Thus I get up each morning like I would when in regular employment and follow a similar pattern to the day.
For example, when a regular income was the norm rather than a novelty I would moan about the boss' latest crap decision at 9am, have a cuppa at 10am, put off that difficult phone call at 11, have lunch at 12, put off that difficult phone call again at 2pm, have another cuppa at 3pm and wind down from 4pm.
These days of course I have no decisions to moan about or phone calls to put off. Naturally I still have morning and afternoon tea, (a long) lunch and I still wind down from 4pm (ish). I mean it's not the end of the world is it?
But I still need something to fill the work void in my brain while I'm biking round (saving the planet and money on petrol) looking for work.
I've discovered music fits the bill perfectly. So much so I thought the other day while gliding along life's highway - in truth it was a rather bumpy street in a grotty industrial area but I'm sure you get the point - it would be so much more interesting if life were a musical.
Now part of the reason for this lightbulb moment I'll attribute to the Boomerang Child (she always comes back) who has recently visited our bubble and set me up with a pair of headphone-type ear thingies. This means I can plug them into my phone enabling me to listen to my chosen sounds while biking.
Apparently it's pretty common. Who knew?
Anyway. There I am the other day biking along, headphones on, embarrassingly oblivious to the world and lost in the moment when up comes a song my mate Gardening Guru played to me on a pre-lockdown visit.
I should perhaps explain our tastes in music are wide and varied. I am your more traditional middle of the road (rockers would say sickeningly sweet) while the Guru's are more, shall we say, "out there".
This basically means when you hear some of his music for the first time you think "what the ... ". I'm sure you get my drift.
So, as I say, I'm biking along heading for a work inquiry and one of his songs comes on. It's a very loud and proud, headbanging, sod-the-world, shouted classic the chorus of which features a four letter expletive I can't write here and a woman's name, which happens to be "Ada".
Think of that old expression. Got it?
I am obviously aware this sort of music would probably make good old Frank Sinatra and his ilk turn in their graves and thinking about it now I can't really understand how anyone could enjoy it. Having said that, I find the chorus oddly catchy and, lost in the moment with headphones tightly secured, I start to sing. Loudly. Very loudly in fact.
So lost in the moment was I my destination whizzed by and I had to double back.
There I found - still standing in the garage doorway he had been two minutes earlier when I rode by yelling, er, I mean singing, at the top of my voice - the guy I was meant to see.
The stunned look on his face as I dismounted was quite priceless I have to say and, perhaps unsurprisingly, there was no work available.
So I did what you have to do and philosophically climbed back on the horse and rode off into the sunset.
But as I rode away with him still standing there I couldn't resist leaving him with a loud musical sound bite from Whitney Huston to show there were no hard feelings.
"And I, I, I, I, will always love you!!!!"
• Kevin Page is a teller of tall tales with a firm belief too much serious news gives you frown lines. Feel free to share stories to kevin.page@nzme.co.nz .
