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Reflections
I knew the day was starting badly as my nose came down to meet the skirting board. Putting both legs in the same hole in one’s underpants is something best avoided first thing in the morning.
I hobbled to the bathroom and only discovered the boiler had locked out during the night after deciding a shower might reduce the swelling around my nose. In future I’ll try to remember to test the water temperature first.
Then if that wasn’t enough I managed to cut myself shaving. Nothing particularly auspicious about that you might say. Well there wouldn’t normally be anything auspicious except this morning I decided to use my electric razor.
It thus came as no great surprise then that when I looked out of the window I noticed the car wasn’t parked where it is normally parked.
“Where did you park the car, Dear?” I asked. Already wishing I didn’t need to ask the question.
“Oh I put it in the garage.” Memsahib replied. Too quickly. “Well most of it!” She added as a sort of afterthought.
Experience had taught me not to pursue any line of conversation involving Memsahib’s driving skills. Or ‘aiming’ as it is popularly known amongst survivors in our village.
“How did you manage to get it into the garage without lifting that big mirror out of the way? I’ve been rubbing the frame down all week and there’s no way you could lift it out of the way!”
“What mirror?” (you already know where this story is going, don’t you?).
“The big mirror I set up near the end of the garage so I could restore it, Dear.” I replied. Anxiously.
“You mean the other car wasn’t parked at the end of the garage?” replied Memsahib.
Still not fully grasping a situation involving the optical effects of a large mirror in a dimly lit space, along with the confidence that comes from familiarity with recognisable shapes. In this case the well recognised shape of the back of the car she was already aiming but mistaking for our other car. Finally, judgement of distance. Particularly of apparent doubling of distance in reflected images. A reflected image seen through the rear window of a car in a dimly lit space.
I call that ‘spacial awareness’. Spacial awareness, as everyone knows, is almost exclusively a 'man thing'. A bit like the spacial awareness I encountered just before the distance between my nose and the skirting board became no space at all. I decided to change the subject and resigned myself to slipping out later when things had been generally forgotten. Slipping out with a broom, a dustpan, a pair of stout gloves and a strong sack. That and resigning myself to another seven years bad luck since I’d dropped my mirror whilst shaving some half dozen years before. After getting all flustered following an incident with a pair of underpants and a skirting board!
I’ve finished ‘reflecting’ now.
For the day anyway.
