One of the things to listen for if you want to know if the toilet is free in this house is the tap-tap-tapping sound of the two parts of the toilet roll holder breaking lose and doing their little dance on the tiles.
“Mum!” Miss9 bellowed through the house late this afternoon. “Quick! Call Robert! Dad is trying to fix something by himself.”
Robert is the handy bloke in this house. I mean, he doesn’t live here or anything, but when there’s something needs hammering or unscrewing or fixed, Robert is the man we call. He’s a great mate to have.
A few seconds later Tracey was standing in front of me with her hands on her hips.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
I was sitting on our loo (lid down) with a tube of newly purchased Superglue on the basin.
What I was doing was fixing the toilet roll holder which, whenever anyone attempts to unroll toilet paper, chucks a tizzy, falls apart and sets free the roll of toilet paper to scoot across the floor until it’s just out of reach. If you’re lucky, and it’s fallen the right way, it sometimes unrolls as it darts away, meaning you can carefully haul it back in. But this fortuitous unraveling of events doesn’t happen anywhere near often enough.
I should mention, this is not a new thing – the toilet roll holder has been doing it for years. It’s just this is the first time I’ve remembered it needs fixing before it’s reminded me it needs fixing. In fact, it was the only task I set myself today, the first day of a week’s holiday I’m enjoying with the kids.
“All that’s going to happen is you’re going to superglue your fingers together,” Tracey assured me.
“No, I won’t,” I assured her right back.
“And you’re basing this on what?”
“On I never want to do that again so I’m going to be extra careful this time,” I told her. Why can’t people let bygones be bygones?
She shook her head at me in a weary sort of way.
“Well hold off until I get the camera. You may as well get a blog post out of it. You can call it ‘Stuck on Loo’.”
And while I won’t say it wasn’t touch and go there a couple of times (five hours later I am till attempting to gnaw bits of dried glue off my hands), I’m very excited to be able to report all my fingers are still working independently of each other and the toilet roll holder is now (presumably) fixed.
“Yay, you did it, Daddy!” yelled Miss9, coming to give me a congratulatory hug when I announced my unparalleled success.
“Don’t touch him!” Tracey said, yanking her back away from me. “Not until his hands dry.”
She had a good point.
But let’s not lose sight of the important thing here. That’s right, people, I fixed something without Robert having to come fix it up after me!
I’m not surprised really. After all, the loo where I do most of my deeper thinking.
Entertaining and so easy to relate to 😉
Cheers Rory 🙂 It was a bit sticky there for a while, but then it dried.
Haha very good mate!
Hilarious and well done.