Pouring, Not Raining.

This year has been remarkable for the wasting of relatively small amounts of money through accident, ill judgement, or bad luck – like, for example, the litre bottle of whisky which leapt out of my backpack and smashed on the tiled floor of my office, a fact which I reported on this blog.

The latest occurred last night and involved a new bottle of Corsodyl mouthwash. At half past two this morning, while on my way to bed, I put it in a wardrobe which I use for, among other things, storing back-up stocks of regularly used items. It slipped off a bag, fell down the back of this big piece of furniture, and slid underneath the base. All attempts to retrieve it failed, and so I continued – in a very bad mood – to my repose.

I looked at the issue in the cold light of day and decided that the time and effort involved – not to mention the assault on my less-than-pristine physical condition – was simply not worth the loss of £3.49. It can stay there now until someone, some day, removes the wardrobe in consequence of my committal to some sort of care facility or my embarkation on the journey to the undiscovered country. I’m tempted to hope that it’s well beyond its Use By date by then, but I don’t suppose it matters.

If this year has been a bad one for wasting money, yesterday was a bad one for misadventures. Being robbed by the Fates of my bottle of Corsodyl was the last of a line stretching back sixteen hours. I wonder how many more times I’m going to find that little line from Hamlet apposite: When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions. (Or if you prefer the vernacular to the pretentious, ‘it never rains but it pours.’)