When we first moved into our present house, a neighbour, Sally, introduced herself. She told us her name, how she had an Australian soon-to-be son-in-law and how she thought of us as the fresh air freaks. This was due to our habit of always having our windows open.
And she was correct to a certain extent. I don’t like windows being closed. I prefer a cold to a stuffy room. A cold ROOM I mean, not a medical cold.
The thing is, with this window open habit, our house tends to get a bit breezy at times with the almost constant fresh air flow. This wind flow shuts the doors upstairs rather forcefully. In order to stop this happening, we have a series of door stops, one for each upstairs room, and they keep the doors open and the air flowing freely.
The door stop for the Old Rose Room is in the shape of a hedgehog.
Well, half a hedgehog really, with one side flat, the side that goes against the door. Because of the shape, when it’s not doing its job, it can fall over. Which it did today.
I was upstairs, unpacking some clothes I’d bought online and the big, grey outer bag was sitting in the doorway. I stood up to retrieve it but, saw something more interesting and grabbed that. This action, for some reason, informed my brain that it should direct my foot to kick the big, grey outer bag through the doorway, thus clearing my way. My foot, obviously, carried out the order.
What neither my foot nor my brain realised was that the iron hedgehog was sitting underneath it. Needless to say, I wasn’t wearing any shoes.
It hurt.
I can only blame myself, after all, this is what happens when you think without thinking.
This followed a lovely morning walk into Farnham to shop and chat with people at random.
Which preceded my attempt at making Romanian preserved white cabbage in brine. When Mirinda saw it ‘resting’ on the kitchen counter she wondered whether I’d started making my own botanical gin. Sadly, I had to disappoint her.
