Just when one might imagine that something is over and finished, at that very moment when one believes the water is safe for a gentle paddle, that is the very moment when Jaws leaps out from beneath the rippling waves and bites one’s leg off.
I do not remember if that was actually what happened in the Jaws film, but it is a basic Hollywood principle created by screenwriters who labour under the ridiculous belief that cinema audiences like plenty of jeopardy along with their fainting heroines and dry-humoured beefcake heroes. You can tell whether a leg being unexpectedly bitten off is going to happen or not if it is a film, because you generally have a rough idea of how much longer the film is going to carry on, and probably are beginning to feel concerned about the problem that you have eaten all of your chocolate buttons much too quickly, and also that very soon you might have to disturb everybody else by getting up to go and visit the bathroom .
If the film only has three or four minutes left to run you can usually guess that Jaws really is dead unless you have read in the newspapers that they have already started working on the sequel.
My sequel happened this afternoon.
Readers, it was terrible.
I went out into my neat and tidy yard to empty the compost bucket, and discovered, to my horror, that the builders from up at the far end of the alley had dumped another load of their filthy, sodden wood all over it.
I can hardly tell you how horrified I was.
I dashed up the alley to see if I could find them, but they had gone home.
I was very upset indeed.
I put my boots on and started working.
I dragged it all back up the alley and dumped it on their piles of rubble.
This took ages.
It was completely rubbish wood even if it had not been filthy and soaked. It was lots of splintery pieces, most of which was scorched black from once having been in some archaic Windermere inferno, just about as useless as a pile of sticks could be.
I dumped it back under their scaffolding with some satisfaction. Then I swept the yard out clean.
I was filthy all over again.
It was not my finest hour.
Fortunately it wasn’t raining. It had rained in the morning, with some enthusiasm, and hence my trip over the fells had been minimally sociable. Only a handful of regular dog-walkers venture out in such weather, when we tell one another, optimistically, that it is nice to have the place to ourselves for a change.
My waterproofs spent the rest of the day dripping forlornly over the stove. I had planned to do lots of useful things, but in the event I was so wet and chilled, with a headache thumping just behind my ears, that I didn’t do any of them. I skulked upstairs to my office where I tried to organise our pensions into something that will be useful when we retire.
I came to the mournful conclusion that really our best option would just be to die young, and began to wonder about whether it really was irresponsible not to be purchasing lottery tickets.
I didn’t really achieve very much else after that. I made sushi for my taxi picnics, and found, after some desperate online hunting, somebody who still has some russet apples left to sell, so I will be able to avoid scurvy for another few weeks, and then I came out to work.
I am hoping for some renewed enthusiasm tomorrow.
Less rain and firewood would be pretty good as well.
