Midsummer Madness

It started when I saw the next neighbour's dog in my back garden. There should be no dog in my garden. Only cats. I go out to shoo it off. It remains. It barks at me. Then it runs at me. I do not expect to be run out of my own garden.

I walk to the shops. The traffic lights at the top of the road are out. Yet cars swim elegantly in and out of one and other as if guided by some super sixth sense.

Reaching my corner shop the shop keeper is shooing people away in the manner that I had shooed my neighbour's dog away. I am allowed in. There are no lights on. I pick out a birthday card for a friend in semi-darkness. I discover there is a power cut. The shop keeper is only allowing in familiar faces.

Walking back home, house alarms bleep with annoying insistence. People stand on their doorsteps looking up into the sky as they will seek revenge. I pass a man wearing a fluorescent jacket trying to get into an electrical substation armed with WD40 and crowbar. A car breaks down just as it levells with me.

I am back in my house. Four collared doves are on my lawn, sitting casually as if they are on lunchbreak. Two have just flown onto the roof of an outbuilding in front of me. One is trying to shag the other.

A mouse appears on top of my washing machine.

I drive to get some chips. For once I have no trouble parking. I sit waiting in the car as Mr Scribbles gets the food. The chip shop displays a big sign saying there will be free chips for everyone "when England wins the world cup".

A man on a scooter pulls up in front of me and comes to my window. He too is wearing a fluorescent jacket. He tells me, with all the style and grace of robot with a low IQ, that there is no parking. I have been parking here every Thursday for thirteen years. I ask him since when was no parking allowed? Since always, I am told. Words came out of the man's mouth, but his eyes are dead. No parking until 6.45pm.

I am home again, the first article I see on the local news is about the confusing parking laws in this country and the over eager enforcement of them by incentivised robots with low IQs.

I eat my chips. We put on the football. An Albion player is playing against Brazil.

It is past eight o'clock at night and it is as light outside as if it were mid afternoon.