where are my jeans???
The low-rise, slightly smaller (but still needing to be belted up), incredibly comfortable, thick denim Fat Face ones I bought in St Ives? I love them. I haven't worn them in a couple of weeks. It occurred to me that I haven't worn them because I haven't seen them in a couple of weeks. I have a vague mental image of them lying in a pile of clean washing in the hallway (so now you know), but I'm glad to say the clean washing has long since been put away. I have just finished ransacking Baroque Mansions (in all its nooks and crannies, I might add) for the third time - and still no jeans.
I just want to wear them. I want to put them on like a normal person and go out the door.
And they weren't cheap, either.
I've looked where they belong. I've looked in the wardrobe. I've looked under the clothes that hang in the wardrobe. I've looked in the big basket I sometimes throw things in when I can;t be bothered to think of where they should go (small-space living in action). I've searched young Mlle B's room, even in the drawers. Even under her bed. I've searched every chest of drawers in the place. The dirty washing (just in case). The washing machine, the drier, the back of the bathroom door. Under the pink sofa. Behind the white sofa. The coat rack! (You never know where the cleaner might decide to put something.)
Where are they?
Theories?
I'm going to go look in the bag of things for the charity shop.
8 comments:
They disappeared into the nano-sized rift in the space-time continuum that appears sporadically under Mlle B's bed. This is otherwise known as a teenager's bedroom self-cleaning mechanism. Either that or you're actually wearing the jeans and hadn't realised.
You have checked you aren't wearing them? I once made that mistake with a shirt I couldn't find...
'Maybe you're wearing them.'
That's funny.
I'd look in all the obvious places all over again with that nonchalant 'this is never going to work' attitude. That always does work for me.
Maybe your jeans are trying to get back to Cornwall! I'll look out for them but you won't get them back because I'm about due for a new pair.
pee ess - St Ives is just down the road - I'll send some up.
Oh dear, I just realised I made the same gag as Jura Watchmaker. How shameful. Hard day. It's yours Watchmaker: you got there first.
I saw them Thursday at the bus station in Glens Falls, NY. They said they wanted to find America. Usually I don't speak to strange pants at bus stations but when they approached me with that Finding America look on their face (you know: wide-eyed and yet weary at the same time) I thought it rude to ignore them. Generally, most pants don't find America by starting in Glens Falls; although some swear by it, and I hear there is a modest cult growing around the idea (something about Cooper's Cave).
In truth, your pants were a touch hurt by the "vague mental image of them lying in a pile of clean washing in the hallway" comment. Almost no one likes to be a vague mental image and pants are no exception. They're not finding America but are on a pilgrimage to the Black Madonna of Walsingham. I know because they sent me a postcard: the one with the Bishop looking very cross.
Many thanks. I knew I could count on you, my regular readers, to help me puzzle this one out.
And indeed, in your intuitive way (sorry Francis: your scientific, but secretly quite poetic, way) you have collectively managed to divine the mysterious essence of this afternoon's experience. It must be last night's full moon.
Quink - and Mr Watchmaker - no, I wasn't wearing them. My legs were the first place I looked. TSP, I then did exactly what you suggest, which of course I had already done three times in an increasingly "this will never work" way.
I looked under Mlle B's bed again, but there were no visible rips in the fabric of the cosmos under there. I checked underneath every bath towel I could find. I moved the pink sofa. I even thought of calling the Urban Warrior to see if his quasi-girlfriend had perchance been here and needed something clean to put on. ("No!" I said to myself, then. "That's just nuts.")
At last, at last I moved aside the CD rack that is currently blocking access to the Rock God's chest of drawers (which I had already looked in, twice, btw) and I gingerly opened the very bottom drawer, which was last opened the day we moved into this place in 1742. Not a human hand had touched it since then. All his other drawers are overflowing, too.
As I opened it, dozens of small shimmery bats flew out and circled around the room, squeaking in a weird singsong. They were all colours. I looked into the drawer, and it was empty. But as I looked, a form began to take shape in its depths. Glittery shimmers filled the drawer, circling and dancing over the shape, which was slowly resolving itself...
As I bent over the drawer I could clearly see my lovely jeans reassuming their natural form, right there in front of me, in my middle child's bottom drawer. It was amazing. And all of a sudden there they were, just like the day I bought them in St Ives. The bats disappeared as if someone had thrown a switch; only a very light dusting of fairy dust remained on top of the jeans.
When I lifted them out of the drawer - hardly daring to breathe - I could see a rift in the bottom of the drawer, but it closed up almost before I was sure it had even been there. And I'm sure I heard some tiny voices. I couldn't tell where they were coming from, but they sounded like some kind of Celtic dialect to me. And in the back left-hand pocket of the jeans themselves, there was the imprint of a bus ticket. By shining a torch and doing a rubbing with one of Mlle B's old crayons I just made out a destination: Albany... the town where my own parents met...
Anyway, I put them on and went out for my coffee.
So it all worked out. Of course! You see, after all that searching, I had scared myself with my own insistence on a rational explanation.
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