Lying Again

Champagne three days in a row! Can I really plead poverty?

Champagne at my sister's house in Fulham to toast Beloved Daughter's 11th birthday.  Champagne at Saddlers Hall in the CIty, to start a family lunch under chandaliers for 49. And champagne at lunch on Sunday in Wimbledon Village - because the sun's shining and we're feeling good.

Life continues in its crazy surreal trajectory, not helped by staying up drinking and smoking til four in the morning at my best friend Annabelle's house in Putney, at the beginning of the weekend.  It felt so comfortable, and I was concentrating to remember every sage word that fell from her lips, and I just didn't feel tipsey at all. It takes a while to feel normal again after all that though, especially if you're sharing a bed with a Beloved Daughter who suffers from eczma and kicks.

Tonight I complete my first three consecutive nights spent in one place, in three weeks. I can't wait to fall back to earth. I returned from London to two enquiries about the Range Rover and a man and a woman arranged to come and see it, between Beloved Daughter's and my ride to Princetown for lunch; and a dinner party  for my best local friends in the evening.

I leap off my wonder-horse and throw her out into her field in the rain, and  inspect the Range Rover, which I haven't looked at in ages.  It has earth all round the bottom, muddy wheels and tyres.  I rummage around in Ex's old Bothie and find a plastic container full of bottles of car cleaning stuff. It's raining though - what good is wax in that? I half-heartedly fill a bucket with tepid water and rub some of the mud off bits of the car with a small flannel.  I squirt the tyre-cleaner onto the muddy tyres, where it stays looking like white goo, and it is time for the potential buyers, armed with £7000 in cash, to arrive.

"I am sad," I explain to the overweight lady, "because if you buy it, I know it's gone and it's worth more than £7000, but if you don't buy it I will be sad too."

They look around it, noting the dent, the scratches and the chewed bit.  Luckily when the man presses the button to make the car go up and down, it seems to do its thing, as I am leaning against it at the time and nearly fall over. They open the back door and all my muddy washing water suddenly gushes out.  Then they drive off in it, leaving their Jaguar with its personalised numberplate, as surety.

They're rather a long time.  I have been too trusting.

Eventually the doorbell rings.  It's the lady.

"I think it's run out of diesel," she explains.

Oh God, it's done it again. That bloody fuel indicator.  Says there's 100 miles of fuel left, when there's none, and my potential buyers have been stranded in the rain.  Bloody car.  Lying again.

I join them in the hurricane and (happily) find a left-over gallon of diesel to help them get up the last few yards of driveway.

The couple say they will call me in an hour or two, when they've had time to think about it over a meal at the Plume of Feathers in Princetown, where the horses, Freya and I have just had lunch.  The call will interrupt my dinner party, but what the Hell.

It never comes.