To be perfectly honest, it was, perhaps, the most stupid place to put it. Well, I suppose somewhere on the floor would have been more stupid.

It had been perched on top of the door-entry phone. Of course, when replacing the handset yesterday, it fell off. And broke. It’s not particularly pretty. It’s a small oval needlework thing in a small oval frame. I don’t know its significance but, the fact that it’s still here means that it does have some significance. It’s probably some very important heirloom similar to the “picture” I learnt was the only thing he has from this “aunt” that he loved as a boy. It’s a fake Japanese-type thing. The sort of thing that people would buy in the 70s and you now see in all second-hand shops.

The frame (which is plastic and gold coloured, broke as it hit the hard-tiled floor. As a result the plastic “glass”, the wooden back and the needlework itself, spread themselves over the floor.

I swear. For all his obsessive compulsive disorder regarding cleaning and putting everything away, he tends to leave odd things in rather odd places that, if I’m honest, I find somewhat annoying.

An example would be a bag (one of those which you might get when you buy clothes or something), gold, large which, since he came home on Sunday, has been left on the chest of drawers in the entrance hall. I thought something was in it but, when I checked this morning, it is empty!

So this needlework thing, perched precariously on top of the door-entry phone, fell off. And broke.

No problem, I think. There is some superglue and I can super-glue it together. It’s a couple of clean breaks. We’ll hardly notice the difference.

I go to my study. The superglue is there, where I left it, after I used it to repair my mouse a couple of weeks ago. I remember taking it from the package and carefully opening it (you have to “overscrew” it to make the opening so the glue will come out), using it and then ensuring that the cap was screwed on properly.

Remember the old days? When you used to open a tube of superglue and then, the next time you came to use it, all the glue had dried up in the nozzle and you had to throw it away and buy a new tube? Well, now it’s marketed that you don’t have to worry about that any more. This new cap solves this problem.

They lie.

I would prefer them to say “New Superglue! Special cap that allows you to think you will be able to reuse it next time. Use once and then keep for a while and then throw away and buy another!”

That would be the reality.

That is the reality!

I unscrew the special cap. I squeeze the tube. Nothing comes out for it is blocked solid. I try (as I always do, every single bloody time – you’d think I would have learnt by now but, no, it seems not) using a needle to “open up” some small hole to allow the glue to come out.

I spend 15 minutes trying to do this.

As every other time, I nearly break the needle but am not successful. There is glue in the tube. I can feel it moving. But it might as well be in some high tower of some castle, defended by fire-breathing dragons the size of small countries, the castle surrounded by a chasm full of fire and volcanic lava and so large that it would be impossible to traverse.

I will do what I do every time. Next time I go to the supermarket, I will buy another effing tube of this superglue, which is hideously expensive, to use a fraction of a drop to repair this frame, to save the tube for the “next time” I need superglue, to go through the whole effing process again.

And yet, I simply cannot just throw it away after it’s single use. One day I’m going to be shocked and surprised that it actually can be reused.

Or hell will freeze over first, I suppose.

*sigh*