Forwards and occasionally sidewards – everyday musings of life

With Pikachu back on all four paws, our focus shifted back to getting the Cayenne repaired and investigating an annoying, lingering rattle on the Fiat. This was rapidly turning into a week entirely dedicated to fixing broken vehicles and a lame dog.

Waiting for the Fiat to be looked at in Marlborough provided the ultimate excuse for Karen to go shopping—and for me to cheekily add a few items to her list to justify the excursion. Naturally, Karen can never resist a genuine bargain and was soon scouring Marlborough’s upmarket charity shops for vases, framed prints, and eclectic ornaments that match our home’s current colour scheme. Most of these, I suspect, will end up being donated back to the Pewsey charity shop in three months’ time. I suppose that makes Karen a bit of a charity shop ‘mule’—and certainly a champion of the circular economy.

Back home, I filled the table tennis robot to the brim with balls, powered up the ball server, connected the control pad to the Wi-Fi, and waited for this projectile-launching machine to fire up for the first time since April.

A hard hat and safety goggles would probably have been a sensible precaution; after lying dormant in storage for so long, I fully expected the machine to be angry, miscalibrated, and overzealous. I braced myself for a relentless barrage of plastic coming at me like heavy machine-gun fire.

As the motor began whirring and the serving rollers span up to speed, I waited eagerly with my new bat poised for the first delivery.

The first ball plopped pathetically out of the nozzle with the blistering speed of a heavily tranquillised sloth sliding down a greasy pole.

Talk about an anticlimax. I was thoroughly relieved I hadn’t gone to the trouble of donning full riot gear for such a feeble opening gambit.

The second ball actually managed to hit the table—the robot was clearly waking up. The third ball comfortably cleared the net. This was looking promising. Then, suddenly, she was off: firing balls directly into the target zone with the uncanny accuracy of a seasoned international pro. The robot had survived its months of dark incarceration and was clearly desperate to get back to work.

And a good job, too—my topspin needs a serious amount of work before the new season starts.