The real reason I procrastinate

It struck me, with something of a shock, I admit, that in less than two weeks, I will be heading off to Spain to do some writing. As such, I felt it my duty to do some of the many chores I had been putting off.

The beer and wine bottles were collected into boxes and placed in the trunk of the car. And the back seat. If there is one thing winter in Canada is good for, it is drinking. The x-ray requisition I had been meaning to fill re a persistent cough was found and placed in my jeans pocket. A shopping list was created and dinner thought out for the coming couple of days. A sense of achievement coursed through my veins. 

I closed and locked the front door, brushed off the accumulated 3 inches of snow from the windscreen, side windows, bonnet, roof and trunk; I knocked the snow and ice from my wheel wells and kicked them surreptitiously into the neighbours' garden. Then, I made my fatal mistake. I got a shovel. And I started moving the snow.

Our drive is quite long (say about 25 feet), and on an incline. This is brilliant, usually, because as the rain falls or snow melts, it flows down to the roadside and means I don't have to do anything about it. (Actually, I very rarely have to do anything about it because Mrs Ottawacker is a country girl who can't get enough of the snow, and Ottawacker Jr will pretty much do anything if it entails using a shovel.) But the incline stops me from feeling guilty about it, some of the time.

Today, however, Mrs Ottawacker had been in a rush, and Ottawacker Jr had had to go to school. So it was down to me.

I started, insouciantly, swishing the snow in a sideways fashion, inching my way down the drive. Lifting the snow onto the existing snowbanks. stopping to congratulate myself every couple of feet. Self-congratulation is, I find, essential when shovelling snow. In between times, I greeted a neighbour or two, answering their scurrilous comments - "I thought that was Mrs Ottawacker's job?", "She hasn't left you, has she?", "Where did you find your legs?" - with a good-natured smile and an over-hearty "ho ho". 

Then, as I approached the bottom of the drive, something rather surprising happened. I was leaning forward to pick up a shovelful of snow and throw it onto the snowbank when I had a strange sensation of movement. It was magical. I was one with the cardinals and the crows, flying through the midday blue. I thought immediately of Raymond Briggs' characters in The Snowman, and the haunting song Aled Jones recorded to accompany the film:
"Children gaze
open-mouthed
taken by surprise
nobody down below
believes their eyes"

A full arc, I described. As such, perhaps my own accompanying soundtrack should have been a little more réfléchi, but you gets what you gets. "Ffffffffffaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrkkkkkkkkkkkk," I said. The next thing I know, I am being leant over by my next-door-neighbour's sister, asking me if I am OK, do I need an ambulance, what happened?

What had happened, I told her, in rather a sheepish way, was that I had found the world's final remaining glacier at the end of my driveway, and instead of calling David Attenborough, I had tried to remove some of the snow from it, lost my footing, and (as Ottawacker Jr later said) "done a Neymar". 

"You shouldn't be doing that at your age," she said, in a not-unkindly voice (she must be 15 years older than me), and hauled me to my feet. She let me lean on her shoulder as I climbed the drive, made my way back up the steps to my porch, turned to salute the crowd of neighbours that had assembled to hold up signs reading "3.5", "2.7", "6.0" and other hilarious scores, went inside the house and called Mrs Ottawacker to come home from work and tend my wounds. Surprisingly, this she did with good grace.

I declined to go to the hospital for an x-ray - my recent experiences of Ottawa Hospital Waiting Rooms are too unpleasant to repeat unless absolutely necessary - instead opting to sit in the recliner, my ankle and knee strapped with ice packs, ringing a little bell when I needed a sandwich or a cup of tea.

"You know," I said. "This is why I don't ever do the drive." 

Mrs Ottawacker smiled, somewhat wanly, I have to say, and went back upstairs to continue 'working from home.'