The Way-Too-Shortness of Life

Well, what a peculiar day.  I woke up this morning feeling a little sad, my subconscious mourning overnight the loss a good friend.  To be honest with you, I felt quite heroically tragic in a wronged woman kind of way.  I considered wearing black for the day and wearing flat shoes and, ooh-ooh, may be even a veil, one so diaphanous that it gave my face the gorgeous, steam-ironed appearance of being airbrushed.  But then El Hombre snapped me out of it by pulling his underpants on.

"Why," I asked, "do men always have to make an impressive sound effect whenever handling their genitals?  You make a noise like some colossus has just walked into the room.  I have eyes, I know the truth."
"You're just jealous," he announced enigmatically, before heading off downstairs leaving me to lament the demise of my pal.

Oh, he's not properly, y'know,

without pulse or flowing circulation.  He's just dead to me, for reasons that I will not go into other than to say a third party was involved who had the BIGGEST wooden spoon in the history of tree-derived kitchen implements.  And I think I've taken it so badly because he was the first really good friend I made on moving up to the Borders.  It feels like the end of an era, but with a new one dawning, etc, etc, etc.

I have to say I love living in the Borders.  Our social life crackles more fiercely than it ever did down South.  It started off as sheer bloody nosiness under a thin veneer of neighbourliness, but then we got lucky and things have developed into valuable friendships.  Okay, sometimes it's nice to be able to fart in the breeze and not have the villagers two miles away know it was you but, hey, it's the small price you pay for always knowing someone who can do this:

 And has one of these:

A drive to Kelso should lift my spirits, I decided.  There's nothing like a quick wobble over cobbles to chase away the blues, especially if you try to put lipstick on at the same time.

And I was right.  Kelso delivered me into the foaming jaws of a  road-ragist... rager... a shouty woman.  I drove into a parking space next to her, her daughter opened her passenger door and hit my car, the mother proceeds to get out of the car and sound off.  At me.  For her hitting MY car.  Bless. Aren't people funny? You just had to love her for her CRAZY nature and her overabundance of  enthusiastic  IRRATIONALITY!  She was all:

And I was all:

She absolutely made my day by reminding me not to sweat the small stuff.

So I sent an email to my friend wishing him well.