Wind and Rain and S**t and Stuff

Suddenly, it has become Autumn. I set off for Sainsbugs yesterday to get milk and other essentials, made it about 200 yards down the road and got beaten back home to retrieve my winter coat to protect me against the sudden onslaught of wind and rain.

As I took my winter coat from the wardrobe where it has been nestling in blissful disuse for the last 6 months, I stared out of the bedroom window at the rain coming down at 45 degree angles and the wind bending the trees and denuding them of their leaves and I thought 'Blimey, I don't think I can be bothered to go to Sainsbugs now. It looks too much like hard work.'

The thought of a twenty minute walk downhill there in the wind and rain and the twenty minute uphill walk back in the wind and rain laden with a couple of heavy shopping bags did not thrill me. Nay, no verily it did not.

And do you know what? I almost, almost gave in to this threat of defeat. Oh how easy it would have been to stay in the warm and dry and read, or sew, or fiddle with some writing. But then I thought, no. You are made of sterner stuff than this. You have had a s****y few weeks, what with one worry after another all piling in on top of each other, none of them even bothering to take a ticket and form a nice orderly queue to be dealt with calmly and sensibly. And you've had to deal with them yourself because when you asked a friend for help, they backed away, did not want to know, like their life, their problems were so much more important than yours.

And you did it. You got your head around things, did a bit of crying and huffing, straightened out a few things in your heart and head and have now achieved a sense of calm and purpose and direction.

SO GET THEE TO SAINSBUGS THIS INSTANT, AND BUY MILK!

So I did.

And whilst I was in Sainsbugs, all wet and windswept and done up in my winter coat which was my old dog walking coat from ten years ago and is now three sizes too big for me so perhaps I did look a bit of a sight, I don't know, I was only out to buy milk, I was turned on in the cereal aisle by a man, a foreign man, who looked straight at me, shouted something loudly in foreign, laughed right in my face and marched off with his pal, both laughing loudly.

At this point I thought, 'So, the President of S***dom is still in office.'

And I wanted to stand in the cereal aisle between the muesli and the Sainsbugs own 'Golden- Nuggets-Rots-Your-Teeth -Unless -They- Break-Them-First' and cry because this verbal assault was totally unwarranted.

But sometimes things happen in life for which there is no rhyme or reason. How do we deal with them? Retaliate? Air our dirty laundry in public and end up participating in an undignified and ugly slanging match? Cry? (This was my favourite option at that time). Or maintain a dignified silence, resisting the urge to decry our detractors and attackers because we knows in our heart that we are justified in our feelings and actions and, like Mary Poppins, do not need to explain ourselves?

So I got to the checkout, tears in check, and paid for my goods. I walked further into town on a mission. The rain and wind had stopped and the sun was coming out. I took off my winter coat and squashed it into my already full shopping bags. One of the shopping bag straps broke. My tears nearly broke too, but I continued on my march and found myself in a hairdressers.

And on Thursday I am going back to that hairdressers for a tint and a re-style.

Enough of grey

Good-bye to grey.

Good-bye.