Sticky When Wet

Hi, Kabbalah Rookie here, typing with full appreciation on my psychic laptop.

I still haven't found my photo CD, although truth be told I haven't yet looked in all of the places it could be. It is funny how the mind plays tricks. The moment I run out of ideas, my brain concocts a crystal image of exactly where I saw it last.

"It's in the orange box in the trunk with the printed photos. I can see it."

"It's on the bottom shelf of the TV cabinet in amongst the DVDs"

"It's in the box on the bookshelf with all of your travel memorabilia"

"It's in the back room in an old laptop bag in a pocket that you haven't already checked."

"It's slipped behind the couch"

"It's under your bed"

"It's in the slow cooker"

Each time I am absolutely certain that this is where it could be, and each time I draw a blank and my brain says "Don't be pissed with me. I'm only trying to help. Oo! I know where it is!"

I suspect that I threw the disc out by accident - it was unmarked (which wasn't an issue when I was carrying a single rucksack around South East Asia) and in a plastic wallet.

The thing is that I can remember viewing the whole disc on a computer screen and I am pretty sure that I was sitting in this house when I did. Perhaps the photos are misfiled on my old laptop and I need to search for every .jpg on the hard drive to find them. When I get ten days free to run the search, I'll let you know.

Today there is less absence of heat, mainly due to there being less absence of rain. So this wouldn't be a good day for painting a front door. As it turns out, neither was yesterday.

When the decorator left yesterday at around 4pm, he lightly touched the paintwork and advised me to give it another hour so that it was touch dry. I propped the door so that it was virtually closed but not touching the frame. My cunning plan was to minimise the number of fingers lost through hypothermia during this time.

At 5pm, I touched the edge of the door. Still sticky.

At 6pm, I touched the edge of the door a second time. Still as sticky as before.

At 7:30 pm I returned a third time. There was a slight improvement but not enough to close the door against the frame.

At 9pm I returned a fourth time, and lightly dabbed the edge of the door with one of my remaining fingers. The damn thing was still just as tacky as before. And then it dawned on me - the weather was too cold for the paint to dry.

Wishing that I had realised this when I had more fingers, I closed the door as lightly as I could, put the heating on and took up my usual position on top of the radiators for an hour or so. I wonder if they make radiator hammocks for people? I'm sure there's a market for that.

This morning I tried to open the front door and it was well and truly stuck. The only way that I could get any purchase was by sticking my hand through the letter box and giving it some welly, at which point the door opened with a large slurping sound, taking half of the insulating strip with it. Oh good.

Thank heavens for cold weather. If the paint had actually dried at all during the night then I would never have been able to peel off the insulating strip. It is still as sticky as fly-paper, and lies in wait to collect more fingerprints until spring arrives.

The unsuspecting postman is next.