When I lived in Aberdeen I decided to start up a little business, renting out equipment to the rapidly expanding housing market. The company was appropriately, if unimaginatively, named “Aberdeen Home and Garden Equipment Hire”; but I was quite proud of our slogan: “Setting a hire standard”.
We rented out mowers, rotavators, small cement mixers, ladders; the sort of equipment a home owner might want to use on an occasional basis but was not wanting to buy. “We” was me, and I had to juggle a job with an oil company with the delivery and collection of rental equipment. This often involved Sunday lunch being interrupted by a call to come fix a belt on a rotavator, or to satisfy an urgent request for a ladder (another grandmother stuck up a tree).
Customers were generally friendly and decent, apart from one prick who refused to pay for an extension of hire. I immediately wished him dead. Long after I gave up the company (I had to chose between oil and lawn mowers, the oil won), I kept the culprit’s name and address on file and plotted ways of making him suffer. Even now I bear him ill-will.
In short, once I have decided I don’t like someone for what I consider to be valid reason, then it is for life. Of course this is not a healthy attitude, but it can prove useful on occasions. Like yesterday for example.
Two years ago I was dragged along on a trip to a durian farm. It was not the best of days and I was no rush to repeat it. Fortunately, since that time I have added another name to my (very short) list of people I want nothing to do with. I shall not go into the reasons, just to say that there is a certain gentleman of Italian extraction that I never wish to speak to again.
So when the next durian farm adventure was planned, and he was to be one of the attendees, she who must be obeyed knew it was a lost cause to get me to come along.
We are going to the durian farm again, do you want to come? (small hopeful voice). Will (insert name of Italian gentleman, registered on list of people I want nothing to do with) be there? Yes. I am not going. You should forgive him. Never forgive, never forget (especially if it gets you out of durian farm trips).
And so I didn’t go, and judging by the state of my beloved upon her return, it was just as well. She was sweaty and exhausted and desperately in need of a shower. But of course she came home bearing fruit, and my back passage is currently stuffed with seventeen smelly durian, one of which is reserved for genuinej’s back passage. The other sixteen are for inserting into that fucker in Aberdeen who still owes me money.
No way am I going to eat any, but they are weird enough to warrant a photograph or six.
Comments 🔗
2010-05-18| TheSon saysI guess I now know where I got that trait from. A genetic predisposition for unwavering grudgery.
2010-05-18| genuinej saysPlease, please pass my reservation on to someone more deserving. Or even someone less deserving. Or just to anyone! How about Walter?
2010-05-18| Brenton saysDid I read correctly? You have 17 spiky durian “stored” in your back passage? That must be uncomfortable.
2010-05-19| Billy saysIn fact use of GJ’s back passage is exclusively the preserve of Cadbury’s chocolate products … as indeed you were to discover recently. How were the chocolate eggs btw?
2010-05-20| Spike saysThe Son, “A genetic predisposition for unwavering grudgery”. I like that phrase and will use it as an excuse in future.
genuinej, take it like a man, like a man who is about to adopt an amusing gait.
Billy, the eggs were wonderful. Sadly only half as wonderful as I had hoped, because SWMBO took a liking to them and I had to share.