Just when you think things are getting better

And the Scumbags are back!

This has not been a good weekend.  Not at all.  From the Friday night “feast” from the fast-food restaurant to the rain on Sunday – not a good weekend.

My hatred of fast food has grown exponentially after a night of utter misery as something in the food reacted with my cast iron stomach to produce shivering (!) in the middle of the night together with aches and pains of various and quite unnecessary violence.  Sleep was impossible and I was eventually driven to take a tablet and doze my way towards daylight.

Saturday was the day of the Food Fair which I had been looking forward to ever since I completed the Ruta de Tapas.  I had been given an “invitation” ticket which entitled me to sample products from many of the establishments that had taken part.

Using the tear off stubs in the ticket book it was possible to have a three-course meal with drinks, coffee and liqueur.  I was determined to go and as I was feeling somewhat better (worse would have been impossible short of death) I marched off to the bus stop.

I should have taken it as an omen that the bus arrived just as I got to the bus stop.  The park in which the Fair was being held was within a couple of minutes walk from where I was dropped off.  Everything was going well.

As the bus was early I arrived at the park to find a queue of people waiting to get in and reserve their places at the tables set out in front of the booths of the restaurants and food manufacturers.

By the time that I got in the sun had increased in its intensity and I was not feeling quite as chipper as I had when I started out.  I found myself a place to sit and watched the serious pantomime of families clearing space and staking their claim to substantial areas of the tables.

While I watched the genteel squabbling over chairs I got down to the serious business ahead of me: would I be able to eat or drink anything at all feeling as I was.  I had dismissed the idea of anything alcoholic slipping down my throat almost immediately and I was wondering if there was anything sufficiently bland and innocuous that I could force into my mouth.

The simple answer to all of this was: no!  After a few more futile minutes of failed personal persuasion I decided to cut my losses and go home.

Of course, now feeling very much the worse for wear, the bus did not arrive in anything like a reasonable period of time.  As I waited, so the worse I felt.

When the vehicle finally arrived I almost cried with relief.  Just in case anyone is wondering why I didn’t take a taxi – not a single solitary one of them passed me during the whole time of waiting!

Once on the bus I then had to endure the serpentine route that the bus took to get back to within staggering distance of home.

Home was a centre of family activity as The Family had arrived to visit the invalid and have a barbecue lunch.  God knows what I looked like when I wearily made my way upstairs, but it wiped the smiles off the faces of those that I greeted.

I went to bed.  And stayed there.  This is my traditional approach (not, you have to agree, rocket science) to all illnesses.  And I have to admit that for me it generally works after a day’s uneasy rest.

I did manage to get up in the evening and I was fed rice broth and a baguette of ham without tomato.  Which I ate and did indeed feel better.  A bit.

I had an early night and slept fitfully – but at least I slept.

And woke to an overcast sky with an attempt at showers.  It says much for this part of the world that we have not had an extended rainfall in recent memory - or at least not the sort of memory that I use!  Today was scheduled to be the end of the summer as far as the weather is concerned, and if that is the case then I can live with this sunny sort of non-summer climate!

And to top it all, our Scumbag Neighbours have returned!  We like to think that it is merely to check up on work that they are having done, but if it is to stay then I will be looking for somewhere else to live.  The idea of having those inconsiderate, noisy, offensive bastards next to us for anything more than the summer is simply intolerable.

This awful development is something which I anticipated as they linked up this summer with a French family where the mother does nothing but sit by the pool and smoke and allow her obnoxious children to scream their heads off.  This augmentation of irritation with both families uniting their insufferable traits pushes their intolerable rating off the graph.

In a move which is deeply disturbing the Scumbags have Taken The Car From The Drive.  They place the car there when they leave after the summer so that passing criminals will assume that the pigeon crap swathed, pine needle covered, filthy car is in regular daily use.  It is only when they are In Residence that the car is taken from the drive.  And from the drive it has certainly been taken.  It does not bode well!

After 11.00 am tomorrow I will have taught all my classes and I will have a clearer idea of just how unbearable it all is.  I am increasingly concerned that all the bits-and-pieces teaching that I am doing will amount to a substantial extra burden during the course of the year. 

But this may be merely the usual depression that follows any restart of the school year after a two-month holiday!

With an irritation which I have long since come to regard as habitual, my “illness” seems to have run its course after the usual 24 hours of sleep dominated therapy – I am therefore fighting-fit for school tomorrow.  Which is a lousily full day with the extra delight of a lunchtime duty thrown in as well. 

Why am I doing this again? 

Oh yes, the money.  Cue stifled hysteria!