I went from fast asleep to wide awake very quickly this morning. Usually, it is an orderly process of waking up, collecting thoughts and checking everything is where I Ieft it the night before and eventually getting out of bed when I deem the time to be right. This morning, there were no niceties involved and I was up and at them, whatever ‘them’ is, in one swift manoeuvre. It put me right off my stride, I can tell you.

The issue was that I had to get the truck to the garage for its service in a timely manner to give the mechanics an even chance of getting all the work done in a day. I had a sneaking suspicion that it would be more than one day, anyway, because I seem to recall that there was a bit more to do this year; shock absorbers, overhead foxbats, and mainspring flanges greased, that sort of thing. Before I set off, there were a number of things to do, not least finishing off The Diary for the previous day with enough time to publish it and walking the girls. I got around to walking the girls, but The Diary had to wait, apologies.

We make an arrangement with the garage that we take a loan vehicle for the duration of the work, which is very good of them. It is not all that good of them as it never has any fuel in it and if we need to go further than to The Cove and back, we must fuel up. I did not bother on this occasion, as I did not think we would be using it much. I had forgotten all about Mother having and appointment in St Just which is the opposite direction of the most convenient petrol stations. I had also forgotten Mother’s blue park anywhere card – another unforgivable misdemeanour.

On the bright side, the garage had swopped out their aging courtesy Model T Fords for a spanking new, well, fourteen year old Audi A1 Sport. It was in remarkably good shape for its age and apart from some odd stickers on the paintwork – the faded remnants of go-faster stripes, perhaps – it looked the part as well. I took a few minutes before going to get used to the feeling of being posh and being in a vehicle that was not covered in rust and mud. I then explored where all the buttons and levers were that I would need to press and pull to make it go to where I wanted it to and reasonably safely. I must say, it was very nippy and clung to the road and the corners like a limpet. It handbrake turns very sharply and makes for excellent donuts in the Harbour car park.

It was about an hour later that the Missus reminded me that she would be driving it to take Mother to her appointment. I told her about the fuel situation but said that there would be enough to get her to Penzance, where she was heading after the appointment, so she could put some petrol in it. I had actually remembered to ask which fuel type it took. Usually, I arrive at the petrol station and have to gamble that there is a label on it somewhere.

Not five minutes later, as I was halfway through a very palatable scrambled egg on toast breakfast, the Missus called to tell me that the car would not start. It was at this point that I remembered that I had not turned off the headlights which I turn on regardless of the weather or time of day when driving anywhere. The truck takes care of such carelessness by giving off an audible alarm if I have left the lights on and if I ignore that, it will turn them off for me. The Audi apparently has no such feature and happily allowed me to depart the stationery vehicle with the headlights blazing. 

We have one of those small and very effective power packs that I have used on numerous occasions to start visitor cars when they have found themselves in such predicaments. We keep it in the back of the truck in case we ever need it ourselves. This is where it still was, six miles away on the ramp at the garage at Buryas Bridge. Fortunately, the Lifeboat station has one, kept in the Inshore Lifeboat shed – or more accurately had one in the ILB shed. I went up to the crew room to ask where it was, interrupting a meeting of three Lifeboat mechanics who, without being asked, leapt to my assistance. 

It seems that the Harbour keeps a power pack and our Coxswain, also a fisherman, went off to get it while the remaining two mechanics assessed the issues, the first being there was no battery under the lid. Apparently, it is in the boot which we could not get to because the keys were not working because the battery was dead. Being experienced mechanics, they quickly worked out that there were terminals under the bonnet but not immediately obvious which were positive and negative. 

We were all rather surprised that the battery had run down so completely after what was not a very long time with the lights on. They suspected that the battery was not as efficient as perhaps it might be. Attaching the Harbour power pack initially had little effect, only to light up the dashboard panel with a warning that the security lock had engaged. To release the lock, the car needed to be unlocked with key fob which was not working because there was insufficient power.

They eventually got the car started after waiting a while for the power pack to transfer sufficient power. During the stalemate, the Missus had to cancel Mother’s appointment. Since we were still not sure about the state of the battery, I arranged that I would head into town to do the shopping that the Missus intended to do and, on the way, collect our power pack from the garage just in case it was needed. This I did, but again forgot the get out of jail free parking badge.

Once in town I also stopped at the petrol station. Another thing that I had forgotten to check was how to open the fuel filler door. Each vehicle seems to be different with either a press of the door itself or a lever or switch inside the car. I remembered that I had forgotten to ask as I pulled alongside the pump, quite fortuitously on the correct side, having forgotten to establish that as well. Just to further define my predicament, I had apparently chosen the busiest time of the day and immediately a car pulled up behind me to wait its turn.

Now under pressure, and since I could not immediately see a button or lever, I tried pressing the fuel cap door which resolutely refused to move. Convinced therefore that there must be an internal lever or button, I went about searching all the obvious places and when that offered no positive result, looked in a few not so obvious places, including the passenger side since it was a foreign car. There was either no button or lever, or it was exceedingly well hidden. As I imagined the driver of the car behind me seething with impatience, I decided it was prudent to withdraw, find a less inconvenient spot and recommence my search. 

One of my sweeps of the interior included the glove compartment wherein I found the car’s documents and user guide. Remembering the acronym RTFM, that encourages the daft and hard of thinking to make use of such a guide, I thumbed through for instructions that should reveal the whereabouts of the elusive switch. It became clear very quickly that there was no such hidden button and I had merely failed to push the door in the correct spot or hard enough. Sure enough, when I tried again, it sprang open with ease.

If I thought that the day had finished with its unrelenting torrent of vicissitudes upon my person and that no further punishment or ignominy could be lavished upon me, I was gravely mistaken. Relieved that I had found a solution to the filler cap issue, I casually drove back to the petrol pumps. Parking at a convenient spot, I got out of the car and pressed the button to seek attention from the attendant. I suppose that I should be grateful that I could not see him at this point because his face would have been a mask of derision, I am sure. I had picked the only pump on the forecourt that had large caps over both the pump handles that I might have selected showing that the were out of use. I had to climb back into the car, manoeuvre around a car that had queued up behind me and move to a working pump. The only comfort that I might derive from any part of my existence in the previous hour or so was that the car started each time after I switched it off.

I should have taken note and found greater enjoyment in my drive home because it was the only time I was not standing up doing something until well into the afternoon. No sooner had I arrived home and discovered that we were already into the early part of the afternoon, I went immediately – well, after a cup of tea and a biscuit – remember I had abandoned half my breakfast earlier – down to the shop to continue my work on cleaning shelves and making ready for opening the shop.

There is no easy method or shortcut in cleaning the shelves or mopping the floors. It is simply a case of getting on with it. I had thought that I had done half of the middle aisle the day before but discovered that it was rather less than that. I also discovered when I updated our inventory records with data from The Farm that I had omitted to count the t-shirts in the shop. There are not that many of these and we will need to place an order this year, at least for children’s sizes. We might manage for adult ones until next year, which will be helpful.

I found that having finished the shelves I had to mop the middle aisle again having already done that area before I moved the furniture back. The shelves are dusty enough that it affects the floor when they are swept. Also doing the gift aisle it only left the grocery aisle which I will do after I or the Missus finishes with the shelves.

The next thing to do was to sweep the groceries for out of date stock. Over the years we have become quite efficient at running down the stock levels but sometimes it is inescapable that whole cases of, say, crisps and soft drinks are left over. I went around the aisle with a trolley and deposited the items in it for sorting into donation or throwing away. This is the hardest and most traumatic job of all for a grumpy and tight shopkeeper; it is difficult seeing the best before dates with eyes full of tears. 

Most of the out of date stock were indeed crisps and soft drinks – they commonly are. The date refers to the ‘best before’ date and the products themselves are most usually perfectly edible or drinkable. Unfortunately, many of our customers would eschew such purchases fearing that they would be poisoned by mouldy and contaminated produce – we struggle to get rid of bread with two days left on the date, for heaven’s sake. There are occasionally some products that are indeed beyond the pail, and I poured a dozen bottles of orange juice down the drain outside.

Given that I was a quivering and weeping vessel after such horrific actions, I decided to retire after delivering the boxes and bags to the Lifeboat station. No one feeds Lifeboat persons at home and any food delivered to the station disappears almost the moment it arrives. It is a well-known fact. That I was not mobbed by ravenous persons in yellow when I dropped it off was itself something of a curiosity.

That was it, as far as I was concerned. I had endured more than could be expected of a normal person in the pursuit of simply getting from one end of the day to the other. I had every intention of shutting the door, gluing myself to the sofa for the remainder of the evening and excluding the vagaries of the outside world forever – or at least tomorrow. Then I remembered I had to take the girls out. Later, then.