Missing the Lady B and Managing the Beetroot.

I attended the village school Well Dressing ceremony this lunchtime. It was held in the village hall which adjoins the school because it was raining and therefore too wet to be held at the actual well which stands at the side of the lane. (It seemed a little ironic that the well was put there to provide water, but it couldn’t be privy to its very own ceremony because there was too much of the stuff falling from the sky. Life can be a little surreal at times.)

Anyway, the main reason for my attendance was the presumption that I might get the chance to have a brief word with the Lady B whose eldest daughter attends the school. There’s something I’ve been itching to know ever since she completed the London Marathon, and also something I’ve been wanting to say to her.

It didn’t work out. I stood in the doorway with random onlookers at one end of the hall, while the good lady stood with other mothers at the opposite end. Our eyes never met across the crowded room and so there was no conversation. It’s likely that she didn’t even notice me.

But I did my best. I waited through the kiddies’ songs and the little speeches and the sound of some woman going on about something or other (religious I think), and when the matter was concluded I waited by the door as the parents filed out. The Lady B was not among them. I went back into the hall but she was nowhere to be seen in there either. Maybe she had spotted me and was hiding, or maybe she wasn’t. Maybe it was simply one of those days when presumptions are doomed to failure.

By that time I was feeling hungry because I’d delayed my lunch, so I went home and had beans on toast with pickled beetroot and some plum tomatoes. (I read somewhere once that beetroot is supposed to be good for heart conditions and I’ve become a bit of a fan ever since. Liquorice, on the other hand, is said to be bad for heart conditions, which is a shame because I love the stuff. In fact, most of the foods I like best are bad for heart conditions, which probably explains why I have one.)

And that led me to think about those attainments to which only the very best and very worst of human beings might be expected to aspire. They would include such things as committing an act of great courage to save lives, building a mighty empire, captaining the team which wins the rugby world cup, unseating a ruthless dictator en route to creating a better world, and so on and so forth. To me, it’s getting the slices of beetroot out of the bloody jar.