Investing in an Ark

                            
A man wants me to invest in an ark with him. 

More to the point, he wants to build an ark and I will pay for it to be built: which means financing his wages and materials and anything else that comes up; like some housekeeping money for his wife.

Why I ask, not unreasonably I feel.

Because it may never stop raining, he says with patience. Animals can only swim around for so long and then they drown: whereas humans can sit on a roof for a long time: pending cessation of the downpour.

We, meaning he, will do  it and I will pay him to gather a pair of every animal there is to be found locally and bring them into the ark.

When all is dry once more we, that is he and I, will produce them like a magician producing many multicoloured rabbits from a hat and declare we have a monopoly on all the animals left on the earth and they are all ours, now.

This he seems to believe will lead to effective world domination by him, and me, in no time at all.

Which is a good thing, he says without saying why or spelling out which of us will arise first in the morning to do the ruling of the world.

He gives pause for thought when I point out that pairs of animals are like to mate and that if the rains last for a long time the new animals may very well take over the ark and decide to sail away to an  new Animaland across the sea, without us.

While he considers this possibility, the sun comes out and the rain stops.

He is terribly sad at this turn of events.

He goes home to explain to his wife that climate change has thwarted their ambition.

Once more.

I put my rain hat in my pocket and walk on.

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One coin is like another

I watch the cashier and calculate my change so I can casually check it while lifting my purchase with my other hand.I tire of being shortchanged by underpaid till jockeys supplementing their rent by imposing a thief's levy on unsuspecting shoppers.

Before me, an older woman waits after the till is closed. She has a few pastries in a bag.
"Was there anything else, Madame," asks the suddenly wary sales assistant.

She says she handed over three two-euro coins totalling six euro; but received change from a fiver.

The man opens the till and stares at the tumbled coins and notes of many transaction. He says yes you are right, I have your other euro here in my hand for you. Did you want anything else?

She shakes her sorrowful head and walks to a table to clutch her paper bag and await the arrival of someone else, who seems in no hurry to appear.

The same thing has happened to me, thrice, in different places in the past few weeks. All challenged by me, all apologised for as a mistake.

If it was a mistake, why did they not mistakenly give me too much change?

On my way out, I think to bond with the pastry buyer; but she flicks her wrist and produces a two-euro coin secreted by her in her coat. She had handed over not three coins, but two, to a value of four euro and received change of five.

She is in short, a thief, and the till jockey is not only an honest human but is now short of his employers' takings.

Do the police know who she is, or should I lock her in and ring them, I wonder?

I do neither; but watch out for pickpocketing grannies on my way home.

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Talking Dogs

A woman with a dog stops me to talk to me about her dog and about mine.
I don't mind that she coos over my dog and asks me her name and then speaks to my dog in a familiar way without having been first introduced to my free-running companion.
She tells me what her dog's name is and waits. So does her dog, who is on a lead with a little bell on it to remind him at every step that a human owns him.

I don't feel I can enthuse about a dog I have just met on the way to the river. Me and my dog are going for a swim. Well, she is, and I am going to stand there and try not to get wet when she shakes herself dry.

I don't say this to my dog's new best friend.

She may want to come with me and learn our secret way across the grass to the best place to swim.

We get away and I make a note to travel a different route for a year or so to avoid such an encounter being repeated.

People with dogs can be odd creatures if you meet them unexpectedly on the road, on a sunny morning.

Best avoided.
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