After finishing the application form, Graeme visited Lindsay Pearson next door and asked if he might cut a few logs from the apple tree near the garage? Lindsay said no. He didn’t want anyone going near the garage at the moment because the chickens needed some calm. They had had a difficult day caused by an unannounced visit from Defra who had attempted to ‘insinuate a surprise inspection upon us all’. Graeme hoped all was well? Lindsay reassured him that his solicitor was the best in the business and Defra were soon sent packing. Even so Lindsay was unsettled. He said on more than one occasion ‘Now I know someone is out to get me, I will be far more careful’… Graeme couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to cause problems for Lindsay. He seemed like such a nice man. Not that he really knew anything about him. But Lindsay had a pleasingly shaped head. Plus Graeme admired his corduroy trousers and the smart check shirts that he always wore. The combination of these things made Lindsay seem firm yet approachable and fair. These were three things that Graeme valued highly.
After a cup of tea together it turned out that while Lindsay didn’t want anyone near the garage or the chickens, he did need his lawn mowing. So Graeme obliged and in return received 6 fresh eggs. They were a little smaller than normal but Graeme put that down to the stress the chickens had had that day…
And then it was bedtime…
It was only now that Graeme’s thoughts returned to the application form he had completed for the synchronised swimming team earlier that day. He allowed himself a little smile. He was pretty certain he had done a good job and that they would want him…
Only, as he brushed his teeth Graeme began to feel a prickle of anxiety.
And as he lay in bed the anxiety grew to become a fully formed worry.
Because there was a technicality, an important technicality that he had overlooked until now… but now this thing was all he could think of!
Of course, while he had been writing his application he had been thinking! He had been thinking about many many things. For example - would they mind that he had drawn a picture of himself, rather than supplied the photograph they had asked for? Would he suit the team colours of gold, purple and blue? He also thought a good deal about whether he would find the nose clips too uncomfortable to wear? However, it now became obvious to him that all of those concerns were nothing as compared to the issue he had overlooked. Namely, he realised he had dealt with question 3 all wrong. Question 3. The question that asked about skills, abilities and whether Graeme could swim?
Graeme had made a spur of the moment decision to write: Yes
But actually, he now realised it would have been more honest to have written: No
And so, that night Graeme had awful trouble sleeping and a terrible dream where he came out of his house to find the whole street submerged in water and Mr Lindsay and the chickens and everything Graeme loved had been swept away or was broken or waterlogged and beyond repair and and and…
When he awoke, Graeme thought about the dream and decided it was a sign. So he sat down and wrote a letter to the synchronised swimming team amending his answer to question 3 and asking if it would be possible (at first at least) for him to participate in activities using a lifesaver? If of course the rest of his application was successful? And after that a great weight of worry was lifted and Graeme was reminded that honesty is always the best policy.
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