I am feeling very pleased with my day.
This was because of an email that turned up in my Inbox this afternoon, amongst all the usual detritus. There was the Crockett and Jones catalogue advertising beautiful shoes for which we would have to save up for so long that the sale will be over long before we have raked enough cash together. There was an email from the Passport Office telling me that they had posted my passport, which I knew, because John the postman had brought it this morning. There was an email from Big Brother Watch warning me that our beloved leaders are planning some underhand manoeuvres and that I should give them some cash so that they can stop them, and an email from a trading platform suggesting that this might be a good time to buy more of something called XRP in order to outwit our beloved leaders whatever underhand manoeuvres they might have up their dastardly sleeves.
I have some XRP, whatever it is. I have fallen victim to a world in which one can purchase something with a mysterious name on an internet trading platform, and then have all of one’s happiness dictated by a little arrow which slides up and down the screen for the next few weeks, turning alternately red and green. This seems to me to be all that XRP does. It seems to have no other nature whatsoever, it is not socks or chilli sauce or a gearbox or a blackcurrant bush. It is not even something less definable like a hangover or a crush on a pop star or a longing to be on holiday. It seems to have no function other than potentially to outwit the Government, which as far as I can see, probably wouldn’t be very difficult.
None of these emails were of any interest, not least since I haven’t got any money, at least until Mark’s last set of employers cough up, at which point I might be inclined to a more sympathetic consideration, especially for XRP, because I do like the green arrow.
The interesting email was not asking me for money. It was something different altogether.
It was from the council.
Hi, Sarah, it said, in a burst of cheery familiarity that rather took me by surprise. In my day letters from the council were supposed to start Dear Mrs. Ibbetson, in which case they could end with Yours Sincerely, and if they couldn’t be bothered to check your name and had just said Dear Madam, then they had to end Yours Faithfully.
This one ended Kind Regards, which was a cop-out but which sounded sincere.
We can confirm that our team have assessed your enquiry regarding the white line, they continued, and my heart leaped into my mouth.
I shall not repeat the rest in full because it contained lots of platitudes about considerate parking, but the upshot of it was that we can carry on parking exactly where we have always parked, white line or no, and the council have got no intention of doing anything about it.
Readers, I can hardly tell you how relieved I was. To say I was relieved does not describe my ecstasy of delightedly lifted spirits.
I had not realised how much this has been bothering me. Having somewhere to park beside the house is very useful indeed. We have parking permits for the front, but there is never any room there, especially in the summer, and in any case, we never use the front door.
Note to self. I have left a key underneath a stone on the front doorstep in case anybody was obliged to park there. I can go and retrieve it now. I would like to say that it would have been only too convenient for burglars, but actually burglars would have an easier time just going round the back, whose key is completely lost in any case.
I went about my daily affairs feeling as though a great stone had been lifted from my heart. I even felt benevolent towards the grumbling neighbour whose whingeing had inspired the white line in the first place. Indeed, our lives will actually improve, because nobody else will park there because of the big No Parking sign.
We do not have to move house nor demolish the shed nor any of the other tiresome manoeuvres we had been contemplating.
We can carry on living as we have always done.
That is a very definite happy ever after.
