Things I Don’t Understand

 Why is it that I sometimes get a toe stuck in the second leg of my knickers when I put them on? It doesn’t happen all the time; usually, I can get both feet through the corresponding knicker holes without skin touching fabric at all. Yet every now and again, one toe will catch and then there will be a bit of toe/ fabric wrangling accompanied by a bit of mild swearing, and I end up rolling my eyes and wondering if this is the reason humans end up sitting down to put on underwear when they reach a certain age. I do NOT sit to knicker and sock myself up. That would, at the stripling age of 60, be defeatist. Sometimes I do sit to put on my woolly tights in the Winter but only if they are a very long pair with a lot of leg to gather up and it’s early in the morning and still dark, and I don’t want to either put on the light or wobble around, fall over and smack my head on the wall. 

Why do we need a national alert to tell us not to do anything that might set off a wild fire? There were two last night. I didn’t receive them because I have disabled the national alert feature on my phone because I have issues with authority figures telling me what to do, especially government ones. I do NOT want to be jumping out of my skin in my own home. It all smacks a bit of communism to me. Is our new ‘prime minister’ trying to introduce a communist state by the back door, I wonder? I wouldn’t be surprised, given he already looks like he’s wearing a comedy nose and glasses combo as a disguise, like Groucho Marx. Also, isn’t it a bit shutting the gate after the horse has bolted? There have been wild fires all Summer, and only now does someone in government think about sending a national alert. And making a temporary ban on the sale of disposable barbecues. I mean, purleeze. 🙄 Also, the thickos, don’t-care-less and psychopathic elements in society are hardly going to listen to a warning about wild fires, are they? They’re the ones that are probably starting them. 

Why did I sit indoors all day yesterday waiting for DPD to deliver my consignment of twenty dog-rose bushes only to be sent a message at 4.30 p.m stating that they were sorry they missed me and would attempt a redelivery on Monday, accompanied by a photograph of a random driveway which was definitely NOT my driveway, by way of an excuse to prove that I wasn’t at home when I bloody well was? Sorry, that was a loooooong sentence but I had to get it out all in one hit lest I choked on the outrage of it all. 

Anyway, I wasn’t having my roses stuck in a boiling warehouse all weekend to shrivel and die just because some crappy delivery driver wanted to start his weekend a bit early. I phoned the business from where I purchased the roses and spoke to a very nice lady who said I wasn’t the first person to call that day saying they’d waited in only to receive a message saying they were sorry to have been ‘missed.’ The nice lady immediately upgraded the delivery so that it would be rescheduled for today instead of Monday and said if there were any more issues - another failed delivery, dead plants etc - I was to call her back immediately and it would be sorted and rectified to my satisfaction. We then had a brief and entertaining discussion about becoming more belligerent the older we became. She was definitely of my female tribe.

The roses arrived - a bit dry and in battered boxes - at lunchtime today. Here they are after having a good recovery drink:

It’s the only photo you’ll get today. I decided one of me trying to negotiate my toes through a knicker leg would be wrong on many levels. 

Basically, why does a delivery company - DPD - think it is okay to provide such crap service? Why do they think it is okay to treat living plants that badly, by handling them so the packaging is damaged and then thinking nothing of holding them for three days in a warehouse? What is WRONG with these people? That’s DPD. DPD. Just in case you were wondering. 

And why am I suddenly baulking at getting on with my novel writing? I am a proper writer. I am an entertaining writer. Writing is my purpose on Earth. And yet, this afternoon, I spent time in ‘Darling Buds’ sorting through some old magazines and singing along to Queen’s Greatest Hits at the top of my voice in order to drown out the screaming of next door’s grandchildren who really, at their age, should be past the screaming stage. 

I also sang through the entire score of ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ and it was then that I suddenly thought maybe I’ve been affected on some supernatural level by the recent solar eclipse. Perhaps I should be on my guard for strangers selling weird blood-thirsty plants because I don’t want to get into all that malarkey. Perhaps I had better double check all those dog-roses. Just in case…