Nice weather for slugs

I was aquaplaning to work yesterday, pressing random buttons hoping the rear windscreen wiper would come on (how often do you need to use that, eh? pretty much never) and twirling random dials trying to stop the windscreen misting up when a big orange light came on on the dashboard. Shit, I thought, I've just drained the brake fluid or something. This is no time to be breaking down, I'll drown if I get out of the car. I tested all the vital functions I could think of (brakes, lights, er, that's it), and proceeded in mild terror, trying my very hardest not to soak people waiting at bus stops with my backwash. It was a bit like negotiating a hovercraft. The light continued to glare at me.

When I got to work I parked up and dug out the user manual, hoping whatever was wrong wouldn't cost hundreds of pounds to fix, but fearing that it would, as everything that goes wrong with M's car costs hundreds of pounds to fix.

But I was in luck: the warning light in question turned out to be a 'drive carefully, it's pissing it down' light. How very useful, I'd never have worked that out for myself. My 2cv used to warn you of the same thing by dripping gently into your lap through the hole in the roof.

Later I learnt of children stranded in schools, unreachable villages and cancelled festivals, so I felt I had got off pretty lightly, but that didn't stop me getting furious when our student neighbours poached the taxi we'd booked to save us waiting damply at the bus stop laden with food for dinner with our friends C&G. Little bastards (our neighbours, not C&G). But we got there in the end, and it was dry when we left, full of curry and watermelon, a little stoned, and just in the mood for a stroll past Evenlode Tower. It's beautiful at night, whatever they say. The Blackbird at chucking out time is not beautiful (it's an unfulfilled ambition of mine to find someone willing to take me in there for a pint, but this may be one of those ambitions best left unfulfilled), but the bus stop opposite was only mildly intimidating, and even at that time of night you've never more than 10 minutes to wait for a bus. Cities are great.

When we got home, there was a slug party happening on the path. I think they were eating the entrails of a snail that had perished there previously. See that? I said (or maybe just thought, I was a bit out of it). That's what little boys are made of. Some of them grow up ok though.

joella