Wheels Of Misfortune

There was nothing unusual about the journey to work today.

We were late because we can't get out of bed. We had to stop for petrol because we couldn't be bothered to do so on the way home last night. Emma had to use my card to pay for it because I couldn't be bothered to go out to the cash machine in my lunch hour yesterday. I have too many books to read. None of these things are in any way unusual.

We got stuck in traffic. No matter how late you are, even on a Friday, you can expect to find yourself stuck in traffic on the way to work in the morning. So we crept along in the usual fashion. I sang GooGoo Dolls songs badly and, in places, wrongly, aswell as a few highly similar sounding tunes by The Script. None of these things are remotely unusual.

When we got to work the LJMU catering delivery man was blocking the disabled car park. This is not unusual. There was just enough room to squeeze by him into the first bay which, on a daily basis, seems to have more and more obstacles around it. Wheelie bins mostly, the odd skip makes an appearance to test your driving skills further. None of this is unusual.

Emma got out of the car and as I opened my door she said;

"We're going to have to go home."

She was half-smiling, not seeming overly concerned.

"Why?" I said.

"We haven't brought the wheels with us."

The wheels she is referring to are those usually found on either side of my wheelchair. Somehow we have managed to avoid bringing them with us. At this point I should take a little responsibility. A little. Emma puts the chair in the car in the morning because if I did it then she would have to sit in the back, because I can only put it in the front seat beside me in the driver's seat. I am guilty of taking this rather for granted. Only today she has not done it so she's right. We have to go home.

Before we get out of the gate I compound our error by scratching the car. While I am incredulously taking in the fact that we have come to work without my wheels several new and interesting obstacles appear to have sprouted up behind me in the car park. They may have been there all along actually but I'm too flustered to be sure either way. In any event I reverse straight into one of the wheelie bins, this despite the fact that my car beeps furiously at me whenever I get within the proverbial country mile of colliding with anything located behind me. Call it annoyance, bewilderment, whatever, I have ignored the beeps and bumped the car.

The drive home is particularly quiet. We're not screaming and shouting at each other in the manner of a couple who between them have fucked things up spectacularly and yes, royally. There's just a stunned silence and probably a mutual acceptance that any futher discussion of the situation is superfluous. We just have to get back and pick the bloody wheels up. Emma rings my sister, Helen, firstly to ask if she can find them and reclaim them before they are stolen from the front of my house (Helen lives just down the road, like every member of my family going back about 36 generations), and then when it emerges that Helen is on her way to work, to find out if she has seen the wheels when she passed our house. She hadn't. Not unnaturally, Helen finds the whole situation highly amusing.

Thankfully when we arrive at the house we find the wheels. There is a scary moment when I think that we won't, because they are not strewn across the pavement outside the house in the way I had predicted they would be. Someone, probably our next door neighbour, has very kindly picked them up and rested them against the front door. Emma gets out of the car (I can't, remember?) and puts the wheels back in their rightful place. I phone a work colleague to explain the farcical situation. We go back to work.

By the time I arrive I am almost two hours late. I switch on my phone to find several text messages from my work colleagues, all of which are in various ways mocking me for my lunacy. Replies are as superfluous as trying to discuss how something like this happens, so instead I take it all on the chin and don't mention it to any of them. They'd enjoy it rather too much for my liking and I'm still a bit steamed up about the fact that I have bumped my car to add to my woes.

All of which proves beyond any reasonable doubt that, contrary to the persisent claims of one of my colleagues in particular, Friday is shite. There is no more chance of a Friday at work being enjoyable than there is of any other day at work being enjoyable. It is arrant nonsense to believe it any better just because you get two days off at the end of it. You still have to live it. Friday is fucking crap.

Nothing unusual about that.