The rain came back to Mother Earth in an unrelenting crystal curtain - water never forgets who it is beholden to. Wayward dancing shards momentarily defied the confines of gravity and flew horizontally under the canopy, before smugly hugging its target surface: my freshly made-up face. And my new shoes.
But an overdue date with the girls must not be deterred by heaven's sprinkler party. With dogged determination, I dialed a cab company again. A friendly drone informed me that all the taxi services had better things to do than to attend to me.
I'd squeezed into a new backless dress and 4-inch heels - no way was I going to crawl back home because of over-enthusiastic atmospheric moisture, which kept trying to fling itself at me even as I retreated further and further inside the porch canopy. I dialed another cab company, which this time decided to forgo the automated faux friendliness and simply ignore my call.
As I blessed the phone with my richest expletive, a soccer ball, apparently also trying to defy the laws of physics, zipped past my left foot, missing it by 2 inches. Its pint-sized owner scampered to retrieve it without casting me a look, before proceeding to accelerate the 22-centimetre particle through various other vectors.
As the gleeful riot of rain gathered in strength, I glanced forlornly at the time. I was hopelessly late. A loud thump to my right made me feel lucky to be alive while children are playing soccer on the porch. I attempted to book a cab again - the sooner I away with me, the less likely to experience death by ball.
Just as another irritating engaged tone emanated from my phone and my feet started to scold me for donning screw-me-shoes after a long hiatus from high-heels, I looked up in time to see the offending black-and-white sphere hurtling my way again. As I artfully dodged the soccer ball of death, I opened my mouth with the intention of curdling the child's blood with my verbal prowess, when a flash of red brought light to my rain-darkened world. The scarlet Volkswagen came to a halt and the knight in shining white shirt emerged as I jubilantly surged forth to meet him.
"Dad! Pleeeeaaaaase give me a lift?"
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