What an utterly bizarre cock-up of an afternoon!
Disappointingly, after only one set of Nadal's first round match at Wimbledon, I had to leave to go to teach. Off I went into the blazing sun, onto the AC-free Metro, off the Metro one stop before my student's class because the line is shut. Walked for 20 minutes to her building, pressed the buzzer, waited, waited a bit longer, buzzed again. Finally, a voice said "Si?" "It's Emma" I said, cheerfully. Silence. "Oh. I. Um. I. Er..." Entryphone went dead, leaving me standing in the street burning my bonce! Then my mobile rang. It was my student, who said "I thought I told you I had to cancel class today". And yes, she had. Last week. When I didn't have my diary with me, so when I got home last week, I wrote it in the wrong week and showed next week's class as cancelled. Crap! Oh well, head home to catch maybe the end of the Nadal match, I thought.
Over to the bus stop with me for the nice, quiet, air-conditioned number 21 which comes every 6 or 7 minutes. Or not. 20 minutes later, it finally turned up. On I got, and plonked myself at the back for the short ride. At the next stop, I thought maybe I'd entered some kind of alternative dimension. Waiting at the stop, for my bus, was a huge group of pensioners along with their, um, supervisors? Helpers? Guards? Whatever! There were 55 of them (yes, I counted) - 45 excited (drunk?) and very chatty "people of the third age" and 10 nuns! On they piled, taking as long to get on as my entire journey should have taken. It was hot and loud and very squashed. When I could see my stop coming up, I rang the bell and struggled valiantly to get out of my seat and to the exit. To absolutely no avail. There was no getting past this sea of age and wisdom. The bus stopped for about 2 seconds then drove off again.
I managed to escape the bus hell at the next stop which turned out to be much closer to Metro Alonso Martinez, than to Bilbao where I'd wanted to get off. Fine. I'll get the Metro there, change lines and get home!
So I descended the 4 escalators to the steaming depths of Line 10 where another AC-free Metro whisked me to Plaza de Castilla where just one more change would have me in sight of the flat. Or not. Again. This time, an inexplicable problem (OK, that should be incomprehensible cos I didn't understand half the tannoy announcement) meant no Line 1. So back up to the roasting hot street with me to walk home.
By now, it was nearly 2 hours since I'd left the flat, I hadn't taught, hadn't earnt any money and I was hot, tired and fed up. With one result - a HUGE bag of fries from the nearest fast food place (something I haven't done in many, many years!)
Yes, no-one but myself to blame for screwing up the date of the cancellation but even so, sense of humour failure was threatening.
