Dim Sum Sunday: cheating already

This is my first-ever attempt at posting something for Dim Sum Sunday (see The Karmic Kitchen for details) but it ain't true. I made a batch of chocolate brownies today for Sandra's son's 22nd birthday, and forgot to take a photo of them - they'll have been devoured in moments, of course, in that household of hollow-legged boys - so this, made 2 weeks ago, will have to do instead. It's a chocolate and vanilla bundt, marbled and choc-chipped, and it's ENORMOUS! 7 eggs went into that whopper, then chocolate icing, dolloped rather messily on top and a heap of birthday candles, as it was made for Sandra's twins who had achieved their teenaged goal - to be 18 and legally permitted to drink. And drink they did, until Sandra put a stop to it once she noticed how many beer bottles were in the recycling.

So, sorry for cheating, but as this week's theme was 'sweet' I couldn't let it pass. Millie would like a theme of 'dainty cat dinners' some time please; she hates Whiskas kitten food and thinks culinary standards could be higher in this house.

PS Is one supposed to post the recipe? Groan... I'll wait till asked, I think.

So tired...

Very naughty girl, who, unknown to me, had wriggled out through tiny chink in the cat flap security barricade in the middle of the night, then couldn't get back in again. Had to stay out till morning, in pouring rain, coming in sopping wet and bedraggled. After enormous breakfast, spent the day sleeping off her night on the tiles. It's late now, and what does she want to do? Yep, all over again.

An Alarming Tale - or Three Knights and a Dog

Oh drama, oh horror, oh what-could-have-happened anxiety in the night! About ten o'clock last night, just as the dog and I were about to go out for our last walk (which would have been brief, let me tell you, as it was so cold outside that socks and central heating had been required all afternoon) I heard someone's house alarm go off. Very normal for round here, where people like to let their neighbours know whenever they are opening their front doors or their cars.

But it wasn't outside, it was indoors - in my house. In my hall and also upstairs in the spare room, to be precise. Not the full eardrum-bursting racket of an outdoor alarm, but loud enough to be thoroughly nerve-racking, and accompanied by a distinctly chemical smell of burning in the bedroom. The main control box for the alarm, which for some mysterious reason is in the bedroom and not the electrics cupboard under the stairs, had black marks round it, and was smoking slightly, as well as emitting nasty smells and loud, assaultive sounds. It was also a matter of moments before the landing smoke alarm went off too, just to send me completely mad.

And could I get the front panel of the control box off? No. And could I remember the alarm code for the key pad downstairs? No. And could I find the instructions? No. Me, the person who always knows where the torch, the candles, the matches are, and where to turn the water or the power off in an emergency, now a helpless hand-wringing ninny. I had ignored that alarm for years, never using it since I inherited the bouncing, furniture-leaping dog, and now, as punishment, I was completely foiled by two shrieking plastic boxes and a bad smell, surely the harbinger of death by toxic fumes in the next five minutes.

And so I rang Roger and Tim, because they are Truly Wonderful People always willing and able to help, and not at all because they are less likely than my other neighbours to be in bed at 10 p.m. They arrived in moments, shining armour worn sensibly beneath their warm clothing, expressions serious and manly, to wrestle with the front of the control box (screwdriver required for cleverly-hidden screw underneath the box - who designs these things?), take out the very hot acid gel battery, and to advise calling an alarm engineer when the noise didn't stop. Calm and common sense were restored to me once the potential cause of fire and hideous death was removed and we knew that the engineer would be arriving within 30 minutes. The engineer's wife had to get him in from the garden where he was watering the plants in the near-dark, he had to get the ladders on the van, and drive across the city to reach me, but what a cheerful and pleasant chap when he got here!

Unfortunately, the dog had been thrilled to see Tim and Roger, and had scuttled about getting in the way at close quarters while Roger performed his heroic hot battery-removal, thereby setting off his allergic reaction to dogs. Much cartoon-style sneezing ensued, rattling the windows and loosening Roger's head a little - yes, I saw it wobble. As we said goodbye in between enormous ah-ah-ah-ah-CHOO!!s, the over-excited kitten escaped into the street, to run about under parked cars, try to stalk a student walking home dragging a suitcase on wheels, stand defiantly in the middle of the road in the best position for an alarm engineer's van - with ladders - to squash her flat. It took ten minutes to get her back.

Eventually calm and order were restored; Roger went home to rattle his own windows, the kitten was captured and dragged indoors, protesting in a squeaky voice about how no one else's mum makes them come in so early, I remembered the alarm code number, and Brian the sainted engineer arrived to sort everything out before midnight.

There's a moral to this tale, but of course I don't need to state it. You knew it already, didn't you.

The cup that cheers

Roger's lovely little coffee cups inspired me to set out some of my own favourites. I love china, and have a collection of odds and ends, some of which are used. Above are some that I particularly like. Below is what I really like to use them for!

Hard drive

I've got one. A shiny little metal thing, to hold my zillions of photographs. I realised that since digital cameras became the norm, a computer was a far less safe means of storing wonky pictures of my beloved team, my friends and family (all of whom invariably complain that they look fat/ugly/half-witted/demented), my chaotic but evolving home, my life, really, captured in blurry, badly-composed pictures, than the old method, i.e. the old shoe boxes that litter the house. Shoe boxes don't suffer fatal crashes to the same degree that PCs can, but I haven't had a hard copy of a photograph for years. The thought of losing all those pictures recording the past 5 years was too awful to contemplate, for all that the record is largely banal or trivial - food, baking, cats, dog, gardening, weather, snails, workmen, close-ups of cute tabby kitten whiskers. A rich treasure trove of aide-memoires for when my memory gets even worse ("No, mum, Patrick wasn't your boyfriend, he was your tabby cat - look, I'll show you his picture!")...

So I have stayed in for most of the day awaiting delivery of this new object of desire, feeling virtuous that this was all I had ordered, and not the gleaming white Mac that I really covet (a want, not a need; I could easily convince myself that an external hard drive is both a want and a need). It came, I plugged it in, and nothing happened. After a bit of sitting in front of the screen, mouth slightly open, eyes a little glazed, I realised that nothing was going to happen, no wizard-led installation process - it was already there, waiting to be used. How easy was that!

So I set to in a determined and organised manner, and now, as if by magic, half my photos are sitting safely inside this neat little box - although I stopped before RSI set in, and went off in search of dinner - and the rest will be moved tomorrow. Strangely, I find that I have no feelings of protectiveness towards any of my documents; only those amateurish pictures matter.

You can always find and copy another special recipe, or write another reference or letter of complaint, but you can never recapture the moment when those tabby kitten whiskers were at their cutest.

Guinea pig heaven 2

Apparently yes.

We sat in R & T's garden room with coffee served in cheerful tiny cups, their new acquisition from Tynemouth Market, and tucked in. The mohnstrudel was pronounced a success, and unlikely to survive the night. A rather dull and plain-looking sweet bread, it had depth of flavour and a wonderful texture to its slightly brioche-like crumb, contrasting deliciously with the buttery poppy seeds. We licked our fingers, we had a second slice. We were happy guinea pigs.

There is a little yeast left, and some of the ground poppy seeds, so another experiment might be taking place today. Come and have a cup of coffee later, and a bite of something warm from the oven, go on!

Guinea pig heaven 1

I'll make you a cake, I said to Roger, as a thank you for my new blog banner. You choose what sort of cake. Usually this means chocolate, or for the less sophisticated, more chocolate.

I'll have to think, he said, and consult Tim. I'll get back to you.

We would like mohnstrudel, they said; we loved it when we lived in Vienna.

Mohnstrudel? Wossat? Poppyseed roll. Took a while to find a recipe for that, or at least one that didn't require a staff team of five. Yeasted dough, not pastry. Large amounts of poppy seeds. A true relic of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, with more (complicated) Hungarian recipes online than Viennese. My heart sank. Yeasted anything was not my forte, and it was clear that expectations (and faith in my abilities) were high.

And then, in a little-used recipe book , I found the very thing, named as a Polish confection, but looking just right. R & T agreed - this would do nicely, minus the non-Viennese additions to the poppy seeds and the iced topping. I had a pack of ground poppy seeds already, a gift from Roger some time ago, that with hindsight I could now see had an ulterior motive. R & T came back from their Saturday jaunt to town bearing some fresh yeast from Fenwicks, so I was all set up.

And what yeast! Costing all of 24 pence, this was wonderful yeast, just bursting with vim and vigour; the sweet dough rose so enthusiastically that I was moved to send Roger a warning email about it before it took over the warm spot (upstairs sitting room) and smothered the cats and I in its pillowy bosom.

It seemed like a crime to knock it back, and it put up a fair fight. Rolling it out into a rectangle wasn't easy either - like rolling a bouncy castle - with dough determined to carry on towards the ceiling: no, no, let me rise some more! I have so much more life left in me yet! The warm poppy seed, butter and sugar mixture was spread over it, to pin it down as much as anything, and with difficulty, it was rolled up and popped into the oven.

Delicious smells ensued, but a rather unprepossessing loaf resulted, which wrinkled slightly when glossed with a little butter. This is where icing and toasted almonds would have come in handy. So far, so good - perhaps. But what would it taste like? Would it meet the expectations of Roger and Tim, with their experience of real Viennese bakeries and the genuine article, their very favourite, ever?

Front of house

Here in Bacteria Gardens and surrounding streets, we don't really have gardens as such; these streets stand on what used to be allotments, hence their misleading names. We do have little patches in front of the bay windows, each with a narrow concrete path in it, and these 'gardens' vary from unspeakable mini-wastelands to manicured showpieces that could only be enhanced by toy fountains and gazebos. Two streets away, peonies abound on the sunny side, but we are a much scruffier lot, and between us we have the national collection of weeds, as well as an amazing assortment of plants growing in the pavement. One student garden has enough grass outside it to constitute a miniature prairie.

Every year, a council worker walks the area, spraying weedkiller on our pavement plants, sometimes catching our own shrubs as he passes, and for the rest of the summer, the pavements are thick with dying and dead plants. Not everyone clears them up, and they sit there, a silent reproach, waiting to trip the unwary.

Today, before it got too hot, I tidied up my own dismal front garden. It does well in the Spring, when daffodils, grape hyacinth and tulips come up in succession amidst fresh new greenery. The oriental poppy does its showy best before collapsing over the front path, making it hazardous to deliver the post. Then the thugs appear, the geraniums and columbine, both an unattractive muddy pink, swamping anything pretty and fragile beneath. At the far end, behind a hebe and a rosemary, always the bees' favourites, is an Iceberg rose, bought centuries ago for £3 from Woolworths, and it always does well, but the garden hasn't looked lovingly tended for years. The first time I saw the house, French beans were growing up a cane wigwam, and for several years afterwards, I worked hard at keeping colour and interest going, despite the sun-bleached, hot, dry position and the meagre amount of soil.

I've been saying for weeks "I must sort that front garden out." It's not an appealing task; easier to potter in the prettier back yard or feel virtuous down on the allotment. For the past week, the heat and sunshine has hastened the thugs' seed-setting, revealing parched blotchy leaves and the browning remains of the old bluebells. Today I could stand it no more and had a ruthless tidy up. I filled four large bin bags with what had recently been a fresh Spring garden, and can see how dry and impoverished my soil is, and how little remains of the years of planting and variety that pre-dated my allotment. So many plants lost! Drought, neglect, snails....

Also revealed in their big burly multitudes were those snails. There they are, bottom right; that's only a small representative group of the mighty force that help to make my garden the Bower of Despair that it has become. Another project looms.

Special little moments

I was listening to some Turkish music today and recalled a lovely snippet of memories from my week in Turkey some years ago. I had wandered into a little village music store, and the young man in charge tried to interest me in the usual tourist range of CDs, Turkish pop music, and so on. Not in the least tempted, and not overly optimistic either, I said that I would like to hear something old, maybe something classical, maybe folky, something that evoked the old Turkey. Not an easy conversation to have, with neither of us possessing many words of each other's language, but he got it.

And he demonstrated this very surprisingly, by singing me an old folk song, to test whether or not this was the sort of music I would like.

And what a touching gesture! He stood very straight, looking directly at me, and without a shred of self-consciousness, sang beautifully, just for me. I found it hard not to fill up with tears, both at the song he sang and the loveliness of the gesture. Then he rummaged at the back of the shop, and brought out a boxed CD, making me understand that this had no words, just instruments, and that some of the music was very old. There was no pressure to buy; he seemed delighted that I had been interested and appreciative. After trying some of the tracks, I bought the CD for the usual astonishingly low price, and have played it many times since. The music it contains is very foreign indeed, and utterly beguiling; to my untrained ear it has no discernible links to Western music, and on hot sunny days like today, it's exactly right. And thanks to a lovely, open, Turkish boy in a tiny shop, it has to be the one of my best shopping experiences. HMV? No contest.

Scorcher

For two days now, we've had hot sunny weather here in the Grim North. We rejoice, we sit outside, we get burned arms and noses and patchy, stripy tans because we can't quite remember where we put the sun cream last year, and we have a collective moan about not being able to get into our summer clothes because we are too fat after a winter under woollies. We find our sandals and wear them for too long at a time, till we get raw rubbed spots on our tender pallid feet. We go to the coast, and find that there's a nasty wind there, and that sand whipped up into sunburned skin is deeply unpleasant. And we tell each other about the optimistic weather forecast, and how this will last till Wednesday!

And it might, but it probably won't, and these few hot sunny days might well prove to have been our summer, just like last year. Not that I'm a pessimist, you understand.

Mother's Little Helper

Mother, meanwhile, is lying in a darkened room with a cold compress on her forehead, trying to remember what life was like when she had to do her own kitchen stuff, unaided.

Banners and bunting

To celebrate the notional arrival of early summer, I am to have a new blog banner. As I can't for the life of me fathom out how to construct one from my million and one photographs that denote my small life and even more pinched range of interests, Roger is making it for me. He has Photoshop and/or Fireworks, I believe, and this gives him superior firepower over me when I say "show me how to do it!", as I don't have anything so sophisticated.

He also says that it's like art therapy for him and reduces his blood pressure. So that's a good thing I'm doing for him, not just begging a favour for myself. Maybe I'll suggest that he comes over and catalogues my photos in an orderly fashion when he's done bannering, as this might help to realign his chakras or replenish his chi.

I might make some bunting for the shed this weekend, just out of wickedness, you know, to wind the old chaps up a bit. The treasurer might disapprove, of course; bunting can be so unruly!

Pressure, what pressure?

I received this book today in the post, from Maggie in Toronto, who sent it after she read that I was considering a move away from Newcastle. She did say that it might confuse me and perhaps make my decision making even more complicated, and she may well be right. So far, though, it's the telling, rather than the deciding, that is the most stressful.

So far, reactions from friends and family when I've said, ever so lightly and carefully, that I would be looking at moving away to the west, have been mixed. That is, a mix of negatives. You'd think I was leaving the Shires for ever and taking ship with the Elves and Frodo. The Lovely Son's response doesn't really count, as he hasn't a clue about the location of any town or city that he hasn't actually lived in.

But mostly, the response of other people hasn't been encouraging either. There's been some vigorous pushing of awful alternatives such as local towns, although I've said repeatedly that I wouldn't want to live in them (too Grim-up-North, with awful weather, or dormitories for the city) but today's was the most succinct. Rose rang, and in the course of an otherwise riveting conversation about paint colours and home improvements, I mentioned timidly that I would be looking to move, perhaps to Devon, when my house was finished and fit to sell. Tersely, and in her best Lady Bracknell tone, she said "It's packed out down there!" (this from the only one of my friends who has travelled in China, where it's a little bit packed out too). More of the same was to follow; it's getting to be a familiar refrain now, distance, loneliness, expense, crowds, abandonment (mine, of friends).

My sister has been encouraging though, and says that I must live wherever I like; as she intends to be spending a great deal of her future retirement in Greece, I suppose the idea of distance and life in a strange community is less daunting to her.

Maggie, usually the optimist, says I will have plenty of time to decide where to go, as it will take ages for the house to sell. I think I will tell everyone now about my wanting to move, then not ever mention it again, perhaps right up to the day before the removals van arrives to take me to the Grey Havens......

Different stitches

Just the other day, I was talking with fashion student Charlotte, whose major subject is knitwear, expressing a vague desire to take up knitting again after about 100 years away from it. Some people post the most beautiful knitted items on their blogs, filmy tops, glorious socks, jolly hats; not a pink nylon crinoline lady toilet roll cover amongst them. I aspired to this, but tempered with a harsh touch of realism; how much could I remember? Could I miraculously turn into a Completer-Finisher type? I know from experience that there is a Slough of Despond moment in the progress of many knitted items - even Charlotte often gives her obliging grandma things to finish for her.

Charlotte would refresh my ailing memory and teach me to cast on with needles, she said. Alas, I had charity-shopped my large bag of assorted needles years ago (see, you shouldn't really ever get rid of anything!) and would have to start collecting the basics again. Yarn and needles seem to have evolved fantastically since my primitive knitting days, and patterns have certainly improved too. Yet I have stayed firmly stuck in the early '70s, when I had actually managed quite a lot of a cable sweater for the Lovely (little) Son, but hadn't the staying power to finish it.

Then today, when walking the dog, I passed two German ladies sitting on a bench in the sunshine, each knitting the loveliest striped sock. I was drawn magnetically towards them, the dog too, although she just wanted to see if they had anything to eat, this bench being close to the local sandwich shops. We chatted about their work and they strongly recommended bamboo needles - the equivalent in the knitting needle world of cashmere versus acrylic sweaters, they said. We talked and talked, and had they not been waiting for their taxi to take them to day 2 of their Indian friend's wedding, we might well have ended up round my kitchen table drinking tea. I had a feeling that they might be knitting throughout the lengthy ceremonies of the day.

Encouraged, I will pursue the notion of taking up the needles again, but first I want to send out a plea to you skilled and creative knitters - where to start? What patterns are good for someone who is starting over, is easily daunted, tends to look twice her size in handknits, and wants to create pretty, wearable things that don't look like Great-Auntie Gladys has made them from scratchy cut-price Shetland wool leftovers. Sandra knits, but her taste is towards the utilitarian - balaclavas, mittens, warm cardigans; Charlotte is altogether on another plane, too avant-garde and artistic for a born-again novice, at least for now.

All advice, comments, biased opinions, suggestions and useful links exceedingly welcome!

(BTW, the picture is of a little cupcake I once made for Charlotte; marzipan knitting is so easy to do, and if it goes wrong, you simply pop it into your mouth and start again.)

Waste not, want not

Millie's shaved patch is growing in nicely. Her stitches seemed to take an age to dissolve or be absorbed, whatever it is they are supposed to do, and a couple of sharp jagged bits stuck out from her smooth side. Now Millie is the household groomer, and hates having a hair out of place; poor fluffy Lottie, who has tufts of hair growing out of her ears, presents a serious challenge to Miss Millie, and she sometimes looks beadily and in a calculating fashion at my eyelashes. But on the whole, she tolerated her stitches very well.

However, this jagged stitch got to her eventually, so she gave it a determined tug and pulled it out. And then she ate it.

I may start sleeping with an eye mask.

Drudgery

So whose clever idea was it to transform the ancient Venetian wooden shutter into modern, metal, fine-slatted blinds, supposedly ideal for long awkward windows where fabric wouldn't do?

My white kitchen blinds, custom-made by John Lewis such a long time ago, have soaked in a bath with sugar soap till the water turned tea-coloured, and are now ready to be hung up. But before that, the slats, which have only the smallest finger space between them, need to be wiped individually on both sides with a microfibre cloth, as some of the dirt won't just float off. Only then will they gleam and look like nearly-new.

So, ask me how I'm spending my Saturday morning?

Unnaturally tidy

The finished kitchen today. Paint still wet on shelf above hob, so no rush to decide what to put up there now. The cream clock doesn't match anything and the flooring is dingy and worn, but still, it's all a great improvement.

And once I could get to the hob again, I was too hungry to wait for long before dinner, so I threw together an omelette with a little Italian ham, cheese, and fresh spinach that - oh, thrilling! - I picked on the allotment this afternoon - the first crop of the season. Delicious, even with the smell of paint.

Er, sorry

Yesterday's post was a bit revolting. And probably left too many of you thinking that I live in a vermin-infested slum. But really, I don't, just a house with overlooked areas, much like everybody else. Millie the Fly Hunter would like vermin though....

Of flies and fans

It has to get worse before it gets better. Very true, whoever you are who said that, you miserable sod. It's been pretty bad this morning.

I am being a proper housewife today, in pinny and the Right Mood. I have unearthed the steam cleaner (thank you, mother who loved a cleaning gadget or appliance) from the loft, to tackle the hated extractor fan over the hob. It's set into the chimney, and is less than accessible unless you have an unfeasibly bendy neck and tentacle-like arms and fingers. It's also a masterpiece of bad design, full of twiddly bits just waiting to trap grease and dirt, and the cover is hinged, so that it doesn't come off for cleaning but falls downwards, releasing nasty things that have collected inside - dead flies, mostly. I knew this already, learning from a most unpleasant experience of some years ago, and now cover the entire area with an old sheet, but it's still the sort of job you would prefer someone else to do, and pay them handsomely for it. Unfortunately, Margery, who is completely unsqueamish, is taking her aged mother for a scan today, and couldn't come to do it for me - no, I mean help me with it.

Elbow grease, hot water, Cif and the steam cleaner did the job eventually, although I doubt if Environmental Health would give me ten out of ten for it - there are limits to how long I'm prepared to lean into a cloud of steam and vapourised grease with my head at an unnatural angle and my rubber gloves dripping gunge up my sleeves. Everything that sits at the back of the hob has been scrubbed or is in the dishwasher, and the tiles have regained their original colour (porridge, sadly; well, it was hard to find neutral tiles in the '80s). Perhaps I won't cook for a week or so, to allow time for admiring the results of my labours. The kitchen walls are bare, the surfaces almost cleared. The sitting room is full of china and my beloved collection of Everhot chrome tea and coffee pots.

Next to be tackled are the very long once-white slatted blinds; they will soak in a bathful of warm water with bio washing powder, as nothing else will remove evidence of months of neglect. Blinds are a necessary evil, as the kitchen is overlooked by students smoking out of their bedroom windows, and sometimes I feel exposed as a slob, still in dressing gown at lunchtime; after all, this could erode my authority when I tell them off sternly for kicking rugby balls into my back yard. Later, I'll persuade Laurel and Hardy to move the dresser, so that I can clean behind it.

When my kitchen was new, I used to get up before the family on Sunday mornings and do this sort of cleaning, so that it never got to be this bad. Unimaginable now. And they didn't notice anyway.
Lesley came in yesterday and observed that after all the tedious preparation required, the actual painting is the best bit. She may be right, but that extractor fan ordeal has earned me a day off tomorrow, to read with my feet up, while Wally, Millie and Radio 2 get on with it. Maybe I'll buy a copy of Good Housekeeping magazine.

Clutter, cupboards, cats and keys

Wally the Painter, who is Millie's personal guru, returns on Thursday to decorate the kitchen. Heavy-heartedly, I am preparing the way, starting by emptying the old dresser that stands against one wall. It has a cupboard beneath and shelves with glazed doors above, and when full, is very heavy. The glass in one of the doors is cracked, and for some time now I've been talking about taking the door to a restorer to have it repaired. Now's my chance, I guess.

Inside the cupboard is the shameful evidence that for some people, such as me, who have inherited the untidy gene, clearing one's clutter doesn't always work as intended. I was once given a book on the subject for Christmas by a determined friend, and in a fit of enthusiasm had sorted (i.e. dismantled) my sitting room bookshelves by Boxing Day evening. But it's the follow-through that defeats me every time.

So, inside the cupboard half of the dresser are storage boxes, holding what was once neatly organised clutter. The trouble has always been that once I put things away in a box, no matter how tidily and logically, I forget it exists, and voila! another cupboard is filled up for ever with stuff I will never look at again. I did try to reform, but failed to follow through with the regular discipline of reviewing and discarding unused items - well, I ask you, who has the time to do that? Or the interest, or the energy, or the sheer obsessive madness to keep it up, year after year? (Oh, you do? Sorry....)

So these boxes are now standing in the sitting room, along with the newly-washed china and assorted bric a brac that adorned the shelves. The dresser stands empty, its shelves lined with a Laura Ashley wallpaper that had been a decorating mistake that I recognised in time, and that must be at least 25 years old. Millie has hopped in and out of it, and has left her trademark, a small nose print, on each pane of glass.

I found some money in a teacup. About 40 Australian dollars and a small Czech note. Nothing exciting like the time I found £100 neatly tucked away to leave for Sandra as an emergency fund while I was in Oz but had clearly forgotten about and then duplicated for her; now that was good clutter to clear! I found a pair of silver earrings that have waited for 20 years or so to be repaired, and will never be so now, due to becoming outdated - uh-oh, shameful memory just emerging of small son growing out of a shirt while it languished in the ironing basket - and to my pierced ears rebelling against any attempt to poke metal through them ever again.

I found two spare sets of house keys, so I can now free myself of the lingering resentment towards the Lovely Son who for years has maintained that he hasn't lost his set, he just hasn't found them yet. But there is also a mysterious heap of other keys, held together by a large paper clip; these keys don't seem to belong to any door in this house, and have been kept because, well, you know....throw them out and then you'll find out within days that they contained the one that your neighbour entrusted to your care years ago, and that without it, and the neighbour gone off trekking in Peru, her house sitter had to spend the night huddled on her doorstep with a starving cat yowling on the other side of the keyless front door, and all because you didn't put the spare key where it should have gone, namely in the clutter-busting box marked Keys - Other. Best be careful and keep that bunch of keys.

Things migrate to the nether regions of this dresser; it collects dust and fluffballs underneath, towards the back, where the excessively lengthy hifi wires are pooled, and Margery never reaches with her hoover. I have no doubt that cat toys lurk there, hairy and unrecognisable, and other long-lost items too. I once took a photo of Kevin in his youth, with the dresser behind him, and on getting the developed prints back, saw where my missing slipper had gone. I also have a horrid suspicion that there might even be an unpainted patch of wall behind it, but this might be a guilty fabrication of an habitually-shamed conscience; I'll find out soon enough, when the drawers are taken out and the dresser becomes light enough for a team of strong men and a pair of dray horses to move.

And when it's all over, and the room is fresh and newly-painted? Where will all that stuff go? Guess.