I could never be in the SAS. Aside from the fact that I am short, fat and old and for most of my life couldn’t see further than the end of my nose, literally, I am not very good with things going wrong unexpectedly. This week being a case in point.
Batteries, mostly and, as usual because it was me, happening in twos. I have a wireless mouse for the laptop on which I’m writing this. I like a mouse. My mouse went on strike, showing upon the screen no pointer of any variety. I had to use the track pad until I could find the relevant battery in the kitchen drawer. So I fed the battery to the mouse and the mouse worked for about five seconds before it died again.
Our kitchen drawer has batteries of every shape and size, just like yours. It amazes me why manufacturers manufacture artefacts that require different batteries from all the other batteries, Not only do I not know why they do it, I am also unable to fathom why we seem to have so many of them, and also, why no one can design a battery box which is secure in the shop, but containing subsequently, to avoid the situation whereby batteries, once purchased, have to be winkled out with fingernails, scissors and patience, but, upon being introduced to their home drawer will immediately leap out of the cardboard and roll all over the place like a three year old on E numbers.
Picking a battery from the tribe rolling around under the dishcloths and pan scrubbers does not guarantee the battery being new, full of charge, or even working. Some should probably be donated to a battery museum. Therefore, when the first battery died in the mouse after a few seconds, I naturally assumed the battery to be at fault and swapped it for a potentially more vital one, also rolling around in the drawer. This proving futile, as did the definitely new one prized at the cost of a fingernail from packaging, I concluded the mouse had died and that three batteries among the rolling flock were now suspect or, maybe, ticketty boo. Tricky to say until the next battery powered item was hungry.
Fortunately the OH had a spare mouse which I borrowed for a few days, being unable to get to the shops myself as I was rubbing down porcelain, two weeks later than I meant to, thanks to the kitchen refit, and really did not want to either stop, or go to the shops in my rubbing down gear.
If you have met me at Miniatura, you may think me to be a well-dressed, short person, with a new perm and comfortable shoes. If you met me while I am engaged in rubbing down, you might be forgiven for thinking I am an elderly derelict.
It’s the porcelain. The dolls I am making now are under three inches, composed of fourteen parts of mostly hollow porcelain. The only way I can make them at all is to rub the tiny cast pieces very gently with my small fingers encased in old cut-up tights. There is a way of partially firing porcelain and scrubbing it wet with a type of file, but you could never do that with the millimetre pieces I produce, you would destroy them all. So the work of rubbing dry is just that, it generates a lot of very fine dust. The very fine dust settles on everything and is capable of causing silicosis, so I rub down, having covered the table, the floor, the chair and the Welsh dresser in plastic and myself in a full face respirator, a head band and an apron and my very oldest clothing, usually an ancient pair of jeans, and a selection of holey tee shirts circa 1980. The glamour is off the scale.
I change the tee shirts every day in order to spend a week looking like a tramp, but, not a dusty tramp. However, the effort required to get changed to tramp to the shops is just not worth the time lost in which I could be working.
Naturally the minute time is tight, it is also stolen.
On Friday, as it was raining for the (put any large number here that you like) consecutive day, the OH, who volunteers once a week at the hospital, asked for a lift. Taking off my apron but still in tat, I splodged out to the car.
Which would not start.
The OH stood in the downpour outside the car, asking if it would start.
It would not.
The OH vouchsafed the information that we were with the Automobile Association via the bank, he thought, prior to me driving him to the hospital in his car.
Back at home. now covered in wet dust, with my hair plastered to my face and dripping rewetted slip down my neck, I went through the papers.
You really should keep your paperwork up to date, chucking out the old stuff from years ago and only keeping the relevant bits.
Do you? Me neither.
So, as my car was due to be collected for a service and MOT in two weeks time, first I rang the garage. This used to be in my town but has now moved, conveniently, many miles away to another town. They could not collect it A) because they had no drivers and B) because it would not go and C) there was no point anyway because it took four days to order the correct battery.
I tried the phone line of my car insurers. I got a message saying hang up, they no longer had a phone line, they were just online with a portal, so that was no good.
There were more bits of irrelevant paper in two desk drawers than there were dead batteries rolling around in the kitchen drawer. If I had not been short of time because Miniatura is only four weeks away, I’d clear out the drawer.
Nevertheless, eventually, I found the information for the AA, to which, apparently, we did belong. I rang and they arrived before I had time to change into the clothing of a responsible householder. So I answered the door to the AA man with the rain and slip running off my hair through the holes in my tee shirt, and back out to the holes in my shoes.
He looked at me, ‘You have a car? That won’t start?’ The first question seemed unlikely, I admit.
It did not take him three goes with a selection of batteries out of a drawer to determine that the car battery was A) underpowered for the car and not the right one, despite the battery being the one they sold me with the car and B) dead.
We had a brief trot through the ‘my garage which cannot help’ scenario and various possibilities, and a long stand in the pouring rain staring into the car engine, before the AA man suggested Halfords. This is a bicycle and car sundries national chain, who I would never have considered for a car battery. A call to head office produced the information that they did purvey car batteries and that the out of town branch nearest to me might have some in stock. Which did I want?
Er? Happily the AA man was willing to be put on speaker phone and run through a list to find the right one. Having ascertained that my nearest branch, far away at the out of town shopping centre had that one in stock, I paid by card and phone, while the AA man dripped in the porch. I was given a lengthy code, by phone, to prove it was me, should I be able to get to the shop, additionally a necessary text was sent to the OH confirming the purchase. A confirmatory email was also sent fairly pointlessly, to my laptop. The one with the borrowed mouse. Then the AA man, who had to go on another call, got my car going in a one time only, do not stop this car it will never go again, sort of way, I rushed upstairs to change just the holey tee shirt and into a pair of proper shoes also without decorative holes, I got into the car, running on the drive, and drove to the miles way out of town shopping centre without gaps, hesitations or pauses, but a couple of near stalls due to other drivers suddenly pulling out or stopping because of the driving rain making the driving difficult and I drove all the way with my heart in my mouth and into the space by the bollards directly outside the shop whereupon the car stopped permanently. STOP.
However, at the shop all was well. The massive code was accepted without the need to ring the OH to ask what the text was and some cute little colleague, who could easily have been anyone’s granddaughter, bravely stood in the downpour and swapped batteries. I went shopping while she did it, at the suggestion of the lady behind the till, because I really couldn’t get any wetter. Eventually I squashed back into the seat of the re-batteried car, and for lo! She worked. Hooray!
At home the OH complained that his trouser legs had got damp walking home, but I won, as by then my underwear was sodden along with everything else, but I changed slightly, back into the dry holey tee shirt and got on with the rubbing down.
The following day I nerved myself up and got in the car which started. I went to the very local supermarket and bought a new mouse which actually came with a very ordinary battery and that worked too.
Then I worked and worked and finally the kiln went on, first firing, at eight last night.
I could not feel more exhausted if I had yomped up to the ice cream van on the summit of Mount Snowdon with or without the SAS, and giant slalomed back down again.
All that remains is to renew the car insurance with the AA, not the insurers that can only be reached via a magic portal and possibly write an online approval of Halfords customer service, which was, really very good.
And now to get on with work for Miniatura which is in four weeks time, featuring lots of artists who will currently be trying as hard as I am to get a bit of uninterrupted work in. If you would like to see who they are www.miniatura.co.uk will be the online portal that works, with or without batteries.
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