I think I may have started to go senile as I've spent a good proportion of the last couple of days looking for stuff after forgetting where I'd left it. Yesterday I searched high and low for my ipod as I had wanted to record my gig in case I ad-libbed any good new bits, but couldn't find it anywhere. An evil part of my brain wondered if the men who had ripped up my bathroom floor had added insult to injury by making off with it, but like wrongfully accused characters in a film they were vindicated (rather quickly and less dramatically) when I found the ipod where I had left it - hidden behind my Homer Simpson doll. I don't think you'll find a sentence that reveals more about me in this whole blog than that one!
Today I couldn't find my phone. I was in a rush to play squash, but the phone wasn't in any of my usual places. I wondered if it had fallen out of my pocket during my gig, or (again suspecting some other fool so I didn't have to blame myself) that one of the audience had stolen it from my pocket when I'd taken my jacket off during the show. Worryingly when I rang it it went straight to answer phone, so maybe the battery had run out, or perhaps the thief was busy running up a huge bill by ringing the Voyager unmanned space mission to see if any aliens were on board yet.
I had to take my car in for a service after squash and had meant to check under the seats in case it had slipped out of my pocket, but forgot. So when another search through the house has proved phoneless I ran back to the garage to look. The car was up on one of those lifting things you have in a garage and I had to climb in to look, but there wasn't much room to manoeuvre and I couldn't see it on the floor. The evil part of my mind suspected that one of the mechanics had already found it and pocketed it.
So then I had to rush home to ring up O2 and ask them to put a hold on my phone. I was annoyed with them for not being able to tell me if the phone had been used by anyone today. This was everyone else's fault and nothing to do with me.
Later as I went to pick up the car one of the mechanics told me with a smile that he'd found the phone, just where I'd left it last night, on the little shelf above my radio. Again the wrongly accused were quickly vindicated.
Then as I was dashing to get out to my gig in New Cross I couldn't find my Oyster Card (it's the new kind of tube pass, grandad and the less old people who don't live in London). For the third time in 24 hours I was going up and down the stairs, checking the same rooms, throwing stuff around. I was pretty sure I could remember taking the Oyster Card out of my pocket at some point, but annoyingly my memory couldn't recall where this event had occurred. Useless memory. I didn't need to remember taking the card out of my pocket - the fact it wasn't in my pocket told me that. What I needed to know was where had I put it and my memory hadn't even bothered to attempt to remember that. A couple of times my memory gave a little "oh" as if it was about to recall, but then it realised it still didn't know. I checked behind the Homer Simpson doll, a place that was as secure as any safe - no burglar would look behind there, but that wasn't where it was. I weakly wondered whether the men who'd ripped up my bathroom floor might possibly have stolen it and imagined them at this very moment travelling around on a bus and laughing, because one of them was travelling for free. You'd think I'd have learned from my previous mis-judgement and the fact that I could remember taking the card out of my pocket and putting it somewhere.
Just as I was about to give it up as a lost cause, I found it, on top of my book shelf in my lounge, in plain view, where I had already looked for it.
All my things were safe. The only things I have lost are my mind and my youth.
Now I want you to promise that if you ever burgle my house that you won't look behind my Homer Simpson doll. It's not fair to use this privileged information against me.
