Uncanny Tales – (24) Another Day Out With Mum

 

The rhythmical rain tapped out it’s symphony on the car roof, punctuated periodically by the added percussion of larger drops that had accumulated on an overhanging bough.

Inside the car I watched the rain drops as they race down the windscreen and secretly chose one as my own and followed it as it raced the others of its kind in the windscreen Grand National until the rhythm of the rain changed and the drops were swallowed in the ensuing torrent.

With the windows tight shut and three people in the car, mist quickly formed and my brother and I played naught’s and crosses in the mist until the game was ended abruptly when Dad switched on the heater.

The rain eased slightly so I began the secret racing game again but this soon has to be modified when Dad put the wipers onto intermittent wipe.

This added some extra level of excitement as it meant your chosen droplet not only had to beat all the other contenders but also avoid being wiped out.

Dad put the radio on and it was playing the Sasha Distel song “Rain drops keep falling on my head” my Dad laughed and my brother and I just looked at each other and so he shrugged at the fact that the irony was lost on us.

My Dad liked the song but then he was old, almost fifty.

We had all been in the car for twenty minutes and we were just waiting for Mum.

She came out the house at the same time the rest of us did but she had to go back for her handbag and then she came out again only to return to check all the windows were closed, all the taps were turned off, the back door was locked and so on and so forth.

She would have checked the gas as well had it not been for the fact we were all electric.

It didn’t matter that my Dad had already checked everything.

Then Mum appeared again and even got as far as the car before going back for the loo.

My brother and I got very fidgety and irritable by this performance, it happened every time we went anywhere but my Dad was completely un-phased by it, he just sat behind the wheel with his pipe in his mouth.

My Mum appears once again only to go back because she’s forgotten her umbrella.

The puzzling thing is whenever we went anywhere we always managed to arrive at our destination on time, what I didn’t know at the time was that my Dad always told my Mum the departure time was half an hour before he actually wanted to leave.