Within Working Days

A thing continues not to happen. It's up to me how often it hasn't happened because I find out whether or not it's happened by checking my email. So lots. For a while I was checking it fifteen times a day. Although I hadn't heard the new message ding I thought one might've snuck in while I was thinking about all the insurance I'd have to get for all the stuff I'd be able to afford if the email contained the right kind of news. And then I started imagining I'd heard the ding while staring into the potato cupboard or rearranging the cobwebs in the bedroom. And I'd hurtle to the computer but the thirteen thousand unread emails hadn't turned into thirteen thousand and one. And I'd leave the house and trudge up hills and waddle along ridges and plod down slopes and pinball through copses and springbok over trenches under overwrought javelin rain, hearing the ding come out of passing cars and handbags and tanks twenty times a minute thinking one of these must be a sign, and I'd get home and towel off and microwave a plate of the dauphinoise of the week and kick open the computer, drooling, and the number at the top of the leftmost tab'd read thirteen thousand and one, and I'd click on it, and there'd be an email from someone I'd never met, asking me to throw woe at an overlord to raise its awareness of a disease bonanza or boring old massacre, and I'd eat the dauphinoise thinking things are bound to get better.