"See you later. I'll be back when it arrives," I wave to the LTLP.
"If it does arrive," I add, with a note of doubt based on years of experience of expecting things to arrive.
"It had better," she states. "Or I'll be posting dog shit through their letterbox."
I perform a double-take as she closes the front door. The LTLP is an internationally-respected scientist, and I had always taken her for a decent sort of human being. Now I find that she is the sort of person who posts dog shit through people's letterboxes if she is cross with them. Where does this leave me?
Thoroughly alarmed, I drive to the cottage.
We do not even have a dog. She would have to borrow Short Tony's. That would be going to quite a lot of trouble. Posting dog shit seems to be really rather more effort than it's worth - you have to find a dog, wait for it to go to the toilet, pick up the result and put it in your envelope or jiffy bag, lick the envelope, find a stamp and take it to the Post Office.
Either that or you would have to go to the door yourself, under cover of darkness, and stuff the dog shit through the letterbox yourself, with your fingers - and even then the recipient might have one of those basket things so you would end up covered in dog shit whereas they would just see the dog shit in the basket and say 'aha! Somebody has sent me another dog shit. I will just put it straight in the bin with the others'.
It occurs to me that I share a letterbox with the LTLP, so am likely to be safe for now. I am more reassured by the time I reach the cottage.
My kitchen has arrived!!!
Richie the Kitchen Man is installing it at double quick time. It is brilliant!!! It is wooden and cottagey and has drawers that close with a satisfying 'thunk'. We exchange a laugh and a joke as he works, him having little idea how close he might have come to a dogshitting.
"She'll be dead chuffed with this," I tell him, knowing that she will be. "I might even get a shag tonight. But I'm playing bowls."
I drive back to Narcoleptic Dave's, mulling over that last sentence and how it encapsulates my life.
