This time, the receipts were mine

Long-time readers will know I have a friend. A friend who, on the occasions we’ve planned to exercise together, has produced a remarkable series of last-minute emergencies — a broken washing machine, an overheating car — each one accompanied, to his enormous credit, by receipts.

On Saturday, our loving father who art in heaven decided it was my turn.

He messaged me the night before, and I want you to appreciate the thoroughness of his preparation. His car was working. His washing machine, he reported, had no drainage issues. He had eaten a banana. He had located his parkrun barcode. The man had, in short, eliminated every excuse he’d ever used, pre-emptively, and arrived at the start line of our plan utterly, annoyingly ready.

And I bailed.

Not out of laziness — out of family. It was a busy weekend, and by Saturday we were somewhere around activity number three (there was a party involved; the details are a blur of cake and small children). The morning belonged, entirely and non-negotiably, to family. And so, for the first time in this whole saga, I was the one sending apologies. I was the one who had to produce receipts.

There is a particular humility in becoming the thing you’ve been teasing. I had spent weeks as the amused accuser, the man with questions about other people’s washing machines. And there I was, on Saturday morning, filing my own emergency paperwork.

To his eternal credit, and I quote: he accepted my receipts.

Grace, extended. The circle, complete.

I did get my run in — solo, that afternoon, once the family duties were honoured. A normal route, normal easy pace, normal strategic walks, a good chat-pace shuffle in the sun. The back, I’m pleased to report, stayed completely silent throughout. Nearly six kilometres on the watch, an easy afternoon, nothing to prove.

So the score is settled, the receipts are filed, and my friend and I remain locked in the longest-running failure to jog together in recorded history. Our day is coming, he says. It’s blocked out. Non-negotiable.

We’ll see whose washing machine holds.