How utterly, utterly typical!

You may remember, or you may not, the incident last September when a cretinous fool caused me to have to attempt to run a small marathon in order to detain him for theft.

A time later I was required to attend an identity parade, which I duly did, and then it was a waiting game, waiting to hear if 'Joe Toe-rag', he of idiot proportions,would plead guilty or not and whether I would be called as a witness.

Time went by and I forgot about it, or rather I persuaded myself forget about it. The whole hoo ha, and particularly my employers response to my efforts at saving their expensive stock, annoyed me intensely, their only reaction had been to chastise me for 'not adhering to company policy, blah, blah, blah' in giving chase, not a word of thanks, absolutely zip gratitude! So, to save myself mulling and fidgeting about said response I stopped thinking about it....that was until today.

Today the inevitable happened, a letter requesting my presence at court arrived with a plonk on the doormat, of course Joe Toe-rag hadn't done the decent thing, of course he hadn't pleaded guilty, do they ever?

This in itself is not a problem, I will happily potter into court and say my bit, what is a problem though, is that having moved heaven and earth for PG and I to get a few days off work together and visit my parents for the first time since last summer and the only time we can, before this coming summer, the court date is smack, bang in the middle of our planned week away in London!

Bloody, sodding typical! There are 365 days in the year, almost any other one of them would have been just fine and dandy with me but no, that would be way too straightforward, it just had to be in the middle of our holiday didn't it!

Our traveling dates and the length of visit make it pointless to go sooner in the week or later, as much as I love to see my parents an 800 mile drive for one or two days just isn't viable.

Bugger, bugger, bugger!

So I have done what I can, I have alerted my parents and I have called the 'powers that be' in the world of court dates and they are 'seeing what they can do'. Quite what they can do I don't know but I suspect not much. Forgive my cynicism but I imagine I would have more chance of consideration if I were on the opposite side of the law.

So that's it, my efforts have earned me a telling off from the employer who's gear I was recovering, half a day fiddling about going to an I.D. parade, damn sore legs at the time (I'm too old for this running malarky) and now likely the cancellation of a much anticipated holiday, probably only to go into court, hang around for a morning and hear that the case has been adjourned for one thing or another.......... and I don't have to appear yet afterall! Oh and of course, there is always the possibility the Joe Toe-rag will change his plea at the eleventh hour.

Arghhhhhhhhh!