Every time I wash up, it makes me aware of itself as merely touching a tap on our sink can cause a vibration which can result in an avalanche of the carefully balanced crockery, cutlery and recycling debris to which sits on the dish draining surfaces.
Now, obviously, if I cleared the pots away after washing them, or I washed up more regularly and prevented a build-up, this sort of thing wouldn't happen, but, ah, you know... life's far too short to spend it all wrists deep in grey soapy water.
There is a price to pay for this indolence, though, and this time it was my current favourite tea mug of choice which suffered the supreme penalty as the pans and bowls made their seismic shift and pushed it over the edge whilst my hands were otherwise occupied with, I think on this occasion, filling the kettle.
This was our very black, everso chic "Hobo Code" mug which had been carefully wrapped to survive the rigours of transatlantic travel well more than half a decade ago having been bought at the Railtown gift shop in Jamestown, California during our 2006 travels there.
That was a fine day!
A day when we rode the steam trains, listened to the guides chatter about the line featuring in various movies, and then decided that we needed to buy a couple of souvenirs of another great visit.
Having travelled thousands of miles, and contained countless and mostly long-forgotten cups of tea for its new owners, it couldn't quite manage to survive that short drop from the dish drainer to the floor and its handle paid the largest price.
And, because we don't have a handy Ralph Waite to fix it ("NCIS" fans...), it remains a broken shadow of its former practical self, and has had to be invalided out of daily service, although it's helpful knowledge of the "hobo-code" that vagrants travelling the roads and railroads of the United States used to use to communicate information to each other remains valuable enough for it not quite to be ready to be consigned to the dustbin just yet.
After all, you never know when you might need to interpret a few scratches made on a gatepost telling you that a "bad man lives here" or that the "town is hostile..."
Ah well, I suppose it'll have to join all of the other broken favourites on my desk as another receptacle for pens. pencils and paintbrushes, because that seems to be the destiny of all of my most frequently used mugs nowadays.
There's getting to be quite a few of them now...
Curse you, gravity...!
This was our very black, everso chic "Hobo Code" mug which had been carefully wrapped to survive the rigours of transatlantic travel well more than half a decade ago having been bought at the Railtown gift shop in Jamestown, California during our 2006 travels there.
That was a fine day!
A day when we rode the steam trains, listened to the guides chatter about the line featuring in various movies, and then decided that we needed to buy a couple of souvenirs of another great visit.
Having travelled thousands of miles, and contained countless and mostly long-forgotten cups of tea for its new owners, it couldn't quite manage to survive that short drop from the dish drainer to the floor and its handle paid the largest price.
And, because we don't have a handy Ralph Waite to fix it ("NCIS" fans...), it remains a broken shadow of its former practical self, and has had to be invalided out of daily service, although it's helpful knowledge of the "hobo-code" that vagrants travelling the roads and railroads of the United States used to use to communicate information to each other remains valuable enough for it not quite to be ready to be consigned to the dustbin just yet.
After all, you never know when you might need to interpret a few scratches made on a gatepost telling you that a "bad man lives here" or that the "town is hostile..."
Ah well, I suppose it'll have to join all of the other broken favourites on my desk as another receptacle for pens. pencils and paintbrushes, because that seems to be the destiny of all of my most frequently used mugs nowadays.
There's getting to be quite a few of them now...
Curse you, gravity...!
It's always the special mug that tops itself. The ones in the cupboard just seem to spontaneously multiply.
ReplyDeleteInvest in a tube of superglue for such occasions Martin.
ReplyDelete