It's the little things that count!

They say (who e’er they be) that when three planets align then it is a sign of something or other.  In a purely domestic sense this mystical alignment is more prosaically achieved by a few seemingly unimportant coincidences changing one’s view of life.

For me this occurred recently when three small, but important elements in my existence were renewed: the brush in my electric toothbrush; the blades in my razor and a fresh towel.  Not important in themselves but a whole new world of renewed experience when taken together. 

One suddenly realizes that one had been trying to clean one’s teeth with a stunted and splayed array of abused filaments that had all the cleaning power of a worn down and long dead porcupine; one’s razor had all the cutting power of a corroded strigl recently unearthed from some archaeological dig and the less said about the marsh-like consistency of a towel when one finally decides that one has to walk three steps to a cupboard containing a plethora of crisp fresh pieces of material to replace the flexible petri dish that one was using ostensibly to dry oneself.

I never fail to be impressed by how little it actually takes for a massive change to be effected in day to day living – I call it the “Tea-Towel Effect” after the fact that tea-towels cost virtually nothing, but people cling to old ones with passionate intensity until they are holey and tattered before they can even bring themselves to consider parting with the pittance to buy a new one and thus transform their lives!

I am considering writing a short monograph on “The Power of Little Things” and then distributing it to the less fortunate (most of the world during this crisis) so that they can change their domestic world even if they cannot afford to eat.  It is the modern take on “bread and circuses” to distract the minds of those who should be rising up in wrath and fury against the incompetent thieves who have brought us to this situation of desperation and hopelessness.  The thinking would be that with a new tea towel revolutionizing the look of the kitchen area who could possibly think of armed rebellion! 

Thus, judicious distribution of interestingly coloured tea-towels and bright new toothbrushes could calm and distract an enraged crowd at a much cheaper cost than the deployment of police and water canon!

My continuing frustration with my new Sports Centre (still unvisited since I joined at Easter!) is about (allegedly) to be ameliorated by the swimming pool (the only reason I joined) to be opened on Friday.  I have been told this by a member of the sports centre staff - but I have been living in this country too long to take an unequivocal statement at face value as if it had truth behind it!  On Friday (my early end) I will make an effort to visit, for the first time, my new swimming paradise!

I have marked the official beginning of summer by the purchase of a summer watch.  In honour of my adopted city I have chosen a timepiece with the mark of Cuesto on it and a flamboyantly wide white leather strap.  Unusually for me I have decided on a digital watch with a display which gives time, day and date.  I am assured that it is waterproof and I have carefully preserved the guarantee which lasts two years against the incursion of water into the mechanism.  Its shape is a squared off oval with blue and sliver trimmings.  I like it, though it has not met with unalloyed approbation in certain quarters.

Although this is a week shortened by the delight of a bank holiday on Monday we will all be suitably exhausted by Friday as if the phantom day of delight we had was just as work orientated as any other.  I suppose that we should consider ourselves lucky that we didn’t have two days off because, in the odd, contrary world of teaching, a week shorted by two days is exponentially, ontologically and existentially longer than any normal week - with the concomitant exhaustion at the end of the week sufficient to drain pleasure from the succeeding weekend!

I have noted that I am getting more and more lax with my writing as day slips by and I think that tomorrow is fine for the entry.  Perhaps the relaxation of future escape is working its magic on me at the moment and I am going through some form of release-syndrome lassitude.

This must end.  It is part of my concept of twisted professionalism that things must be as they must be and no minor change (like retirement) can be allowed to influence the important elements of life like wittering away on my computer!

Writing must go on!