not quite but almost

from the post office to the supermarket

As I said before - time is a problem. No sooner do you want to settle down and tell stories of days past, than fate intervenes, and gives you something more up-to-date to talk about.

Of course, if I were a purist, I would simply make brief mention of it as a potential topic to come, and then continue on my reverse-quest through time, attempting to uncover the Origins of the Beard. That story in itself has tributaries, short stories which both feed it, and survive off it.

To cut an extremely long story hardly any shorter (when have you known me to skimp on the detail?) a year ago this Sunday I went to a wedding - and at this wedding, I used my video camera, or rather more accurately my father's video camera, to film the proceedings. It was only an old Hi-8 camera, analogue, a handycam thing. However, it was much cheaper to ask me to do it than to hire a professional - however professionals provide extras in their service which include delivery of the video in a timely fashion. But you shall hear thus:

It was a grand day - and everything went very well. I'd managed to film all the important bits, and the only minor downer was that my mobile phone was stolen, but it's only a phone, and the bride and groom both had a great day. I took the footage home, and eventually figured out how to capture it to my PC. The results were not very good. After 6 months, I'd got a demo of the end of the tape, all cut and edited together, with a fantastic sound-track, and everything. And that's as far as I got with it. It's their wedding anniversary, first, on Sunday. I thought I'd lost one of the original tapes, but I'd copied all the footage to my PC, so it was a case of finding the time to sit down and do it properly. I reckoned it would probably take me about 30 hours to do entirely. Now, unfortunately I sat down and totted up all the things that I had to do, in terms of hours. It included things like work, sleep, eating, writing, talking, socialising, travelling - the whole shebang. I've calculated that in order to live my life to its full potential, I need each day to be 33 hours long.

The actual figure came out at 33h 23m 7s. I won't go into the details of the calculations, but suffice it to say that as each day passes, the requirement for extra minutes per day increases. You see? It all comes down to Time again. Time is not my friend.

I did find the time to copy the tapes to DVD on tuesay night, thanks largly to the fact that my fuzzy pater purchased a DVD Recorder for his TV. I hijacked this, and repurposed it to put the wedding footage on a couple of DVDs (one DVD in fact, which I then used my Mac to copy). This in hand, I came to work on Wednesday, found an envelope, labelled it up, placed the DVD and the original tapes inside, and trundled off to the post office muttering something about it being a nice day.

Next thing I know, I'm back at work, sans envelope, plus Recorded Delivery slip, and a fruit salad from Asda (the diet is going well, thank you.) Rehearsals that evening started at 8pm, and I decided to do some catching up at work, and go straight to the rehearsals from work. At 7:15, I packed up, and walked to my car. At 7:20, I was back inside, having mumbled to the security guard that I'd left my keys on my desk. At 7:25, I was asking the security guard to move so I could check the front desk to see if I'd left them there. At 7:30, I was explaining to the other security guard, for the second time, that yes, I'd left my keys somewhere and I couldn't find them. He was incredibly helpful, asking questions that I hadn't thought of, like "Where did you have them last?" and "Where have you been today?" and "How are you going to drive home?"... He's such a helpful chap. Terribly bad teeth, but so helpful.

My keys were gone. Missing. My house keys, my car keys, my key rings. The strange thing is that I've never lost my keys. Not once. Not properly, anyway. They've always been somewhere, under a shirt, or hanging on a peg at home. I was now in a situation where it was quite possible that I'd never see them again. If something is lost at home, you know you will find it eventually. Out in the wide world, anything is possible. I entertained the idea that my colleagues were playing a practical joke on me; that they had accidentally taken my keys mistaking them for their own; that I'd been pickpocketed.

I'd only been three places that day: work, the post office, and asda. Most of the time I am aware of what I'm doing, I remember when I've taken something out of my pocket. I rely hugely on instinct, but I'll write about that later. I decided to retrace my steps, to see if they had been handed in at Asda, since I remember taking change out of my pocket to pay for the fruit, and I could have taken the keys out at that point.

It then occurred to me that had I managed to get the video done sooner, and sent it to them within weeks of filming it, I wouldn't have been out of the office that day, and wouldn't have lost my keys. Karma works in funny ways.

However - my first issue was that it was now 7:40, and I was going to be late for the rehearsal no matter what. I wasn't even certain that I could make it to the rehearsal at all, which was a shame, since I really need to go over the first act. I called Mater, and explained the predicament. I asked if she was busy this evening, if there was any chance she could pop down to my office with the spare car key - at least then I'd be able to get the machine home. She said she was a bit busy, but that she'd do her best, and then go on to the wake afterwards.

Wake?

Yes, wake. She'd been at the funeral of the mother of a family friend. My mother had returned home to change, and was on her way out again when I'd called. I told her not to bother, that she was busy, and I'd get the tube home, and worry about the car on Friday. I didn't know if I'd need the car on Thursday, since I'd booked the day off to spend it with my friend on her birthday. The likelihood was a resounding no - so leaving it at work wasn't really an issue. I asked again for her to continue with her plans, I hadn't realised she was busy. 10 minutes later she calls me on my mobile to tell me she was en-route, with the spare key. I can't argue with my mother when she gets like this, and I love her to bits for it. She told me it didn't really matter if she was 45 minutes late, since the old lady had already died, and her condition was unlikely to improve.

I walked out of the office, still very confused. I honestly had no recollection of losing the keys. Normally if I lose something, I'm very aware of where and how I've done so, particularly given short time-frames. I decided to go to Asda, since the Post Office was closed. The people at asda are lovely individuals, but as soon as they become "Helpers", they can't find an ice-cube in an igloo. I asked if anyone had handed in a bunch of keys, and then described them from memory, in great detail. I'm hugely proud of my keyrings, as each one had been given to me by someone else, and they all meant a lot to me. The woman didn't look to impressed with this display of my memory-recall, and descriptive powers of language. She simply opened a drawer, pulled out three seperate bunches of keys, and asked if any of them were mine. I thought, how wonderfully ingenuous of her, and felt everso grateful that my keys were not among them. Had they been, and had I been an unscrupulous individual other than myself, I might have walked away with car keys likely to be linked to a car in the car park. Thankfully, they weren't, I wasn't and I didn't.

It was at this time that I spotted my mother at the traffic lights, and opening the window as she moved away in second gear, I found myself the victim of a drive-by keying. Were it not for my lightning reflexes I might have been impaled in the chest by the ignition key to a Peugeot 206. Had that occurred, I would have had to endure comments along the lines of a recommendation not to take the phrase "key to my heart" so literally. Thankfully it didn't, so I didn't.

In true point-and-click computer game style, I found myself holding onto the spare key to my car. I could almost read the subtitles under the camera of my life reading "You have found a spare car key!" as the key glowed and rotated above my head, and disappeared into my inventory. I now had to "use" "the key" with "the car". It was all terribly exciting, and still I was over an hour late for the rehearsal.

Which - I have to say - was a good rehearsal, however tiring.

The rehearsal didn't end until past 10:30pm, and it was 11pm before I was at home again. I can't remember what I ate, but I do have the memory of eating something, which is a little disconcerting when you're on a diet. It breeds self-doubt. I'd intended to be up fairly sharpish on the Thursday morning, so I was bright and breezy for my friend's arrival at 11am. At 1am (!) I noticed that K was online - and we started to talk. As 6am rolled up, I was answering questions about owls, larks, top, bottoms and breakfast beverages. It was a great way to say up all night, and felt more like 5 minutes than 5 hours. She's got some stamina, I'll say that much. I was fading by 6am, and at 6:30am could no longer use the muscles in my neck to support my head. My eyelids were on a mission of their own, and I'd started to hallucinate about courgettes.

I woke up at 10am. I say woke, but it felt much more like that sleeplike state one goes into if visiting the loo in the wee small hours (if you'll pardon the expression). After a Yakult (I don't like them - but we have about 36 little tubs of them for free, so it seems a shame to waste them) and a cup of tea, I felt much better, and tried to set about organising the evening a little. A few emails here and there, a conversation with my mother about a Beer Drinking Competition, which is my mother's wonderful interpretation of the time she and I were judges for the Evening Standard Bar and Pub of the Year Award. It takes a while but you begin to see the logic that she employs to describe things. It's also nearly impossible to have a conversation with her if you can't see her, since at least 50% of her meaning is employed through hand and arm movements.

My friend was driving down with her parents, and was late. I was hoping to be able to do some shopping of my own, with her, for some new sunglasses, and maybe a sarong. I'm not 100% certain about the sarong - I've seen guys wearing them, and they looked pretty good - but I wanted a woman's opinion in terms of colour and design, and I have no idea on how to wear one properly. I don't even know where to buy them, so if you have any ideas, leave a comment and let me know.

We had a long lunch in Highgate, and eventually got ready and down to the Kings Road by about 6pm. My friend did go into a number of shops, and managed to pick up a few things, and I resigned myself to silence, since my tiredness was lying waiting for me - and I thought it was prudent to save my energy. We found out that a few of our other friends couldn't make it to her birthday dinner, so it was a manageable number who turned up a the French restaurant. Which served frankfurters and fries. Go figure. I had eggs benedict, which is rapidly becoming a favourite dish of mine. There were two people who hadn't arrived yet, and they were bringing their baby son. By 10pm they hadn't arrived, when my friend was called on her phone, and spent 5 minutes trying to direct them to Old Brompton Road.

This, it turned out, was deceptive in its helpfulness, since the restaurant was on Brompton Road, not Old Brompton Road. I left the restaurant, knowing my friend really wanted to see them and the baby, and on calculating roughtly where they were driving from, sprinted towards the tube station. Wine, it would seem, is not without its uses. I felt like Anneka Rice, with the phone stuck to my ear, running hell for leather down the streets of London, searching for a silver car. I found them, sitting patiently at a junction, facing the wrong way.

My friend was so happy when I brought them to the restaurant. I was so out of breath that I couldn't even complain when I knocked a glass of white wine into my crotch. Had it been red wine, I would probably have been rushed to hospital by a samaritan fearing some kind of burst testicle injury (nice image, I know) but white wine simply said "bladder control issues".

In the taxi on the way home, I was talking, as "wine enthusiasts" often do, about fidelity, morally reprehensible acts and human nature. My sister was quite animated on the topic, which I'd brought up, since she was having a bet with my friend. The bet revolved around whether or not someone would leave their girlfriend for my sister. My sister bet that they wouldn't, and my friend had bet that they would. Apparently there was a vial of nail varnish involved as a reward. I felt that since my sister was directly involved with the outcome of the bet, particularly on the negative side, it was not a bet she could lose. Au Contraire, apparently. Despite the fact that my sister had claimed she would lose the bet, apparently she wanted to win it, but had resigned herself to defeat already.

I pointed out that this was more than an idle thought experiment, that her actions could directly influence whether or not this chap would stay with his girlfriend. I felt that encouraging him to do so was... inappropriate, and to be honest, not really very nice. This sparked an entire conversation about myself - and whether or not I could perform an action which would ultimately lead to the break up of a couple, and whether or not I would ever act upon the temptation to do so. I steadfastly remained by my moral code, which stated simply that I would not knowingly cheat on someone, or help someone else to cheat, simply "to get my end away". My sister and friend both implied that I would, that it was simply human nature, and I had to be open to the possiblilty that my moral code could change given the right situation.

The issues go much deeper, to be honest, and it's probably the topic for another day. Suffice it to say I felt a little shocked by my sister's frank admission that she'd actively participate in a course of action which would ultimately end up in someone being hurt, and by the fact that she couldn't accept that I wouldn't. My friend, sitting opposite me in the taxi, was as quiet as you probably are now, stunned to silence by just how long this blog entry has become. Sweet zombie jesus it's long. Apologies for keeping you.

This morning I woke tired. I drove to work, I made tea, I had lunch, I walked to the Post Office. Hanging behind the glass of one of the counters were my keys. Having left them in the post office for 48 hours, I'd been reunited with them. Clearly all that running on a stomach full of eggs benedict had restored a few karma points.

If you're still with me at this point, THANK YOU. You could always leave a comment, to let me know you joined me at the bottom of this entry - otherwise I'll assume that, like me, you gave up around halfway down. Now I'm going home - to have two or three cups of tea.

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