Keeping a watchful eye on the Technohermit now includes helping out with the odd errand, and he has just given us a very odd errand.
We are quite used to getting phone calls at strange times now asking us if we are going into town, could we bring him a bag of spuds. This involves further conversations about size of bag, location in shop, price, who planted them, where they were in the row and other seemingly banal detail that is lost on yours truly but of great significance to the Hermit who ruthlessly interrogates me when I deliver the spuds. None have ever been rejected but many have had the exhalation of disdain when, under cross examination, he discovers they are correct in every detail except for number of eyes.
We also fetch coal for him and even been entrusted to get him a gallon of petrol. I think he likes the twice weekly contact as I take him his dinner and he really likes being able to phone for help. He did this the other night, the poor chap had really hurt his back moving a battery. I have since seen the battery and where the Technohermit acquired a battery that size is a bit of a mystery. The Americans were stationed on the hill next to ours during WW2 and the battery looks suspiciously like it came off one of their tanks. Anyway the geriatric hermit had tried to move it and seized up. This meant he couldn't ride the four miles to town to fetch his baked beans. Never fear, Rene's here and soon Hermit and Beans were united.
I took him his dinner and we had the usual pleasant conversation about the weather, space stations and his bad feet, all spiced with ooohs and ahhhs caused by his bad back. I asked him if there was anything he needed from town.
He paused.
There was something. He had a watch. A very special and valuable watch that needed a jeweler to look at it as it had stopped. I was intrigued, of course I would take it to be looked at. He made me turn around while he went to fetch it from its secret place. As I turned back in the darkness I saw the flash of metal as he told me to be careful with it, it was valuable, worth a lot. He handed it over with a whole five pounds to offer the nice jeweler man to have a look at his worldly good.
I took the watch and even in the dark I knew one thing about it.
Weightier items have fallen out of crackers.
I wait with interest to see the reaction of the jeweller when I take it in tomorrow.
see http://www.herefordtimes.com/news/blogs/4207611.Animals_/ for a different tale.
No comments:
Post a Comment