It's True What They Say About Magpies

I have been working at home today, which has reminded me of the taunting birds outside my window. There are magpies infesting the garden. I can hear the damn things singing around the garden, tempting me to curse my whole day by looking out of the window and spotting one of them. So I have steered clear from the window all day, other than to shut the blinds.

And there was a close shave when the door buzzer went and I peered through the blinds to see who it was. It was the meter reader man - there to read the electric and the gas meter. The gas meter is in the bottom of a storage cupboard, the electric in the bottom of a storage cupboard above the one the gas meter is in.

Both cupboards are filled with junk. (The whole flat is filled with junk. I keep meaning to get addicted to selling all my wordly possessions on ebay - however that is not going so well so far. I am still yet to learn how to sell things on ebay... but when I do, I'll be rich, rich, RICH beyond my wildest dreams. (My dreams are not very wild - a nice dinner out once a year and a comfy bed will do me). But for the meantime, I remain poor and laden with a flatfull of junk).

So because both cupboards are so full of junk, there was a lot of embarassed unpacking going on before he could read the gas meter. Some uncomfortable (but delightfully light to carry) camping roll mats, a rug (covered in old bits of dried grass), a kitchen drawer utensil holder (lord knows where that came from - maybe it belongs with the flat and we rejected it), some old curtains (probably moth eaten - as you know, we have rather a moth problem), a few empty boxes, blah, blah, you get the picture. And the gas meter is, as mentioned, right at the bottom at the back, so everything had to come out.

We then had to go through the whole palaver of putting everything back in again before moving onto the next cupboard of junk, for the electricity meter. Luckily, after moving merely a single cool bag (we don't have loads of them - I just used the word "single" to illustrate that we only had to move one single thing) and there it was - the electricity meter - black and shiney, with big, highly visible numbers.

So I was delighted that no futher junk moving was necessary - I could avoid the embarassment of pulling out my unused nonsense. The bloke pulled out his little torch - it was like being in CSI - him shining his torch about in the middle of the day - though he did have to see past a few junk items, so I suppose I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

Anyway, as I was saying, I was counting my eggs, because junk removal was unnecessary and he was busily shining his torch in the cupboard, moving in a little, getting a little closer, putting his head slightly inside the cupboard to get a better look, when suddenly, out of nowhere (and in slow motion for me), a scooter (a heavy metal (made of a heavy metal - not heavy metal as in long haired with plenty of tattoos and unintelligible words to crazed music), grown-up's scooter (not of the motor variety of course), bought for me one birthday a million years ago, when scooters were "in" for grown-ups) started to fall. I say started, it was actually very swift - but remember I pointed out it was all rather in slow motion for me.

Well, anyway, this scooter (heavy and made of metal) started to fall and within less than a second or so, had reached the end of its descent, onto the meter reader's head. His bald head.

I felt terrible. He'd just had to help pack all my junk back into the cupboard below, witness a similar level of junk in this cupboard (probably with a certain amount of dread at having to move it all) only to have a heavy, metal scooter fall onto his head. I did, of course, appologise endlessly and profusely.

I did consider offering him a cup of tea and a biscuit - I'm not sure how I thought that would aid his recovery, but I decided against it anyhow. He would only have felt like he had to say yes - to reassure me that I needn't worry and I could stop apologising, when really, all he probably wanted to do was to get out of the damn flat and away from the lady who collects junk and apologises too much.

Still, at least we know that our next bill will be accurate. Unless that knock on his head was just too much. Similarly - at least we'll know that if our next bill seems ridiculously high it will only be him getting revenge - and we can console ourselves that the one after that will be extra low due to our overcompensation.

So, really, all's well that ends well. I suspect the problem was that he looked about the garden as he was coming up the path and had the bad luck to spot one of those magpies on their own. Damn rascal things.