Life is crazy

All my life I have known what a kitchen sink is.

Useful for draining boiled potatoes and spaghetti, and doing the washing up. The latter bringing back fond memories of my sister and me clearing up after a family of at least six. Poor Petra – since she is younger thus lower in the pecking order- she got the bum job of drying whilst I was sloshing around with the water. Mostly we sang.

When I left home – in a hurry -  my parents couldn’t buy a dishwasher fast enough. It hurts to this day; the pain only soothed by the gentle noise of my own Miele.

However I have now learnt a completly new meaning to ‘kitchen sink’ thanks to wordpress dot com. Why is computer speak so obscure? And why does woman always have to run to man to find out what the hell a “toggle” is? HTML I ignore on principle; as indeed I do spell checkers. I can live with my mistakes.

My Paperback Oxford English Dictionary, having given up the will to help out, has broken into two halves, some of its pages vanished in the mountain of paper surrounding me. Meaning that I have to avoid words starting with f. Unless – and do I not just love the art of English understatement – I want to combine exercise with stringing a couple of words together: The New Shorter Oxford. Both hard bound volumes resting at my feet, each weighing a ton; door stoppers, nay writing stoppers if ever there were any.

Still, to this day, I thank the man who bought them for me at a hefty price and carried them all the way home.

U

Veiled

How a curtain – not drawn - can unsettle me.

We moved house a year ago. I potter in my lovely stone walled garden. I say hello to Jonathan, an eighteen year old, living at the house directly opposite; our gardens adjoining. He is very well spoken, extremely polite. I ask him why he is taking out all the plants, ransacking the place. He explains that his father is allergic to anything living, and that he (Jonathan that is) can’t wait to leave for his gap year, travelling. I haven’t seen him since so he must have escaped what sounded like a suffocating household.

Every day, for a whole year, there has been a sad note for me: That upstairs bedroom window in the place opposite – curtain closed, at all times, day or night. Never NOT to be noticed by me. Never a sign of life.

As of two days ago there is no curtain any longer, the window flung open at all times. Has that father died, has he recovered – momentarily – from what I could only read as syptoms of severe depression? Alas, no Jonathan around to ask.

U

Two hours after writing the above: Forget it. The curtain is shut close tightly once more.