So this morning I was doing what everybody does when they have guests coming, right? The spare bedroom sheets need changing, hoover the room, dust - make sure it's in good order for your mates, basically. Now for most people this simple, mundane task would pass without incident. When I'm doing it, however, I manage to make an absolutely straightforward job look like a short Clouseau film. Or something Chaplin made. While pissed.
I am, dear reader, one clumsy bastard. I have, quite genuinely, almost knocked myself out by standing on a rake, the rising handle coming off the floor like a lever and smacking me just above the eye. This was years ago but honestly, the only other person who's ever done that in the world is Jerry the cat from Tom and Jerry, and he's a cartoon for fuck's sake.
For some, Clouseau is old-fashioned, knockabout farce. For me it can
sometimes feel like a hard-hitting ('scuse the pun) fly-on-the-wall documentary.
sometimes feel like a hard-hitting ('scuse the pun) fly-on-the-wall documentary.
So day to day I never know what new form of idiot way to do myself injury I'm going to discover. This morning, though, I did at least manage to get new bedsheets in place without incident. I say without incident, I'm of course discounting the standard stuff that goes on every time I move around the house. I caught my elbow on the door handle on the way in, stubbed my toe against the leg of the bed frame and smacked my shin on that same frame just coming into the room. But this stuff is so frequent that it barely deserves a mention - it doesn't really count. I was just warming up.
Just inside the door of the room in question there's one of those square, black shelving units from Ikea with four equal sections. On top of that is a small TV. Behind the TV, resting against the wall with its base against the back of the telly, as a cork board about the size of a sheet of A3 paper. Pinned to it are dozens of pairs of earrings, those owned by my partner's late mum Julie. Lots of her stuff has been given to friends of hers, and some to charity, but there's still a fair bit around the house and this is one such example. Above the whole thing, on the wall, is a set of shelves in an oval shape with a few knick-knacks on it.
Dusting behind the TV, I jolted the board slightly and two or three earrings fell out of the cork. Bugger. Carefully lifting out the cork board, I found the loose earrings, pushed them back into the cork, and replaced the board behind the TV. Onward. A couple of moments later, I'm running the long hoover pipe thingy up the wall to remove a cobweb when I catch the edge of the shelving unit a glancing blow and it immediately falls straight off the wall, spilling its contents - among them two glass paper weights and a ceramic tealight holder that's been around since before I met my missus.
It also, needless to say, landed on the cork board, this time bringing the lot down and knocking basically all of the earrings off. Alone (apart from the cats) in a quiet house, the crashing sound it made was only drowned out by my subsequent copious, vociferous swearing. I used two words beginning with C, dear reader, and only one of them was 'clumsy', as I castigated myself volubly. The cats barely stirred - they're clearly used to me. But I now had to find and replace all the earrings and put everything back in its place.
Some twenty minutes later, I'd finally got everything back in place. Only a small breakage to the tealight holder, mercifully - it could have been a lot worse. Before I put the corkboard back in place, however, I thought I'd better check on the floor behind the shelves to make sure no earrings had dropped down behind there. Leaning over the telly to look down the back, I headbutted the fucking shelves, and off the wall it came again.
Happily a lifetime of such ineptitude has also heightened my inner clumsy-alarm's sensitivity to my own uselessness, and it remains at DEFCON 1 more or less constantly. I was therefore able to react so quickly this time that I pinned the shelf to the wall with my hand before it even dropped appreciably, and saved any further calamity.
I was, frankly, relieved to finally exit the cleaned room. Now there's the weekend, including handling glasses, knives and crockery my partner's accumulated from all over the world, to negotiate. Should be a laugh. For everybody else.
