I think I may have accidentally pissed off God this weekend. I'm not sure exactly what it is I did, but She's certainly doing a damn fine job of getting her own back.
To start with, all the lights at the front of the house went, 'Fut!' Just like that. Fine one minute, 'FUT!' the next. And it's not exactly bright around here in the evenings, coming home after five is like clambering about inside a nun. Dark, dark, dark, dark.
"So why don't you replace the lightbulb then, Oh Beardy DIY Wonder?" I hear you cry. Because the damn thing's rusted shut, that's why. All the screws on the outside light have fused together into one brown metaly lump. Not even anointing it with holy WD40 helps. The screws are ... well ... screwed. Going to have to hack it all away from the wall and replace it from scratch.
"Yes," you say, with that mildly bored expression you've been perfecting ever since you first made the mistake of coming here, "but that hardly counts as a disaster of Biblical proportions, does it?"
Not on its own, no. But like all good Biblical plagues, you have to start out small. You don't want to jump right in with the smiting, do you? No, you want to work your way up to it. More fun that way.
So the second thing that happened, was that the 4Trak rustbucket truck of loveliness decided that leprosy sounded fun, and wouldn't it be great if the rear wheel arches decided to part with the bodywork? Tee-hee. Of course, this was after it experimented with mouse infestations. Right now the thing's clarted in little poisonous mouse hotels. Come for the tasty bait, stay for the death...
The third thing that happened was much funnier though -- the boiler packed in. It went 'FUT!' too. And made a noise that's a little bit like 'FUT!', only I spelt it a little differently, with a 'CK' and no 'T'. I pronounced it really loudly too. It probably didn't help, but for a fraction of a second, it made me feel better. Not warmer though. It's sodding freezing right now. Dark and freezing. We have Eskimos outside, stumbling about and bumping into things, complaining that they can't feel their feet.
But that pales into insignificance compared to the little treat God laid on me today. Like some sort of wrathful chicken, whose egg is a big stinky ovoid of vengeance... The laptop curled up it's little digital tootsies and died. Catastrophic hard drive failure, taking everything -- including all the work I've done on Book Number The Sixth -- with it.
All together now: 'FUT!'
I can't hear you: 'FUT!'
One more time: 'FUT!!!'
Tomorrow I think I'm just going to stay in bed.
Labels: Book Number The Sixth, Trauma, Whinge, writing