dies mali

I had to smile (ironically) as I looked at what I blipped on this day last year. Then, on a dismal day, I was looking at the word dismal in Suzie Dent’s book ‘Word Perfect’, the word she had chosen for 4 February. She explained how in medieval times there were days called ‘dies mali’ or ‘evil days’ of which 4 February was one. Days when people took care to avoid doing anything special in case something untoward happened.

Today for us was not quite an evil day, but certainly a dismal day, in terms of both weather and events. 

As we were setting out to go into Penrith along our narrow roads, a car driven in the other direction failed to slow down as it approached a blind bend, but continued to hurtle on at great speed and went straight towards us. Fortunately we were stationary, as Gordon had seen the car approach and was waiting for it to stop, or at least slow down, so we could pass it at a wider bit, and his car just scraped us quite badly. The driver had had to go up the banking on two wheels and we feared it was going to fall on top of us. Quite a scare. 

The car is drivable, but Gordon has had to spend the day going through the masses of phone calls etc to sort it all out. The driver, a young man, has admitted it was his fault, but we had dash cam evidence if he hadn’t done. (It was strange watching the whole episode on film, including him getting out of the car and saying he was going far too fast.) 

Oh well! Tomorrow is another day and hopefully it will not be a ‘evil day’ or even a dismal day.