I surrendered this morning. Raised the white flag. I worked from home yesterday with an awful fever, snotty nose, and sore throat - racing to get some work done to a deadline. I met the deadline, and then - as so often happens - the deadline moved to next week. I’m not sure what went on in my body following that, but I imagine it went something along the lines of “right then… we’ve kept going this far - now you don’t have to be well, we’ll give you a good kicking”.
Other than helping make packed lunches, and clearing the kitchen, I’ve done nothing all day - which of course is making me feel tremendously guilty.
Two minutes pass while I load the washing machine, and wander back to the computer
Earlier this morning the postman came, and I heard something fairly big being forced through the letterbox. I didn’t give it much thought at the time, and then while pottering around earlier picked up the jiffy bag on the doormat. My wallet!
There’s a story to tell here. You know that day after the wedding, when we were staying in the farm house in the middle of nowhere, and the web project I have been working on went down? (maybe I didn’t write that story up - perhaps I should). Anyway… at 8am last Sunday morning I found myself stood in the car park of a farm in Oxfordshire, with 1 bar of 1G signal on my phone, trying to go through the web payment system to resurrect the website (I had forgotten to make it automatically re-bill). While trying to find out the security code from the back of my credit card, I found myself with too many buttons to press, and too many things to hold - so balanced my wallet on top of a fence post at the edge of the car park.
I left it there, and didn’t notice until the evening. I had one of those awful moments when you feel around your pockets, and the thing you always put in that pocket isn’t there. After panicking like an idiot for a few minutes, I called the farm. They were out, but their daughter was at home, revising. They told me she would go look.
This all coincided with us leaving the house to visit the local furniture store to buy a desk for the kids new computer. I ended up hearing their answer phone message in the car park of the furniture store, while being ranted at by W. And then my phone went flat.
I ended up sending our address to them (for them to post the wallet back to me) via a text message, 4 hours later (yes, that’s how long it was until we were home, and the phone was back on charge, and I could confirm where the answer phone message came from).
So… (after a ridiculous roundabout story) I have my wallet back. I have means of paying for things once again. It’s silly really; we forget how much we rely on things. Just this morning I had to run to the corner shop to get bread to make the children’s lunches - and of course had no cash, and no means of getting any. We ended up scraping some coins together - certainly enough for bread - and I ran off into the frosty morning air, shaking my head as I went.
Even though the wallet is back in my hands, I’m still tempted to cancel all the cards (even though it was found, in a remote location - exactly where I left it). I don’t trust the postal staff at all.