Why Me?
Somebody up there doesn't like me at the moment. I can only think that the rainy weather we've been having recently has driven my good friend, Lady Luck, to book a month's holiday in South America. I can see her now, sipping a marguerita and dispensing good fortune to random individuals in the region...
...like the Uruguayan filmmaker, Federico Alvarez, who was offered $30 million the other week to make a movie. It was after Hollywood executives spotted the fantastic sci-fi short on You Tube he created for just $500 called Panic Attack...
...or the amazingly fortunate Bolivian police force, who managed to arrest a murderer working from what has been described as 'the world's worst photo-fit.'
Yes, I can hear the words on everyone's lips in that part of the world right now, 'Somebody up there must really like us.'
That's all well and good for them, but who's filling in for Lady Luck back here? I have a suspicion it's Wayne - the young man who joined the wrong queue at the Job Centre, and instead of delivering Christmas cards to anywhere but the right address, found himself behind Lady Luck's desk with a pair of dice to roll and strict instructions only to deal with the small stuff. It normally takes years of training and some dexterous hand-eye coordination to roll a double six every time, so a seasonal temp like our Wayne didn't really stand a chance*.
Which is why he obviously didn't bother. With his unlaced Nike trainers adorning the polished mahogany and the aptly named Monkey Challenge to play on his mobile, dealing with the stack of good fortune requests - most of them mine - in Lady Luck's in-tray was probably the last thing on his mind. Hence, my run of bad luck recently.
It all began when the waterproof, 'tested to a depth of 100 metres', sports watch I received for my birthday was taken swimming for the first time a few weeks back. I can only assume the manufacturer employs submariners to do the depth testing from the comfort of their little bunks, as mine started leaking at a depth of 100 millimetres.
I had little choice but to send it off for repair.
My son, Christian, had a similar watch; again a birthday present and less than a year old. The instructions that came with his timepiece went one better - proclaiming it to be, 'waterproof and shockproof...ideal for people who lead active lifestyles.' You can't get more active than an eleven year old lad, or clumsier for that matter. Which is why he managed to drop it onto a hard tiled floor. The watch was indeed shockproof as it didn't react at all when its minute hand fell off.
I had little choice but to send it off for repair.
A few days later, my daughter, Bethany, was due to go on a school trip to see An Inspector Calls in the West End. Her class was due to spend some time sightseeing, so I suggested she take the digital camera we'd bought her a couple of Christmases ago.
'But I don't like using it,' was her reply.
'Why not?' I asked.
'Because it never seems to work properly.'
'Go fetch it, and I'll have a look at it.'
She fetched it, and I had a look at it.
'It doesn't seem to work properly,' I said. 'How long has it been like this?'
Bethany looked at the floor and mumbled, 'About a year.'
I did a quick calculation. 'Great. That means it stopped working three months before its warranty expired, but it's now nine months after.' My daughter looked suitably sheepish.
I had little choice but to send it off for repair.
They say bad luck normally runs in threes, but not when Wayne's in charge. Christian's watch was returned promptly with a brand new movement - children don't need a Lady to provide their luck, they make their own - but my watch must have been given to Wayne's mate Darren - the one who did get the pre-Christmas job at the Post Office - as it got delivered to some sporty lady down in Bournemouth by mistake. I know, because I got her pale pink sports watch and repair slip instead. I've notified the postal watchdog and I'm hoping he'll fetch it for me sometime soon.
Of course, the bad luck didn't stop there. My wife had the idea of converting the kids' playroom downstairs into a room more suited to teenagers and their friends. Out went the box games and arts and crafts stuff last used by our children when they wore nappies, and in came minimalism, a plasma TV and a leather sofa comfortable enough to have me wondering why it was the kids getting the bachelor den not me. For the duration of the redecoration, I moved the kids' playroom computer into our lounge. Like most old things placed in a new home, it began to have very little drive, problems with its memory and progressive disk failure that eventually caused it to collapse and die.
Without a computer for my children to do their homework on, I had little choice but to send it off for recycling, then cough up for a new one.
Anyone who's ever set up a new computer will understand that there's no such thing as plug and play. It took several hours to restore old files, sort out the family's email accounts, load the children's games, add printer drivers and wait for the ninety seven - yes, you heard me, ninety seven! - critical updates the operating system recommended I download off the internet. Our new PC may not have resided in a glasshouse, but I was ready to throw stones at windows all the same. In the end, I got everything sorted only to find our aging printer was following the same advice my mother gave to me when I was young. Unfortunately, 'Make sure you chew at least twenty times before you swallow it' doesn't really work with paper.
I had little choice but to send off for a new one.
Which, of course, arrived without power leads. I had an interesting email chat with an eBay user named cockofthenorth who insisted he hadn't any leads until I pointed out the identical printer he'd posted for sale online clearly showed power leads in the photo. I got my power cables in the end and very nearly suggested he insert the word up in his user id when I was prompted to provide feedback on our transaction.
I might have known that the Wayne effect wouldn't let me have a functioning computer and printer without something else going wrong. I was right. The camera company, who shall remain nameless, but have been known to share a mountain address with the Greek Gods, declared Bethany's camera repairable, but only if I make an offering of £140 to the Goddess of Foolish Acts - I'm not joking, there really is one, she's called Ate. Even a mere mortal like myself knows a repair which costs the same as purchasing the latest, upgraded model is a repair that's likely to involve an old camera, a bin, and a new camera being knocked about a bit to make it look like it's taken a few dodgy pictures in its time.
I had little choice but to curse Wayne and the Greek Gods' neighbours, and inform Bethany she'd have to live without a camera. 'That's okay,' she said. 'I always use the one on my mobile anyway.'
I'd like to claim my bad fortune ended there, but it didn't. Our trampoline's safety net tore loose in a strong wind and Spike developed a rattle. Spike is my little runaround, a white Hyundai Amica that was originally bought to get me to and from the station in the days when I commuted every week by train, plane and automobile. He's cheap to run, quite feisty, somewhat dog-eared and usually low maintenance. Or at least he was until his tail exhaust started wagging when it shouldn't.
'It's your heat shield,' said the mechanic. 'It's loose.'
I was forced to utter the words every mechanic loves to hear. 'What does that mean?'
Normally the answer to that question is a number with at least three digits, but Wayne must have got bored with Monkey Challenge and had a go at rolling a double six. Even monkeys get it right eventually. They wrote a book about it once too.
'It means your exhaust rattles,' said the mechanic. 'You could change it, or just live with it until it goes altogether.'
Pleased to have a real choice for a change, I decided to put up with the rattle as it matched the one on my piggy bank. Unfortunately, yet predictably, I was back at the same garage barely two days later. Not to fix Spike's over-enthusiastic exhaust, but because he had a puncture in his front off-side wheel. I left the garage with the tyre fixed but my piggy bank broken to pay for it.
Everything culminated last weekend when, in a naïve attempt to clear my mind of its Victor Meldrew 'I don't believe it!' frustrations, I went for a Sunday morning bike ride through the country villages around Hitchin. When I set off, it was cold yet beautifully sunny with clear skies and no wind...
...until Wayne decided to put in some overtime at the office and clocked on for another hard day's apathy. Within an hour it was blowing force ten gales and I was being lashed by torrential rain. Twenty miles out, with half the country lanes between me and home flooded, even my gloves and waterproofs couldn't prevent me losing the feeling in my extremities and the will to continue.
Typically, it was on the highest, most exposed stretch of road, with the rain angled like tent pegs being hammered into my side, when Wayne's next dice roll produced another puncture. Changing an inner tube when you can't feel the ends of your fingers isn't fun. Nor was arriving home to find my mobile phone, the one I kept safely in a waterproof pannier pocket, was now soaking wet after I'd been unable to fasten the zip properly during the search for my tyre levers. And no, drying my mobile on a radiator didn't make it work either.
I had little choice but to pay for a new one.
So there you have it. My bad fortune reads like the twelve days of Christmas. Two dysfunctional watches, two unlucky punctures, one broken camera, a dodgy printer, a missing power lead, a PC beyond repair, a torn trampoline net and one exhaust rattling round with glee!
To cap it all, I had a letter from my local hospital yesterday that confirmed beyond doubt that someone up there really, really doesn't like me.
What was the letter about?
It invited me, '...as a male over forty with no outstanding medical conditions...' to complete a questionnaire to see if I was eligible for a study on erectile dysfunction!
With all the problems and expense I've had recently there was only one thing I could do.
I told them how hard up I was.
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