That Mercury Retrograde…

 Yesterday, there should have been a committee meeting at our village hall for us trustees. It had been scheduled for three months, it was in my diary and I duly arrived at the hall ten minutes early because I am very prompt regarding all appointments. The meeting time arrived; no sign of anyone else. My instinct told me what had happened but I sent a message to our WhatsApp group anyway. 

‘Hello all! Is it my imagination, or is there a committee meeting this evening??’ 🙂

(I put two question marks and a smile emoji to indicate I was being casual and light-hearted, and not at all testy. Ha!)

Within a couple of minutes, two replies that confirmed what I already knew had happened. The meeting had been cancelled because of the football. Sorry, I mean the stupid football. An email had been sent by the committee secretary to that effect.

‘Ah, right,’ replied I. ‘I didn’t receive the email. Am I on the email list?’ 

I was also thinking, what’s the point in having a committee WhatsApp group? Everyone is on that and we all would have received the cancellation message if that had been used.

There was some waffled reply about the secretary having some email ‘issues’ but that the chairman would check with her to make sure I was on the list. I’m not on the list. I know this because I have checked EVERY inbox offered by my Gmail account, and meeting cancellation messages there were none. 

The meeting, apparently, has been moved to this evening. I said I was ever so sorry but Thursdays were never a good evening for me, so please accept my apologies of absence for the minutes. 

Now, some people might think I am being belligerent/ awkward/ dogmatic/ stubborn (delete as required), but here’s the thing: my time is just as valuable as the next person’s, right? I scheduled that meeting in my diary three months ago (which, I’d like to add, was moved from its usual Monday slot to the Wednesday in order to accommodate the whims of another committee member) and I wasn’t told it was cancelled because, for some reason, I am not on the committee email list. 

I could maybe understand missing the message if we lived in Georgian times and the post delivery horse had been startled by an errant badger appearing suddenly from a hedgerow, causing the horse to rear up and throw its rider (still clutching the missive informing me of the cancelled-because-of-stupid-football-match-meeting) into a pond where he got tangled in pond weed and pecked into submission by a trio of angry geese, but that (surprisingly) didn’t happen. We are always being told how easy it is to send and receive messages these days - super-technology and all that shizzle - so really, there was no excuse for me to be sitting outside the village hall waiting for a meeting that wasn’t happening, was there?

Anyway, because I had a gut feeling this would happen, I’d taken with me my purse and shopping list, and, as I was out, I headed for the supermarket to do a big shop instead. The supermarket was very quiet and mostly empty, I can’t think why (stupid football, anyone?) Thus, it was a very enjoyable shopping experience, especially as I found a HUGE garden dustpan and brush in the middle tat aisle for £3.99, and it became a thing that I had ALWAYS wanted on account of my indoor dustpan and brush being too small to cope with dead leaves on the patio being blown around by the wind. 

Sometimes turning a time deficit into a time well-used can be very rewarding. 

Of course, Mercury is retrograde until 23rd July which will always mess with communications and transport stuff, and might explain why I didn’t receive the cancellation email. It might also explain why my hairdresser is failing to respond to my request for a haircut before he goes on his summer holibobs AND why the gardening company I got a quote from regarding removing the remaining hedge stumps still hasn’t got back to with a date to do the job over a week after I agreed the price. 

I’m not going to waste my time chasing up these things. I shall remain chilled and calm, grow my hair long again, and hang fairy lights on the hedge stumps and call it an art installation. 

Here are Nell and Bambino being tolerant of each other…