservation mainly but everything on the table was filled to the brim with love.  And in the week of her birthday, I've never missed her more.

Tip of the Blog:  Stanforth, our petrol-headed neighbour, has been nurturing a D-Reg Ford Fiesta into life.  His plan is to create a masterpiece from the wreckage and sell it on to some other mug instead of consigning it to the scrap yard.  Sadly on Saturday, when he turned the ignition key for the first time in six months, we were all left in no doubt that he's trying to convert a bag of spanners into a car.  "Bad petrol." he said looking thwarted.  "Bad petrol."

Raven