I’m usually a bit of an optimist and I always try to look for the good in things but last night I was seriously struggling when our boiler decided to go on strike because there’s not much of a positive when both kids have a cold (again), the house is freezing and I’m ringing round engineers – most of whom say they can’t make it until Monday and the ones who can make it charge an amount equal to a small countries national debt to come out on a weekend.
I managed to find someone who could come out this morning for a slightly less than the others so I’m hoping we’ll be feeling warmer by lunchtime today.
The first positive of living in a house that felt like the Artic is that we get to have hot chocolate to warm us up and if you’re going to be having a hot chocolate then you might as well add in a giant marshmallow iceberg. And if you’ve got some chocolate squirty cream left over from Christmas then you may as well use that up. Then it would be rude not to add some chocolate sprinkles wouldn’t it?
As I was trying to keep busy (busy = feeling slightly less cold) I thought I’d clear the area around the boiler cupboard ready for them and one of the things I moved was an old clock.
This clock, despite our best efforts to revive it, hadn’t worked in years – I think it probably ticked it’s last tock at least seven or eight years ago but I’ve kept it because it means a lot to me whether it’s working or not.
It was a gift from Mr Frugal to my mum the first Christmas we met – we’d only been together about two months but be got on great with my mum and wanted to buy her something nice (so he said at the time, I think he was just sucking up ;-)). Whatever the reason, she loved it (and him) and it took pride of place on her mantlepiece from then until it stopped working one day. Even then she still kept it but it got relegated to the bookshelf in the dining room.
When my mum died, I brought the clock to my house because I knew my Dad would probably get rid of it at some point seeing as it wasn’t working and he had a houseful of my Mum’s things and wouldn’t be as attached to this broken clock as I was. We tried everything to get it working but nothing worked so I kept the clock in the kitchen, out of the way because it was broken but somewhere I knew it was and where I would see it whenever I opened the cupboard to get out any herbs or spices.
So back to last night, I cleared some things off the kitchen counter and moved them to the table in the kitchen where Mr Frugal was sat with the kids while they drank their hot chocolate. He picked up the clock to have a look at it and for some bizarre reason it started to work again! How’s that for weird?
I’d like to believe that it was my mum looking down on me but in reality I’m thinking there must have been a dodgy connection somewhere that’s righted itself when it’s been moved around! Whatever the reason, it’s now sat on the sideboard in my living room making me smile so there definitely is a silver lining to this very cold cloud!
