Of course most things fall apart eventually, but in my experience they crumble in clusters. When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions—as the bard has it. The Horsemen of the Apocalypse ride around in fours, and the plagues of Egypt visit in sevens, so breakages—a phenomenon admittedly on a far smaller scale—might well be susceptible to clustering.
The butter knives are on their last legs and the last of them has at long last disintegrated and now gone the way of the fish-knives (Norman). Oddly enough we now eat more fish than meat but have no fish-knives; so why were they necessary when we ate fish only once a week? Tempora mutantur.
Ah but back at the clustering of the domestic disasters in miniature. My first digital TV- the Hitachi I placed near my work desk so I can watch TV if I have mindless work to do (e.g. scanning)—bit the dust and the hand that fed it slap bang in the middle of a Western. Well I never liked it. It is odd how some objects are a source of joy while others yet, remain merely functional and are angular and awkward and fail to inspire confidence. I have now replaced it with the cheapest Logik set of the same size from Curry's for under £100 and am delighted with it.
The TV aerial has been playing up for a long time now; whenever it started to rain channels dropped out one by one and would not return until it dried again. And it's been a particularly rainy year. Particularly vulnerable to damp was ITV3 which is often the only channel with something watchable on it. The more channels there are the harder it is to find anything to watch. (Quaere: If the number of channels became infinite would I have to stop watching TV altogether? Or would I be spoilt for choice?)
The sheathing on the coaxial cables on both aerials (the one for the TV in the bedroom and one for the TV at my work station) was badly worn and it let the water in. Oxford aerials sent an excellent chap who not only replaced the two degraded aerials but consolidated both cable runs through one aerial. I can now watch TV even if it rains. What a relief when things work as they should.
Tidying up afterwards I found ants had invaded the kitchen. Tiny ones who had found a way through the wall. They don't make brickwork like they used. (Ant activity always peaks after long periods of rain followed by a couple of sunny days, so in a way such an event was likely to be synchronous with summoning the TV engineer, so that might explain that bit of clustering.) Wilcher Close used to be apple orchards so ants abound, but you have to stop them coming indoors. In Budapest I had tiny ants threading their way up to the third floor and eating crumbs off the table. Back at home in Wilcher Close we plugged the hole and hoovered up all the spoil, at which point the hoover hose snapped. We can't afford a new vacuum as well, so it's been taped up with brown tape.
More seriously, my belt snapped and so did its replacement, which I took as a sign that I should go on a diet sometime soon (in a day or so)—and get more exercise. A quick but stretching game of shuttlecock on the back lawn. This is not at all strenuous apart from the bit where you throw a broom up into the tree to dislodge the shuttlecock when it gets stuck. But what was that 'ping'?
Oh my racquet has finally given way as well.
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