One Thing After Another

I was exhorted to buy biscuits for a friend of a friend who was calling in for a cup of tea and a chat on his way home from Minsmere yesterday. In the event he didn't want one, and that spelt catastrophe for me. I can't keep biscuits in the house, so my motto is, eat them quickly, get them out of the house. The trouble is that I am sort of allergic to them, especially if I eat them after lunch, when all I want to do is sleep. Does this stop me eating them? Of course it doesn't. And so I had two chocolate gingers for 'elevenses', at 10am with my coffee, another two an hour later, and three more after lunch. I could have just surrendered to the urge to doze, but I was expecting a BT engineer and had to be alert.

The engineer came in the allotted time with a whisker to spare. Why do they always tell you your slot is 8-1pm, and then arrive at the last possible second? He confounded me by asking what seemed to be the problem. I gaped at him. Do you mean that you haven't been given a file itemising my many issues with my telephone and broadband, I asked him stupidly? No, he blithely replied, smiling face bereft of guile. So I told him about my crackling phone line, my loss of broadband, sometimes for a whole day at a time, the fact that my Caller Display function stopped working over two months ago. His insouciance was truly remarkable. I suppose if you work for BT, voted as the least customer friendly company in the UK, you have to develop a thick skin. He tried to fix the problem which he easily identified, but he couldn't get a van with a hoist to reach the line. In the meantime I heard all about his arthritic foot problems which I identified with having some of my own. It was all very predictable really. Most of a day wasted: I managed a few hours in the garden this morning, it being mild and dry if not sunny, but couldn't settle to Italian. And now it's nearly dark.

But I have much more serious things to worry about. My main concern at the moment is the mystery of the disappearing lipsticks. I own three, one of them bought expensively just a few weeks ago. And now they have vanished. All three of them. They live in my handbag because I tend to wear lipstick quite a lot these days when I go out. I definitely had them on Christmas Eve, but can't remember seeing them after that. It's so perplexing. I never have all three out of the bag at the same time, so can't have mislaid them. I've searched the car, the house, the pockets of all my clothes, down the back of the sofas, under the bed. Nada. What can it mean? Is one of my Christmas guests a sleepwalking kleptomaniac? And how can I play bridge on Wednesday with nothing to brighten up my grey winter face? Must I resort to cochineal?