2132. Rainy days

It had rained all week. Sometimes the showers were quite heavy and accompanied by thunder. Trixie was trapped inside for four days with her five school age children. It was the “summer” break. Her husband was somewhere up in Alaska on some business with oil. He wouldn’t be back for another week.

What does one do with five children aged five to twelve (including the twins) stuck inside for a week? The colouring-in books were finished; the computer games had run their course (at least the time Trixie allotted for computer games had run their course); jigsaws were done; cards were played… Even the guitar sat abandoned and untuned in the corner of a now fairly messy living room.

The rain had caused havoc. Surface water covered backyard lawns. The roads weren’t dangerous rivers but still required much care. The local park was a lake!

“Come on children,” declared Trixie. “Leave your raincoats behind. We’re going to the park.”

Off they went in the rain complete with soccer ball. Never was such muddy fun had! They were a family of drowned rats – including Trixie. Soon they were joined by a few other families, maybe twenty people in all. By now the playing field was in a fairly muddy condition, but Nature sorts out such things, and it is what parks are for.

Back home they couldn’t stop talking about it! All were showered, dried, and changed. Trixie baked some cinnamon buns with lashing of melted butter.

1741. Filling in her day

What a mess! Frederica had popped out to the shopping mall for a brief period of time – she didn’t want to buy anything but she was simply filling in her day – and when she returned the house was flattened. More than flattened; it was kindling. A jet plane had whooshed from the sky and crashed on top of her house. Thank goodness Frederica lived alone and there was no one inside. She didn’t even have a dog or a cat.

Apparently the pilot had ejected and was safe somewhere else. The fire brigade were at the house but they weren’t doing much; just looking really. There was not much they could do. There didn’t appear to be a flame in sight – just a pile of kindling awaiting fire, and some electric cables that the fire brigade were making sure no one went near.

The plane had hit the house and then had skidded out of the way into a field beyond. The plane was a write-off naturally, and on the way into the field had utterly destroyed Frederica’s back garden and fence.

Frederica was in shock of course, but the scene was so surreal that somehow she had trouble realizing that the pile of stuff in front of her was actually her house. If it hadn’t been for the row of fava beans she had planted neatly to the side of her home, she would not have recognized anything to do with her place.

Frederica went to a fire fighter to ask what happened, and all she got was “Step back, lady, it’s dangerous.” So she stood there by herself and looked. What else could she do? A large gaggle of onlookers had gathered and most were either laughing at the bizarreness of it all or muttering concerns as to whether or not “someone had been inside”.

What added to the strangeness of it all was that no one was asking whose house it was. Not the fire brigade, not the police. Frederica went to a policeman to ask if he wanted her name or anything, and all she got was another “Step back, lady, it’s dangerous” with the addition of “This is no time to be troubling us with silly questions”.

Before too long (they had clearly disconnected the electricity) a large bulldozer and front-end loader arrived and began clearing the house and putting it into large trucks which took everything away to goodness knows where. Frederica wanted to ask “But what about all my stuff?” but the official answered “Lady, stop bothering us and let us get on with the job.” Quicker than Frederica would have thought possible the entire section of land was cleared including the row of fava beans. Even her shattered fence had disappeared.

All of this took no longer than two or three hours (Frederica had lost all sense of time) and in the end, when all was done a man appeared with a sign which he hammered into the ground near where her front gate had once been. It read: LAND FOR SALE.

One by one the gaggle of onlookers disappeared. The fire brigade left. The police left. The heavy vehicles left. Frederica was left alone shocked, confused, and puzzled. It would have made a classic painting of a woman standing forlornly before a subdivision of empty land if only there had been a Cézanne or someone to capture it.

And that’s what can happen if you’ve nothing better to do than wander aimlessly down to the shopping mall to fill in time.

1672. Vicky’s day

Vicky decided to walk to the shops because all she needed was some tomato sauce and a potato. If she wasn’t walking she would buy a bag of potatoes, but it was such a lovely day that she decided to walk and not have to carry home a heavy bag of potatoes. She would simply get the one potato for her dinner and then tomorrow she could take the car and then she would get a whole bag of potatoes. Not too big a bag of potatoes of course because it doesn’t take that long before they start sprouting, and since she lived alone she didn’t actually needed a very big bag. Of course, she also varied her diet with pasta and rice and couscous and various noodles. It’s not as if she had a potato every day, but on this particular day she was peeling and boiling a potato to go with coleslaw and a sausage (which is why she needed to get some tomato sauce).

When she returned from the shop she started preparing dinner right away. After all, it was time for the daily news on television, and she could see the television screen from the kitchen bench. Dear me, there is such tragedy in the world these days, and the poor people on the street were almost enough to make one feel guilty about having a sausage.

Since it was Wednesday, after the television news came a program on Nature. Vicky loved to watch it. It was always most interesting and she would (only once a week mind you, usually she would sit at the dining table) eat her evening meal in the armchair in front of the television.

The next day Vicky got a phone call from her sister saying that she (Victoria) should find a few interests and not mope around doing hardly anything. Vicky said that her sister was probably right. She would do something about it. But first, since the day was so sunny and lovely, she would walk to the shops and get a potato to go with her sausage for dinner. (Sausages come in packets of six and she didn’t want to waste them). This time she would have a bit of variety by mashing the potato.

1622. A study in ennui

It certainly produces ennui when stuck inside on a rainy day. In fact, Syd had stayed in bed with the curtains drawn. The only thing that would happen if he got up would be to have breakfast before discovering that there was “nothing to do”. He wasn’t allowed much time on his phone, he wasn’t allowed much time watching videos, he wasn’t allowed much time on his computer, he wasn’t allowed much time doing sweet nothing. And now his parents were telling him to “go look for a summer job during the holiday time.” His parents sucked. The world sucked. It was hosing down outside. He might as well stay in bed. So he did.

When his father came home around one in the afternoon he went into Syd’s room and said “Get out of bed you lazy sod and do something useful.” Syd saw red and leapt out of bed and he and his father had a shouting match. Syd threw on some clothes and stormed out of the house.

What Syd’s father then said to Syd’s mother shouldn’t necessarily appear here unedited. But he swore that their next two sons would have their teenage years circumvented and they’d go from age eleven to twenty-two in one go. It’s a wonder the falling rain outside didn’t steam and hiss and evaporate once it hit the roof of the Maddock household. Syd’s father mowed the lawn in the rain he was so fed up to the back teeth. Then he tidied the garage. Then he fixed the broken cupboard door handle in the kitchen.

When dinner time came Syd came home and everything was normal.