2007: A year to remember
15th December, 2007
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And so to the last blog entry of the year, always the most difficult to write. There were those times when I feared I would not make it this far, most particularly when I was all but crushed beneath the weight of the huge sliding door which opened on to our balcony. Pinned between the slab of glass and aluminium and the outdoor table like a specimen in a museum, I wondered how many others had suffered such a fate. Not many, I reckoned.
There was that time I went to work and left the gas on. It is sometimes my habit to switch things on and then to walk away and forget about them completely. Fortuitously, I am not a smoker for had I succumbed to the nicotine urge, I'd be typing this blog entry from beyond the great divide. Crockery and glassware continued to shatter around me, the last incident was two weeks ago when a bowl leapt off the drying rack while I was washing up and hurled itself on to the floor. My wife said nothing, merely pointing to the archway that led to the loungeroom. Once more a victim of the mysterious forces that surround me, I accepted defeat and slunk into the lounge while she collected the shards of shattered crockery. On a brighter note, she smashed six glasses herself in the past year, more than she had broken in her entire lifetime. I make light of this and tell her how proud I am to be able to welcome her into the ranks of the United Plate and Glass Smashers' Union, but she struggles to see the humour in the situation. This year the vacuum cleaner ate the cords on the blinds in the living room and died of complications after I performed surgery on it with the breadknife in an attempt to retrieve them. The electric gates to the garage of our apartment building attacked my car as I tried to exit the carpark. These gates open and shut hundreds of times a day and there is no record of any other resident ever having been imprisoned in their steel jaws. Then there was the moment I forgot that stovetop coffee pots get very hot and grabbed the handle. I shrieked with pain and reached for a tea towel that dangled in the flame of the gas jet and caught fire, causing me to knock over the coffee pot which sprayed steaming liquid and grounds all over me and the kitchen. My wife's espresso machine, which had been working perfectly all year, exploded the first time she went to use it with me in the room and once more I found myself covered in coffee. It occurred to me that a trend was emerging here. I bought a manbag after, in the course of one day, losing my wallet, house keys and sunglasses, each one in a separate location. I also lost two expensive pairs of reading glasses and four moderately expensive pairs of sunglasses, bringing the eyewear bill for 2007 to around $1,500. My wife finally tired of our guests vanishing beneath the table when we were entertaining outdoors. This was not for having overindulged in my cheap red wine but because my old wooden chairs regularly collapsed under them. One moment they would be chatting away and the next the sound of shattering timber would be followed by shrieks as they slid under the table. In desperation, we bought a lovely new break-proof outdoor setting. I received a pair of undies allegedly treated with an aphrodisiac. If you wore them, you were supposed to turn into a superstud. That was ten months ago and nothing significant has happened yet so I'm wondering if they're faulty. However, the biggest highlight of the year has been the birth of our first child Michael. He is absolutely perfect in every way and there is no greater joy than holding him in my arms and watching him sleep peacefully. I have an incredibly beautiful wife, and now I have an adorable son. How on earth did I get so lucky? I am truly blessed. Merry Christmas. |
