Things fall apart

19th March 2023

I may or may not have had a second sighting of our weekend guest on Monday, not being sure if I imagined or really saw a gecko tail whip away when I went to put some things in the laundry basket. Searching around and under it for our visitor proved fruitless, as did tipping the washing out onto the terrazzo and going through it all. We can only hope that it has packed its bags and gone to rejoin all its brethren, there being quite a number of these. When I took Harry and Bella out on Tuesday at lunchtime, the first day I did so without a jacket or coat of some sort this year, they were quite ubiquitous – and those I didn’t see, I heard scurrying away in the undergrowth.

Wednesday, I had a bit of a surprise, though saying that might raise your expectations that it was something interesting, when I was cleaning one of the light fittings in the kitchen. Wiping round the large globe bulb inside the shade I thought it felt a little lose, but when I tried to tighten it, it came away in my hand. It is not the sort of thing you expect really, to be standing on top of a chair with a duster in one hand and half a bulb in the other, the bayonet fitting still being screwed into the socket. I sent Stephen a photo with emphatic protestations that I wasn’t doing anything other than a spot of light dusting. His diagnosis, on examining it later, was that it had sheared away because it had burnt through the joint. Maybe it is just as well it happened while I was enjoying a little gentle housework, otherwise it might have come away while we were eating, shattering glass all over the table.

And that wasn’t the only thing to come apart on Wednesday, as Stephen found out, while I was having my 7pm lesson downstairs, when he accidentally spilled his mug of coffee on the side table by the armchair in the back room. With me so far? He wiped up the spill, taking a bit of the patina off in the process thanks to his boiling hot milkless drink, and found that one of the legs came away in his hands. I was not overly surprised when he told me, as I had somehow managed to forget to mention that when I was dusting the table on Monday (can I help it if I am houseproud?), the leg seemed a little lose and when I tried to tighten it, it came away. I tried to screw it back in, but it failed to take purchase. I did, though, somehow manage to get it wedged in sufficiently to remain stable – as long as no one spilt a hot drink on it, that is. Stephen, after his mishap, also managed to prop up the table, but obviously it was a situation that had to be addressed.

Before we got round to that, the new bulbs to replace the broken one arrived thanks to Amazon and we collected them on Friday morning when we were doing the shopping. There was, though, a slight hiccup as while the wattage was the same, it turned out that Stephen had ordered a size smaller than the one being replaced, meaning the new bulb looked a little lost in the large, parabolic light shade. He did, though, come up with a solution, swapping two of the larger bulbs in the lights on the beams for the two new smaller ones and using one of those in the shade. I bet you didn’t know life could be so exciting.

What was altogether a pleasanter surprise was when Stephen returned in the evening and presented me with an orchid. I think this had had some preplanning as it was in the pot that my Valentine flowers had come in, so he had obviously arranged it with the florist before the debacle of the bulbs. After trying it in a few different places, by yesterday morning it had found a home on the window in the back room, where it looks much to advantage. That’s more than can be said for the side table, as Stephen decided it could be mended with a judicious application from the hot glue gun. Admittedly, it did solve the problem of the leg falling off again, if you ignore the white blobs, but the top was still looking a little sorry for itself.

That is why we decided to take a shopping trip to Corridomnia this morning, partly because we needed some things from Risparmio Casa, which of course meant the all-you-can-eat lunch menu at Diverxo afterwards - remembering to book this time, and how empty is a restaurant if you arrive at 12.00, just when it is opening? In between, we took a wander round Maisons du Monde to see what they had to offer in the way of tables. The answer was lots, and many at what seemed a very interesting price for not very much, even if you liked them. We did, though, spot one, with dark wood-stained legs and an abstract patterned inset top, in resin masquerading as glass.

As is the way, this was not what we had in mind when we set out, but we were taken enough with it that Stephen threw caution to the wind and suggested we bought both that were on display, replacing the so far intact plain black one by the settee in a sort of his and his occasional table event. And not only that, placed conveniently nearby were a selection of cushions that, oddly enough, seemed to go with the table. What the heck, we thought, let’s have one of those as well, and, from elsewhere in the store, another cushion in a moda crocheted squares pattern. You know how it is once you start, which is by way of explaining how an impulse buy ended up in the trolley on the way to the checkout – but who doesn’t need a doorstop in the shape of an utterly charming little stuffed dog in a grey herringbone material in their lives?