Reflection and prediction

As if being stuck at home eating the wallpaper isn't bad enough, here are ten things I have to live with in the final days of 2007:

1. The neighbours have stopped inflating the reindeer, as recorded in this blog on Thursday 6th December. Below is a picture of it as evidence. It shows just the sort of thing that drove me to Cheshire in the first place.

2. Tiger screaming. She has been doing this a lot today. This is, I suspect, because Aunty Dee is driving back to Morpeth and therefore represents the removal of a significant adult. I have hidden the knitting needles just in case things get worse.

3. The new window cleaner we acquired two weeks ago and who did not appear for his first appointment appears at the front door today with his leg in plaster. Apparently he spent Christmas Eve in A&E having fallen off his ladder. Bodes well doesn't it?

4. The back door into the yard has fallen off its hinges completely. I cannot prop it back in the hole. I have wedged the fallen off door against the hole with a school table I bought at the tip two years ago which had the words 'Jessica Curtis is a slag' scratched on it in biro. Although the door and table combination is a solution of sorts, they do not conceal the contents of our back yard. Although the contents are mostly discarded bottles of paint and children's garden furniture, I am sure Burglar Bill is eyeing us up, so I have found the telephone number of the local police station in preparation.

5. Dig is flying to India in a few days time and is complaining about it. For now, Grit and the junior Grits are not going anywhere, except the front room, where we get a fine view of the privet. We might go somewhere later, but I am not counting my chickens in case foxes attend the counting ceremony.

6. The data disk is still broken. We have tried to be optimistic about this and think constructively of other uses for it, like door prop or garlic crusher. But in reality, no matter which way we look at a broken data disk, it is a disaster.

7. I cannot get to the sales no matter how hard I try. I am quickly descending into one of those life-is-pointless depressive periods and hope to buy my way out of it with a pair of earrings. Of course this attempt, even if I were successfully able to go to John Lewis, is doomed to failure. Would you put a silk hat on an old sow?

8. Someone has numbered the bananas. I look in the fruit bowl and there, carefully written on all the peels are the numbers 1 to 10. I suspect this is Squirrel, who is growing keen on inventory systems. She might be showing early promise as a librarian. It has had the desired effect, because I dare not eat one of the bananas in case I find that I have eaten the one not allocated to me and therefore cause a family argument.

9. I am working, intermittently, at typesetting a book. The editor, SS, is a git, and will find an error. Perhaps I'll have missed an italic setting on a word in Chapter 3. SS won't email back a list of corrections such as follows:

'Chapter 3 page 33, line 14 word 'speech' to be in italics.'

Oh no. SS will email back:

'Once again I have to check the work. This lack of professional care suggests appalling low standards and total disrespect for an author's work. I think it is time to review this situation.'

Just like before.

10. The end of one year and the beginning of the new is, I suppose, a time for reflection and prediction. Here's mine. The above in sum probably means the early days of 2008 will start much in the way that 2007 finished.