My Shoes are in a Drawer

A few years ago we got a new kitchen. (Use Google if you don’t understand how that is possible.) We knocked the old one through to a room we hardly used, and spent more than many people’s yearly salary having everything gutted and replaced. Despite the additional space, we ended up with less storage than we started with. And so ensued a year of not knowing where anything was, because Barbara would frequently reorganize everything she hadn’t been forced to throw away, in an attempt to fit it in.

Last year we decided to replace our bedroom carpet. Apparently, it wasn’t worth doing it without having the cupboards replaced, the walls re-plastered and redecorated, the bed replaced, the chests of drawers replaced, the curtains replaced, and doing much the same in another room as well. As before, it took a whole year and we ended up with less storage than we started with. And as before, there then ensued a prolonged period of not knowing where anything was, because Barbara frequently reorganized everything left from her new round of throwing things away, in the new round of trying to fit stuff in. This time it was doubly frustrating because she often couldn’t remember what she’d chucked.

Eventually I got her to understand that she must tell me when she moves something I obviously need to know about.

But on the very first occasion that she remembered, I was left dumbfounded. My shoes are in a drawer! Sorry, does not compute. My shoes are in a drawer? An ordinary drawer? To try to process this, I intone it. “My shoes are in a drawer.” I’m thinking of having it tattooed on my arm.

Ridiculous Snooker Competition Format

This year the format for the Championship League Snooker competition is very inequitable. It works like this. There are twenty-five entrants, of which seven are placed in Group 1. They play a round-robin tournament and the top four then play a knockout to decide the winner of the group. The winner qualifies for the Winners Group, and the remaining other four of the top five progress to Group 2, joining three other players from the original twenty-five. The bottom two are eliminated from the competition. This whole process is repeated until Group 7, when only the winner qualifies for the Winners Group, the other six players getting eliminated. The Winners Group then contains the seven players who won a group. Again, they play a round-robin and the top four play a knockout for tournament winner. Players win money by winning frames, getting through to the play-offs, winning a group or being runner-up, and by making the highest break in a group. The rates for these are differen...

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Aniseed Balls

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