I suppose it all started when I bitched about the dog-shit, on my way in to the lab for the afternoon seminar.
She, ancient but genteel, hauling on one end of the lead was trying to get poochie-woochie over to do what a dog has to do in the gutter and it, miniscule and scruffy, had dug its claws into the middle of the pavement and had other plans. Physics will be physics, and eventually the weakest link in the system broke, the dog came away from the pavement and went flying in an arc towards the nearby parked cars, and the old biddy fell over on her back.
I suppose I would have helped her get up if she had not already been up on her feet before I got there. She seemed more or less OK, but Tootsie had left behind in the middle of the path a gleaming, smoking grey-brown pile at least half as big as itself. It must have been like a Kiwi laying an egg. I never knew the old man had so much... in him.
Well you know.
So as I passed, carefully judging where not to put my feet, I said `Not leaving it there are you?' She gave me a most withering North Oxford look.
It is clear, in retrospect, that the rest of the day was paying me back for her. The seminar was, er, interesting, but not unusually so I suppose. Dinner at another College was, er, interesting, but not unusually so I suppose. I was walking home past that very same spot however -- now I know what you are thinking, but you are wrong, someone else had already been and stood in it for me. No, but it was just as I got to that place that I noticed the car.
It was the car next to that with the bonnet of which the pooch had collided. This afternoon it had just been one of the parked cars in a street full of parked cars, but by this evening it was all on its own. That was probably why I noticed that the driver was still in it, head on the steering wheel, apparently asleep.
Now I know people often take the odd nap in a parked car on a warm afternoon, but this was getting really rather late, and he had been there since mid-afternoon. I can tell you, one can feel pretty silly tapping on the driver's window of a car with a driver in it even if he is slumped over the wheel, and especially if the blood running down the side of his face has congealed.
Since neither he nor the car took much notice when I opened the door, and since he really was very cold to the touch, I started looking for a telephone. Now this is pretty much central Oxford, houses everywhere. And all of them empty almost all the time. At the fifth house I got an answer and got them to call an ambulance.
Hah, an ambulance. Stiffy had clearly been there in a state of terminal slumber for most of the day. In all probability the Great Chauffeur in the sky had come to pick him up on his way in to work this morning. And I called an ambulance.
Look kiddo, you find a corpse lying in the road again, and you call the constabulary right? Otherwise Mr Plod might just get stuffy and wonder why you are not talking to him, see? Anyway this was why I spent most of the night chatting to the Blue and drinking gallons of sweet strong tea. Yuch.
The chap in the car is probably a little worse off though. He is probably due for fish-gutting in the morning, if it has not happened yet, but they told me that it was a heart attack.
They gave me a lift back home in a panda car, bless the pointy little helmets on their pointy little heads, albeit not in a real police car. It was one of those clapped out little Metro things painted to look like a real police car, and the driver was too tall to fit in it without curling up in his seat. It is no wonder that some policemen are grumpy if they go around all day in cars that do not fit them. It might be the modern equivalent of patrolling in boots that are a too small, or tight leather gloves (which is said to be the reason that they thump one fist into the palm of the other hand while they stand there glowering at you at demonstrations).
Anyway, look, be warned. I have the power, and if you are not good I will come and bitch about dog-shit near your car.