Monday the 13th

It was a scorchingly hot day. The sky was a cloudless blue and the only sounds were the slapping of waves against the ship and the creaking of ropes and sails. Michael turned and …

Cue Nokia ring tone, shatteringly loud in the early morning silence.

“I’m on Edmond Street, how do I get to your place?” It’s the truck delivering the newly milled six inch hoop pine floorboards. I hastily fling on some clothes, comfort the newly awakened Blithe Boy and take him outside in pyjamas and gumboots to wait for the truck. It shouldn’t have been long, but it was a while. I managed to swig the last few mouthfuls of coffee. The truck trundled up our driveway for a few metres and stopped. Rolling backwards, it headed to the end of the road, planning to turn in an easier driveway. Minutes later it is stuck in the neighbour’s (level) driveway. It’s the turn of the next neighbours along to get out their ute and pull the truck free so that the immediate neighbours can go to work. Three of nine houses on the street are barricaded behind the truck.

The truck slowly makes its way back along the road. I meet it and we agree to simply carry the wood up the driveway together. We pant uphill with Blithe Boy trailing us wanting to be picked up. One tattooed gentleman complaining about his sore muscles from the Wii Fit that his wife insisted on buying and the shipping company for making him use the big truck for such a small load, one dishevelled and disoriented woman whose mind is somewhere between Batavia and Brisbane on the high seas and one slightly sulky and suspicious toddler staggering up a damp gravel driveway. Then we pant downhill to get the paperwork that I forgot to put in my pocket and back uphill piggy-backing Blithe Boy.

By seven o’clock all is calm once more. I’ve stopped gasping for breath and I now want a discount on my door-to-door shipping.

I look at my half-finished sentence and decide that it’s just not meant to be today. I wonder briefly if J.K. Rowlings has the same problem and whether a nanny would object to the driveway. I go off to rally the children school-wards.