Rather a lot has been happening here, though not quite in the way planned.
1. We're lucky to have more than enough, erm, facilities in our house (two up, one down, which works out at one toilet each when there's just the three of us) but it's annoying when one of the afore mentioned facilities suddenly decides to impersonate Niagara and merrily gush water ad infinitum. A repair is beyond the mister's capabilities (though he did manage to dismantle part of it, exposing the innards and leaving the bits on the bathroom floor for people to stub their toes on, especially when they're using the striped towels that make your eyes go funny), so it's now a question of waiting for the plumber to fit in a visit in the middle of installing a sparkling new Christmas kitchen for someone else. And of remembering the facility is not functioning. I did stick on a warning note but the ink leaked onto the lid which now shouts 'DO NOT USE ' in a lovely shade of teal. And I'm mindful that my mother would have been most unhappy with all this talk of *toilets*.
2. The mister then decided to do a teeny tiny straightforward refurb in the shower room by replacing the door seal, got carried away and, as a result, the shower is similarly out of action and we've now strayed into more than minor works territory, necessitating the ordering and delivery of various strangely shaped parcels and tools amidst much humming and hawing over Google search results.
3. With the house looking worryingly free from Christmas, we decided to escape the sanitary sick and wounded and get the glitter ball rolling by popping out to buy a tree. Two hours later, we're parked in a lay-by about 10 minutes from home, in a vehicle with a flat as a pancake tyre, waiting for what feels like forever to be towed home by the breakdown truck. And, we observe, we're still tree-less. And why do I always think about toilets (sorry, Mother) the minute I'm nowhere near one?
4. The Boy was in the kitchen baking industrial quantities of something with religieuse in the title on Sunday night to discover, whilst up to his elbows in egg shells, the waste disposal unit had given up the ghost. Now I realise this was yet another first world problem but I'm so used to chucking disgusting stuff into that handy gadget and I really dislike having to stick my hand deep into it to retrieve whatever it was I'd unthinkingly tried to get rid of in an environmentally friendly way. And yes, I've seen that Final Destination scene and know only too well what can happen.
5. Maybe deciding we'd had more than the usual three troublesome things, the waste disposal unit unexpectedly bucked the trend and somehow healed itself. I mentioned it to the Boy. 'It's a Christmas miracle', was the muttered reply.
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(In view of the unsavoury nature of much of the content in this post, I give you a picture of vegan mince pies, baked by my own fair hand to my own recipe and intended for the freezer. They were delicious, by the way. Every single one of them.)