Stuff On My Phone (14)

If ever a song's time was now, this track must be in with a shout and let's make no bones about it.

I've been gnome alone for the past week, whilst Our Lass visits First and Second Born, as well as attending a hen weekend for a niece. Last Thursday, I had a bit of a domestic disaster, which was amusing after the fact, well, quite some time after, if I'm honest.

We have one of those free-standing clothes airers with adjustable arms, and I was removing some clothes from it which were sufficiently dry to be consigned to the airing cupboard. Unbeknownst to me, as I lifted a gillet from the end of the airer, it snagged on a corner and began to raise the whole arm. I still hadn't noticed when the arm reached the critical point where the stay drops down. The noise of this roused me from my reverie, although I wasn't sure what had made the sound, but I did notice the snagging problem and shook the garment free.

As you've probably guessed, at this point gravity took over, and the arm headed south at a rate of knots. On its way, it caught the edge of a small stereo speaker for our digital radio, and knocked it off the shelf of a corner unit. Trapped on the wrong side of the airer, I could only watch as this too plummeted earthwards, its momentum only halted temporarily as the audio lead went taut and the main digital radio followed suit from a higher shelf.

In the split second that all this was taking place, I remained rooted to the spot and continued to monitor progress from my helpless and disbelieving standpoint. Even as several expletives were shuffling from their easy chairs to make their way to turning the air blue, I could only witness the power lead for the radio, which was dragging a tall vase from the same shelf. Shortly after one corner of the digital radio gouged a neat triangular hole in the vinyl flooring, said vase reached Ground Zero and exploded into eleven billionty shards, each an individual sharps hazard of a unique size and shape.

After several seconds of dumbstruck silence, basically whilst I waited to see if the ceiling would fall in or a wall would collapse outwards, I trudged wearily to the airing cupboard where, coincidentally, we keep the vacuum cleaner. It looked at me with a furrowed brow and then put up some grudging resistance as I dragged it back along the corridor to the kitchen. I could hear it thinking "Wtf? We just cleaned this room yesterday! How can it be dirty ag... oh?!"

This week, I am off southwards too, to meet up with Our Lass and attend the wedding of another niece. I shall be wearing these cufflinks.

And here, eventually, is the track I mentioned at the beginning of the post. It's one of my favourite Genesis songs (technically two of my favourite Genesis songs, as it's a medley).