Good and bad!

Let’s get one thing straight: no day can be entirely bad when it starts with me stretched out on the Third Floor soaking up the sun in a bathing costume!

So even Clarrie’s insulting phone call to attack my nation for having beaten the Irish in the Rugby World Cup while, at the same time casually (not!) mentioning the fact that she had bought the latest version of the i-pad failed to dent my optimism which the bright start to the day loaded into my system.

This feeling of rightness with the world lasted right up until I went outside, unlocked the front gate and gazed in speechless horror at the anti-parking post which, for the THIRD time has been destroyed by person or persons unknown.  Actually that last adjective is just there for legal purposes as the guilty parties are within a hair’s breadth of where I live.  Allegedly.

I of course took photographs of the broken post which, this time had been left in the gutter – which was possibly one step better than what they (allegedly) did the last time but one, which was to put the post they knocked over in the street rubbish bin, from where I “rescued” it to be used as evidence against them (allegedly).  Actually, the last time they (allegedly) knocked the post down they had the criminal intelligence to hide the evidence.

Taking a photograph of the broken post also meant that I took a photograph or the car that was parked (illegally) on the pavement and suspiciously near the broken post.  The photograph (now printed out ready for the city hall to act on) also shows the number place with remarkable clarity.

While I was taking the photographs relying on the anti-shake setting of the camera to compensate for my towering fury someone not a million miles from being a neighbour asked, with consummate cheek if we were taking photographs of her illegally parked car!

Toni responded that we were taking photographs of the post and did she know anything about that?  To which her reply was, “Oh, OK.”  My Lord, ladies and gentlemen of the Jury, I ask you, was that a reasonable response, or did it betoken some form of guilt?  I ask for the ultimate penalty the law can impose – and I won’t write what I was going to write, but it did have something to do with the end results of dogs’ ingestion.  So to speak.

I have now had a total of eight of the forty-two fearsomely serious looking and virulently coloured antibiotics that I have been prescribed.  Although Toni says that the improvements to my leg are clearly visible, I am not so jocose but am prepared to give it until the end of the weekend for me to be convinced that something is really working.

The weather has been noticeably cooler this evening, though only by a couple of degrees or so – the windows are still open and I am praying that this unnatural autumn will continue for as long as possible!

We have bought another printer to replace the broken one and have decided to keep it downstairs.  It prints photos, in colour, copies and has a little screen to preview things etc and it cost €49 – just over forty quid.  The printer manufacturers of course make their money on the ink; the cost of replacement cartridges is more than the cost of a new machine; the cartridges in a new machine are of course not fully filled.  Oh the cunning swine!