Sorry...., but MINISHED!

A sudden event has restored my faith in – well, everything.

My cherished sandals, reported as missing here on this blog on the 23rd of June, appeared on the table in front of me, yesterday afternoon at 7.13pm.

Of course we are not talking random materialisation here; they were transported from where-ever they had been these last few months (everywhere except in the friendly embrace of my feet it seems) by my charming wife - who discovered them buried underneath the debris of a teenage son’s life in the darkest corner of a wardrobe where he hides anything that could possibly be used at school (to which he is about to return after an absence of what frankly constitutes a hazard for the poor teachers who are about to meet him).

My god what a tortuous paragraph.

But you get my drift – they were well lost.

I hope the timing is not mal-fortuitous as the weather forecasters are announcing a break in the summer that has blazed on around here enough to have me dipping in the pond this second September week.

My joy at being reunited with my favourite footwear – which in the past has drawn jealous compliments from my brother-in-law - is slightly diminished by the fact that they were in a plastic bag with a leaky tube of sun cream and their black leather now sports a frightening white fungoid growth.

Incidentally I heard a sun cream expert interviewed on French radio this spring who explained that to achieve the level of protection indicated by the published sun-factor, in accordance with the tests devised to obtain this, our consumption of the product would need to be one tube per week. In fact average consumption is one tube a year.

Even given the fact that in most of the British Isles even in mid summer all you need is a woolly jumper, this disparity is alarming.

However my joy at being reunited (see above) ……. was dramatically minished by the fact that I had obviously stuffed them with treasure before packing them alongside the sun cream, putting them in my son’s travelling bag and forgetting them.

Why he chose to tip them into his wardrobe, instead of giving them to me remains, like much of fatherhood, an unfathomable mystery.

An inspection of the treasure convinces me that the sandals disappeared after a February trip to the island of Tenerife – in a desperate early attempt to smear sun cream on our bodies.

There are…two bottle tops for my collection, a plaighted wheat sheaf, four pearl white miniature shells, three twirled shell interiors – one in the shape of a labyrinth, four tiny conch shells and, and, and!!!!!!!!

A perfectly round ball of volcanic lava!

It would be perfect if I could tie that denouement into some pithy philosophical observation of life and its, er, roundness – but I can’t.

Sorry.