DREAMING ON

Last week – I mean literally the moment the yuletide goose carcass had hit the bottom of the dustbin and the new year was but a twinkle in the eye of the 2009 calendar – Bloggiana found herself on the receiving end of a very nasty letter from the Bank Manager.

Now as you can imagine, Bloggiana is not Generally Keen to deal with financial matters; and equally, she is not Terribly Good at dealing with financial matters. Sometimes we find that the reason the kettle is not boiling properly is because there is a bill lodged in the spout. If Bloggiana is feeling really very spooked (usually a bill with more than two zeroes achieves this reaction), we may find that the chimney starts smoking. Or that the chickens’ are no longer bedded on straw but small shredded strips of invoice paper. So a call-up from the Bank Manager is the very worst way a year could start in Bloggiana’s book and for a day or two, we can’t see her for cigarette smoke and we daren’t go too close to the sofa where she lies lest the fumes of Pinot Grigio cause us all to pass out in a toxic faint.

Forty five unanswered computer-dialled calls and seven more unopened letters later, Bloggiana emerges from the fug and barks at me to find the fucking car keys. She is wearing her least clean Husky jacket and her most smelly wellington boots. Her face is wearing the very image of thunder and I get the car keys in a jiffy, faster than I thought my shaky legs could possibly carry me. To the delicate tones of a Wagnerian aria, we set off – in the direction of the godforsaken town where the godforsaken bank buggery manager lives, as Bloggiana says more than once. Weaving through unknown suburbia and then equally unknown urbia, I drive her very small car several times round the same small roundabout, then once or twice up the same one-way system. There are no fucking places to park the fucking car, Bloggiana spouts needlessly. I find myself grinding the gears – again – and over-revving the engine – again - to such an extent that it is hard to tell where Brunnhilde ends and Volkswagen Lupo begins.

In the event, I let the Old Girl see the bank manager alone. You could accuse me of being a coward and you would be right. I Piccalilli am a coward. I sit in the car chewing the real-faux-leather cover on the steering wheel and wishing my New Year’s Resolution had been to smoke more. When eventually my friend emerges, her thundery look does not seem to have abated and something about the way the mud flicks off her boots as her feet hit the ground makes me suspect that the meeting went about as badly as these things can go. We drive back to Our House in silence.

Doing my best to keep my hands over the chewed bit on the steering wheel, I find myself musing. What about that two-week sojourn on the French Riviera we promised ourselves, I wonder. Without having to turn my head to the left, I and my dream-ego have a pretty good idea that the question is now rhetorical. Next to me, Bloggiana seems to be grinding her teeth in a most unladylike fashion.