Finding the funny side.

As you know, life has been a bit full of, well, of Life recently. Since the day I got back from Laos, if we're going to be precise. I'm not going to write about the main focus of all this - mainly because the real heroine is old and frail and believes the internet was spawned from the devil's armpit, and so it would be disrespectful to splash her story over my blog.

But why is it that Big Dramas always come with a sub-plot?

For instance, at that moment when I was most in need of a cup of tea, the kettle blew up. To be fair, my failing to fill it with water was a contributory factor. But such reasoning was beyond me. At the time, standing in the kitchen with the kettle doing its hissing thing and then - phut, that tell-tale phut - and you know it's dead, my reasoning went something like this:

The kettle did this on purpose. It knew this was the very moment I would die - literally die - without a cup of tea. I must ring ... who ... someone who could go out and buy me a kettle, bring it to me wrapped in sparkly paper, make me tea while I sobbed my recovery. (Why couldn't I go and buy my own kettle? Because it was a Sunday, and I live in a small town with no kettle shop open on a Sunday. I have no car, and Sunday buses are ... when did you last see a bus in the countryside on a Sunday? What's more, the kettle must have known all this and chosen a Sunday, deliberately.)

I didn't do any of that. I took a deep breath. Found my little travelling kettle. Made some tea. Ordered a new kettle.

Then, on Bank Holiday Saturday, just as Life was receding enough for me to notice the crumbs on the floor, the hoover blew up. Just like that. The engine all hot and bothered. I'd have carried on regardless if there had been suction, but the hoover must have known I'd do something like that as it packed up entirely. With a little sigh and a stink - and then, nothing. Bank Holiday Saturday, the house uncleaned for weeks - and no hoover.

So, that was the moment it mattered more than anything in the world that I clean the house. I have books to read, the grass to cut, cakes to make (I lie about that, I rarely make cakes), friends to visit, logs to chop for the fire next winter, plants to repot, bed sheets to change, stories to write, films to watch, hair to wash - but somehow I can't do any of it until the house is clean. I order a new hoover. And wait in the dust for days, follow its tracking, jump up each time a truck goes by. The world has stopped because I can't clean the stairs.

Unreasonable? Of course it's unreasonable.

But the conspiracy of kettle and hoover, just when my head is peering above the parapet of Really Serious Drama, is unreasonable.

Please tell me I'm not the only one to have a common sense bypass when things like this go wrong?