Chewy (Back of My Headboard) cracks me up. All this past week I've been whining to her about my iced in drive, and the misadventures it caused.
She summed it up by sending this comical home vid on to me this morning - which naturally, I can't resist sharing!
My drive is looooooong, steep, winding, and very narrow, the only turning point being on the apron at the bottom. My house sits immediately behind this apron, so should the car slip attempting to climb up the drive, there's a fair to middling chance it might take out a chunk of wall with it. If I opt to park at the top, I need to reverse out blindly into a busy two-way traffic thoroughfare - and even I'm not that rash as to attempt to try that, well not without first having someone to halt all the traffic for me. Especially not in the rush hour.
Naturally, at the first flake of snow, hubby
Don't get me wrong, I'd blissfully hole up for the week at home, my cupboards are stocked and my freezer is full, I'd be perfectly content to cozy up to a lit fire and the Jeremy Kyle Show. I could even make my way through a few of those trashy, true-life, American crime novels that I so love to scare the crap out of myself with. That, my friends, would land me in nothing short of Shrinky heaven.
Unfortunately, only Shrinky Hell was an open option. With three of my four darlings to dispense and collect each day, Christmas play rehearsals to ferry two of them to and back from each evening, and the summons of a must-attend parents evening to reach - it turned out quite a week.
Off street parking lies half a mile from the house, and the journey there is solid ice covered snow along the side-walks. Hmph, my Sweet Sam falls over his feet enough as it is in broad sunshine, can you imagine how long this journey took us to reach the car and back, often in the pitch black?
I did try the grit and shovel route, only to skid the car backwards and find it firmly stuck in the flower bed. Sam wouldn't hear of staying home, that's not in his routine - so here I am with my wheels spinning on the spot, and a distraught (facial tic's hopping) son screaming in my (about to burst) left ear, to "just fix it" in time before school. Ah, joy, eh?
Our heating and hot water runs on oil, and yes, you've guessed it, we were almost out of fuel. The 27 ton vehicle arriving to replenish our supplies doesn't have a long enough hose to reach our tank from the road. The driver was already pretty shaken up when he arrived, having just freshly demolished half of the house three doors up from us. After copious begging, a show of tears, and two cups of tea, I finally calmed him down enough to help me shovel ten yards free from the top of the drive. To get out again, yup, I had stand in the middle of the road waving like a crazed lunatic, stopping all the two-way traffic, before reversing him on his way.
(Must remember to send him a Christmas card.)
Oh, which reminds me, my Tesco grocery home delivery guy also deserves a medal, landing up on his arse as he did, wheeling my shopping down the drive. He did say, "I'm not meant to be doing this down slippery drives.. but I can hardly expect you to do this.", as I helped him up amidst the broken eggs (which I, incidentally, received a full refund credit for).
Guess the highlight of the week was receiving a "courtesy" call from the police. No, no I wasn't in any trouble as such, well not really.. I hadn't actually broken any laws.
When I parked up on the street one morning , apparently my front wheels strayed over a white line (one I couldn't see due to all the snow and ice covering it). White lines are not legally enforceable, they are a polite reminder not to obstruct an entrance, usually (wait for it) some one's driveway. As it happened, I did notice the drive there, but aside from there being no vehicle in it, I had left ample clearance for a Juggernaut to drive through. Besides, I returned back again in less than an hour, to do another of my blasted runs.
Seems some jumped up, militant housewife obviously took exception to this, and had slapped a nasty note to my windscreen. Not in the mood for any ear-bashing, I simply chose to ignore it and drove off.
Steam started to come from my ears when the police owned she'd claimed, due to me, she'd only gone and damaged her car trying to manoeuvre out. What a big fat juicy liar! That drive was EMPTY when I'd left. Besides, I thought I was a crap driver, it takes incompetency to a new level to miss a turn even a double decker bus would fit through. I figure she had been on the school run when I'd arrived, and coming back, took umbrage I dared to park up on her street. Who knows, maybe she had damaged her car earlier in the week, and was looking for a plausible story to help out with her insurance claim? Either way, there is nothing I hate worse than an outright fibber!
Funny how she never made any mention of this alleged damage to her (invisible) car on the stinking note she'd left to me. Even more funny is how my car appears to have sustained not so much as one single scratch on this spectacular crash with hers.
Anyways, I wasn't having any of that. Grrrrrrrrr.
Deeply annoyed, I dug her note out of the trash and called her back on the number left. I won't recount the conversation, but at least I finished the call a darn sight more happy than before I'd dialed. (stupidcowwon'tmesswithmeanymoremuttermutter)
With huge relief, I finally parked up in my own garage come Friday night, knowing the London Gatwick airport (after a two day closure) was thankfully open again, and hubby would soon be home to do the Saturday morning ferrying around, with his own car.
Du-uh.
I should have known all flights to the island would end up cancelled. With every hotel virtually double booked, and the roads nigh impassable, the poor man found himself spending the night asleep on the floor of the Airport Chapel, surrounded by a dozen other like-wise stranded passengers. (Least, that's his story.)
Out came my bucket of sand and the shovel again.
(Sigh.)
So, thank you dearest Chewy, I laughed long and hard when I opened this vid today - it kind of put it all back in to perspective again (hugs)! Oh, and I think I should give a credit here to LUKE, the artist who painted this extremely apt depiction of my snow-bound drive. (The spooky thing is, he created this with no prior knowledge of the layout of my place!)
PS. Hubby is now home. I've grounded him from London until the Spring.
Update: I woke this morning to a burst pipe, water flooding through the (vacant for now) eldest's bedroom ceiling; the bed, carpet and pretty much everything else is totally soaked through - arghhhhhhhhhhh!
