The Salad Dressing and Other Disasters

The Roof

 While I was in my online tutorial one day, there was a particularly strong gust of wind and bang! a substantial part of the roof hurtled past the window and straight into a tree. 

Camera off, (still in the Zoom tutorial), I casually wandered over, only to notice that a little knot of neighbours had gathered together in the cold, and were looking, candidly, right up at me.

I had only moved in, so didn't know them from Adam. I wanted to wave but you don't wave, do you? in the midst of catastrophe – that's not what people do, especially in Edinburgh where a wave would be construed as far too positive. In Edinburgh you should be reverently negative at all times, especially in the middle of disaster; the only possibly reaction is a bald, flagrant pessimism. Waving wouldn't be the thing. But then again, having just moved in, I felt that had immediately assumed a sort of minor celebrity status, 'a minor celebrity who had lost her roof', so I couldn't stop my hand. A tall man shook his head, and I quickly turned from the window.

After the ill-advised wave, my hand went limp with the sudden, sinking realization that I was going to have to deal with these people about money.

The thought didn't last and obviously I did what anyone else would do in these circumstances.I just pretended that nothing had happened.

I wouldn't, for example, have dreamed of ending the Zoom call, saying 'Excuse me, I'm sorry but I think I should probably go - there's an emergency developing in my flat'

No. I wouldn't have done that because even this opaque, rather bland statement would draw attention to me, which is against the holy grail of all tutorials; this grail dictates that it is absolutely necessary to focus all your attention on melting into the wallpaper, and pretending that you absolutely don't exist. And you must not try to say anything, especially not any sort of sentence.

Later that night, and I'm very sorry to say, things took a turn for the worse.

Having buried my head in the sand for most of the afternoon as the sky darkened like an omen and the sky whipped up her worst clouds, two unexpected things happened:

1.) A long awaited, cream bed sofa arrived and

2.) Rain began to pour in the living room.

I was in the middle of constructing my cream bed sofa, which involved dragging it out of the box, and putting its feet on with screws (an effective distracting mechanism), when I heard the said noise of gushing water. Puzzlingly close. Could it be, inside rather than outside? Surely not. Still in the sand, I was wondering what I should do with the whale-sized sofa box, when I pulled my head from the sand and knew the truth:

Rainwater was dribbling, and now, spilling generously into the living room!

I did not cry (yet) but remembered that one was supposed to think, explore ones options in such situations, and then galvanise into immediate activity.

I paced the room and did a little dance of despair at one end. I looked up at the grim happenings. At the dark lines running down the wall. At the patches on the ceiling. Then I looked at the kettle and switched it on. 

I stopped myself just short of pouring the tea, with that annoying catchphrase, you've got to do something!

But what should one do in such a situation? First of all, I ran around knocking doors. None of the neighbors answered. Perhaps, I considered, I had become a pariah, because of the wave and the disaster (theroofwasfinetilshegothere). Or perhaps they were just staying put, thankful that the water had not yet reached them. Or perhaps they had fled to relatives and friends, with their secret knowledge, awaiting the collapse of the entire building.