It was a very nice day and I decided to catch-up on some gardening. The first thing I had to do was trim my hedges. They were woefully over-grown. I pulled out the hedge-clippers and started work. Now I know how hedge-trimmers work. One thing that they tend not to do is emit a lot of smoke. Seeing that smoke I started to suspect that there might be something wrong with them. When that smoke was followed by flame I was even surer and placed the clippers down where they wouldn't hurt anything.
OK. Maybe I didn't exactly place them down. It was more of a case of shouting, "Holy shit," and chucking them out onto the road, well away from me, where they would cease trying to incinerate me and melt the road, instead.
Once the fire died down I recovered the corpse and dropped it in the rubbish. Then I rang up Michael, a friend of mine. I explained my predicament and, after making sure they weren't the catching fire type, asked if I could borrow his clippers. He was quite agreeable.
"Thing is," he told me, "the wife and I are heading out in five minutes so there won't be anyone home. I'll leave the clippers on the table on the back veranda. Just trot around the back and grab them. Don't forget to lock the gates when you leave."
"No worries, mate," I told him, got cleaned up a bit and headed off.
- - - -
My parents were going to be out for the day and I was supposed to go over and spend the day with Jan. I was all ready to head on over to her place when she called me. Our date was off. She'd just been asked out by Paul and when it becomes a choice of spending some girl time with an eighteen year old girl or some possibly passionate time with a nineteen year old boy it's a case of, "Sayonara, my friend. I'll give you all the passionate details later."
I could relate to that. I'd probably do the same thing myself. I'd also be sure to bug Jan about how far she went with Paul and why didn't she go further. Unless she did go further, in which case she might clam up. Or she might not, depending on how well things went.
This now left me with nothing planned for the afternoon. However, it was a fine sunny day, my parents were out so I had privacy, and no-one overlooked our back yard. These facts added up to a chance for me to do some serious tanning in private with no tan lines. I grabbed a towel, spread it on the grass out the back, stripped off, and offered myself to the sun-god.
I was feeling nice and warm, just lying on my back, feeling as though I was floating. I had some sunscreen on, enough to make sure I tanned without burning. Relaxed, with nothing to bother me, my phone playing some quiet music.
With my eyes closed I could tell when a cloud moved in front of the sun as the light against my eyelids dimmed. It couldn't have been much of a cloud as I could still feel the glowing warmth on the rest of my body. I waited for the sun to come out from behind the cloud but it didn't happen.
Surprised, I opened my eyes to check out just how cloudy it had gotten. The answer was, it hadn't. There was someone standing next to me, blocking the sunlight. For some reason it didn't even occur to me that I was naked. I just looked up at this person, slightly surprised to find them in our yard.
The man moved so he was no longer blocking the sun and now that the sun wasn't behind him I was actually able to focus on him, recognizing him. His name was David and he was a friend of my father. I only knew him casually, but I did know him so I had no reason to get upset. I waited for him to tell me why he was there.
