Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

My toilet ultimatum to the builder boyfriend

Either make it flush or find yourself another girlfriend, I told him

Credit: bymuratdeniz

The rain showers had a strange and wondrous effect. All the cyclists, joggers and dog walkers that were coming from miles away to take their essential exercise in the countryside magically disappeared.

No one we didn’t recognise took any essential exercise in the downpours, but then resumed it when the weather changed.

I find this odd because the explanation of the day-trippers for putting their bikes and their backpacks and their hiking equipment and their picnic baskets into the backs of their cars had been that they really, really needed to do that — come hell, high water or Covid.

The locked-down inhabitants of towns and cities needed to pedal around the countryside hour after hour, day in day out, so badly that we lot who live here ought to get out of their way.

When we were coming out of our houses to get food or see to livestock, or when we were attempting to walk our dogs or ride our horses down the lanes and bridleways by our own farms and fields, they intimated that we should throw ourselves into hedges as they came past to assure them of their two-metre distance.

The upstairs loo hasn’t performed in months and is getting beyond a joke

So I was delighted that the cycling, jogging and essential picnicking masses underwent a Damascene conversion on the matter of taking these unprecedentedly conscientious bouts of daily exercise and reverted to slobbery, which meant the rest of us who exercise 365 days a year in all weathers could walk our dogs and get our horses out of their paddocks as usual.

I celebrated by hacking to the woods on Darcy and we had a lovely ride in the rain, with no barking dogs snapping round her legs, and no cyclists foaming at the seams with adrenaline as they sped past so close they knocked their handlebars against my stirrups.

Alas, when the showers abated, the Pandemic Picnickers swarmed forth again to rampage down the footpaths, backpacks bursting with essential sandwiches in essential plastic bags that were duly thrown on to village greens and lay-bys.

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