Re-cycling at the bottle bank, in the days before one had one's own personal recycling bin, used to be a job one would put off for as long as possible. (Sorry about the ones. I've turned into her Majesty overnight.)As a result, I would fill my boot with bags of bottles, jars and hope. Yes, I'd travel in hope, that no one I knew would see me disgorge the evidence of a month's drunken debauchery. (Heavier on the drinking than on the debauchery, if I'm brutally honest.)
As the recriminatory clatter of glass-hitting-glass resonated around the car-park, I always felt like calling out to an imagined audience,
"These are jam jars, not wine bottles!!"
As the years have gone by, our wine consumption has become more modest. But not so our young neighbour's. I think she regularly disposes of huge numbers of jolly jam jars with scant regard for reputation or noise abatement.
So when I was having a cup of tea this afternoon with an old friend, and there was an almighty crash of glass, close by, I thought it was Lil, next door, after a particularly enjoyable weekend.
It wasn't until bed time, that I saw massive shards of mirror on our bathroom floor. What a mess. Dearest immediately sprang into action.
And took over the downstairs bathroom, while I swept, hoovered, and re-swept every glittering fragment from every corner. And road-tested it myself, with bare feet. (I am nothing if not noble.)
Some people might be fretting about ten years of bad luck. We, conversely, are counting our good luck. Firstly, that it didn't crack the new tiles on the bathroom floor, and secondly, that it didn't happen in the middle of the night.
Now that could have proved terminal.
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| "These are fragments I have shored against my ruins... " |
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