Member-only story
How My Bad Luck Turned Into Good Fortune
It started with a cat stuck up a tree
Life under the parental roof was miserable. I was out of work and broke, an unfortunate pair of circumstances that tested my parents’ patience. To make the situation worse, on the morning this tale begins, I received a letter from my friend Gustav, who, you may recall, had moved to France. In it, he reminded me that I owe him thirty pounds reimbursement for a carpet repair he’d paid for.
Gustav was safely out of the way, so I didn’t have to worry about paying him, but my parents were another matter. I’d spent all Sunday cadging cigarettes from my mother to the vocal disapproval of my dad, who lectures me daily on what he sees as my lacklustre efforts to find a job.
Dad’s bark is worse than his bite, but when he does let rip, he’s like a doberman going at a cat on the fence that’s giving it the finger. That Monday morning at breakfast, I got a proper earful.
As Dad slurped a bowl of muesli, my mother presented me with a sausage and egg sandwich, which I opened to apply my preferred sauce. An overzealous squeeze of the plastic ketchup bottle delivered a squirt of the red stuff onto Dad’s shirt sleeve. He was already running late for work, so he gave a sustained audible demonstration of his canine side.
