Gull on a Wall

I'd given the go-ahead to the garage on Tuesday to fix the electric window on the driver's side of my Renault and do a temporary fix on the passenger window to ensure it stayed closed (I'll get that fixed after another four to six weeks, just to spread out the cost). As before, the service manager was very helpful and came up with money-saving suggestions. He told me first the car would be ready yesterday, but I told him not to rush and that I'd pick it up today (thinking that I'd be too busy playing around with my new high-speed fibre optic cable broadband).

He wouldn't be around himself after noon, he said, but he promised to leave a note to get the service department to phone me when the car was ready. There was no sign of a phone call up to 3.30, so I phoned the garage.

Yes, your car's ready and waiting.
Since when? I asked.

Since this morning.
Somebody was supposed to call me.

Didn't they? There's a note here with your mobile number. That suggests the call was made.
Well, I got no call, and there's nothing on the phone to indicate that I missed a call. Look, there's no point making my way over to you at this time. I'll leave it until tomorrow morning to pick up the car. Can you remind me what bus I get?

I've no idea. I know it comes along the N4, but I don't know what number it is.
Well that isn't very helpful, is it? I said to myself, and put down the phone.


What is it with service people? yesterday's experience with my broadband connection was disappointing enough, but this attitude in the garage took the biscuit.

It wasn't much of a reaction in terms of calming myself down, but all I could think of was to go for a walk. Why I decided to do what I did, I have no idea. Rather than go out somewhere nice in the open air, whether up a hill or along the coast or to the sea, what I actually did was walk all the way in to town. I blipped along the way, but this turned out to be the best of a rather large crop of mediocre results. This gull was amazingly unflustered as I crept closer and closer, hoping all the time it wouldn't fly away as they usually do. Far from it. It just stood there, stock-still while I adjusted depth of field and focus. Ideally I would have liked to be closer and not to have zoomed as much as I did, but the bird's patience somehow helped to calm me down after the disappointments of the past two days, and I was nicely laid back by the time I got the bus back home.