It's a quiet day at work and I was going to show you Christmas About My House. Novel and original at this time of year, I know. But then I got distracted by the tumble-dryer.
While loading it with my fine cambrics I felt once again that quiet moment of inner pride I always experience when I turn the dial past 'iron dry'.
Iron dry, I tell myself: if only the bloggers could see that, they'd assume I'm the sort of person who irons everything to gloriously crisp creases.
But then there's
Easy-Care to the left. How utterly insulting that is in a household appliance. This family wears only 100% wool, 100% cotton, and 100% linen. That makes 300%: good going, no, on a chilly day?
I had to dust that dial before I could photograph it. Go and check your tumble-dryer. Be honest, now, it's a bit dusty, isn't it, right above the dial pointer? Especially when photographed. You and I, we're not arrivistes with shiny new tumble-dryers. We've had that same vintage one since the turn of the century. It proves our indisputed dignity.
But I was a bit bothered by the dust nonetheless, as I like things to be clean, so I went and had a cherry. Long-time readers will know that in a world gone mad, glacé cherries are my calming drug of choice. Just the one cherry sorted me out after the dusty tumble-dryer crisis. A lesser woman would have had three.
See how I didn't bother with one of those dear little
expensive cloth lids on the cherries? That's because the hammer-blows of fate wait for no lifestyle tweaks and sometimes you just need quick access to the cherries.
I'll leave you with a sneak preview of Christmas About My House.
This is the kitchen chandelier, ablaze with electricity,
and a candle, a profound and enduring symbol of the possibility that the electricity may be cut off over Christmas here in rural Ireland while the repairmen are jollying it up with port and stilton. More Christmas About The House tomorrow, or when the notion takes me.