Cosmic consequences
There is a strange phenomenon in this house.
Herself and I seem to have the power to change things on a massive, almost global scale.
Take for example the weather.
Going back a little while we had some really heavy snowy winters. For a couple of years in succession the only way to get to the village was to crunch down on foot. This worried Herself for some reason and she bought me a pair of those yokes like little chains that you slip over your boots to stop you sliding and slipping. It has hardly snowed since.
Another time we were heading off on holidays. The weather wasn't that hectic but we had booked the place so off we went. Half way there we stopped for coffee and Herself realised we had left my rain coat at home, so she nipped off and bought me one. We had a blazing heatwave for the fortnight.
Those are examples of some of our larger scale phenomena [and there have been many] but smaller things happen too.
Typically we would lose something in the house. We would hunt from porch to woodshed and strip every room asunder. Eventually after a couple of days we would give up and decide to buy a new replacement. Invariably the old one would turn up somewhere obvious within an hour of placing the order. As a result we have quite a few duplicates around, and in some cases, triplicates. I think I have about five keys for my Black and Decker drill and about six radiator bleed keys, simply because the only way to find something is to replace it.
I mentioned a few days ago that my watch had broken. There are little buttons on the side that are used to select and adjust the various functions. Now I never use those functions, such as the alarm and stopwatch because I never need them but they are there nevertheless. For some reason those buttons refused to work.
I dismantled the watch and cleaned it out thoroughly. Using one of the buttons I could cycle through the functions if I pressed it hard enough. If I selected the stopwatch, it would work very happily. I could set the alarm, no problem. Could I change the date? In my arse I could! I would sit there pressing the buttons softly or would bash them really hard but they had no effect at all. I tried dabbing them and I held them down for five minutes. I tried everything. Nothing worked.
I gave up in the end and ordered a new one online. They are posting from the Rings of Saturn or somewhere so I'm not going to get it for a while yet.
After pacing the order I started fiddling with the watch again.
The fucking thing worked perfectly straight away.
Soon they will be fucking with my head and putting the hour forward again.
I wonder if I'll have to order yet another new watch before I can reset the time?
I have a similar situation, although not quite the same. It concerns supermarkets.
I'm usually pretty uninspired by the offerings in our local supermarkets; just the usual run of stuff, nothing to get excited about. Occasionally, though, I try something I've not bought before and find it is particularly to my liking. From that moment on, I know it is only a matter of time before that product disappears from the shelves, never to be seen again. I've even got to the point that when I find something I like, I rush back the following day and bulk-buy, because I know that despite the fact that the product has graced the supermarket shelf for the past twelve or more years I've been using the place, it will vanish without a trace the instant I decide I really like it.
It's quite uncanny, it happens every time. In fact my wife cautions me when I express a liking for anything. "Sshh", she says, "don't say you like it – you know what will happen…".
And I thought it was just me…
I suffer from that to a minor extent. My other big problem is electronics! As soon as I buy something, within a day or two it becomes obsolete. Not months or weeks, but days. This laptop I'm using doesn't even appear in the company's archives!
Woops! Where have all those comments gone?
Now c’mon Grandad – you’re not thinking straight, are you? It’s simple … leave your old, now-working watch on winter time, and set the new one, when it arrives, to summer time. Then, when the hour-change arrives, simply swap your watches; then do the same and switch back to the old watch when the clocks go back again. Easy-peasy. Provided, of course, that you can find the watch you haven’t been using for six-months odd when you need it …
Ah – I knew there’d be a catch!