All My Trials Lord

I worked well all week. Always so much to do. It was good, I knocked over a lot of things.

Come Thursday night Gord said " Hey Dad, we could have pizza tonight. I don't have to go to the footy club, there's a bye this week, so I don't have to get home by six."

So I rang Lib when I finished work and was about to go home. "Hey mate, if you would rather not do the steak sandwiches tonight and have pizza instead, we can do that as it would suit Gord. We can do the steak sandwiches tomorrow."

"OK" she said. "I don't mind."

"Gord wants to go to Pakenham, got his mind set on a 'Bubba's pizza."

" I like 'Dominoes', they're cheap but good, get a thin and crispy base."

Now there's a perfectly good pizza shop in Emerald which I like very much but I bowed to the want of others. So in the dark we drove to Pakenham, the back way via Split Rock Rd and Toomuc Valley Rd. I ordered the pizza at Dominoes then dropped Gord off at Bubbas, went to get fuel, picked up the Dominoes pizza then went back to Bubbas. It was by now nearing 6.30pm.

The Dominoes pizza was very light in the hand when I picked it up so I was doubtful it was enough for me and Lib, so i said to Gord, "Just wait a minute while I get a few steamed dimmies from the noodle shop, I'm starving hungry and this pizza feels like it's not enough." I thought I'd go mad smelling the pizza all the way home while hungry.

The dimmies were good as I drove home. I came up behind the Pak to Gembrook bus and followed it slowly all the way up the hill and round all the corners, patiently now as I had had something to eat. The bus stopped in the middle of the road at the Bessie Creek Rd corner to let someone off even though it was not a bus stop. I didn't try to go around. I couldn't see if there might be car coming the other way. The cars behind me all did the same, patiently waiting, probably thinking the same as me. "We'll be home soon, just take it easy."

All the way I followed the bus. Just when we got near Gembrook's main street, as the bus was about to turn left, a ute came hairing around the corner towards us, accelerating. There was the dreaded smack on the windscreen as a stone hit the glass.

"Fuck."

I have windscreen cover on my insurance policy, but they only allow you one claim a year and I made one in January. An expensive pizza, about $800.

I try. I really try. But bad luck is just bad luck. Any change to the sequence of events that would have prevented delay would have meant that I would not have been there when the dickhead in the ute did his speed thing.

It's OK. I'm live and well. Worse things happen and people die all the time from bad luck, wrong place wrong time. What's a busted windscreen in comparison?