I had to go into town this morning.

As you may have gathered by now, I hate going into town.

But I had to meet some people and, what was nice, they let me use their parking spot. So that was one problem out of the way.

However, I also had to leave a yoke in for repair way up the other end of town, and I wasn’t going to try finding parking there, so I decided to walk. Big deal, I hear you say.

Now I like walking. I used to do a lot of hill walking, and a 25 mile ramble was nothing. But now I have a ‘condition’ [which I am not going to go into] which means that any sort of exercise leaves me knackered. So I walked up to the other end of town and got rammed by the usual clutch of Skobies. I left in the yoke but they told me I’d have to call back later. B*ll*x!!

So back I trundled to the first place and had my meeting. Very nice. I could sit down, and I had a nice cup of coffee.

But then I had to walk up to the other end of town again. I collected the yoke, which was nicely repaired, but at this stage, all strength had gone out of me. I had to rest.

So I found a nice quiet doorway and sat down for a smoke. I was out of the way of the Skobies, and the muscles were beginning to ease, and that cheered me. So I began to sing softly to myself.

Herself is very fastidious about the way I dress when I’m going out, but this morning I’d managed to sneak out in my usual clobber – runners with a sole coming loose, tatty jeans and an old cardigan. I had the cap with me too in case it rained, but I just left that on the ground.

I suppose it was an easy mistake to make. And quite a few people made it.

And I made €83.50.