Richard Hearn is the hero and the villain
A small sequel to last week’s column on clutter and home improvements. (Some sequels like The Godfather: Part II enhance the original; others such as Jaws 5 seem to be flogging a dead horse. What’s it going to be?!).
As discussed, we had moved around a large amount of furniture, including repositioning chest of drawers and mirrors (warning: smoking gun plot point alert). Between weekends of decorating, we also stayed away in a hotel, and in a totally, utterly unrelated piece of news, in the week after our hotel stay, my wife felt that she must have left a particular piece of jewellery with sentimental value at this hotel. She mentioned where she thought she would normally have put it back at our house – underneath a newly-positioned mirror, next to a newly-positioned chest of drawers.
“I’m thinking maybe I’m the one with my tactics wrong”
A side story to distract you from where this other one is heading. A massive box arrived with a replacement chair for our newly-sorted out study. As soon as Youngest™ saw the box he suggested to me a game of hide-and-seek. A bit obvious. As a competitive man, I felt I was in with a chance. Then, when he went inside the box and I heard him counting to 10 and he sprung out and saw me in the middle of the room and shouted ‘Found you!’ I’m thinking maybe I’m the one with my tactics wrong.
OK, back to the main storyline, my wife’s missing jewellery. I made helpful suggestions along the lines of me phoning the hotel, checking our suitcases and even calling others who we’d seen the next day in case they had photos that showed my wife was in fact wearing the jewellery the following day (thus narrowing down the time period, in the style of Hercule Poirot). Then – call it a flash of inspiration, a moment of brilliance, an almost superhero ability to see through furniture – just don’t call it a half-forgotten memory of me knocking a small box off a mantelpiece while drilling a hole for a mirror – but I decided, with my mighty strength, to move the chest of drawers and there, below the mirror, resting against the skirting board was the small jewellery box.
While you digest this unexpected revelation, I’d like to quote my favourite novel opening line, from Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield. “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
Surely, by finding the jewellery, I am a hero? My wife however would argue that not only am I not the hero of this story, but I am in fact the villain.
Illustration: Paul Lewis www.pointlessrhino.com
