The Scent of Witch Hazel

That Paulo Coelho piece on washing dishes has stayed with me. The thinking can be applied to any minor annoyance - for instance, it's a pet hate of mine that Bert gets toothpaste juice all over the mirror almost every day of his life. But why fret? It only takes moments to clean and I'm much better off pondering on how lovely it is to have the company of a funny, kind man even if he is a bit throughother in the bathroom and everywhere else.

Last autumn he planted a hamamelis (witch hazel) in the garden. It will flower in the winter time, he said. And it's scented. The smell will be glorious.

It flowered just before Christmas. Wait until we get a balmy day, he said. Wait until you smell it then.

So the balmy day came. Can you smell it, he said. Isn't it lovely?

I couldn't smell it. Not even when I got right up beside it and buried my nose in its flowers.

What does it smell like?

Flowery. Like Zoflora.

Like Zoflora?

I couldn't smell a thing. Was he gaslighting me? Yet, I worried. Am I losing my sense of smell? He smokes, I don't. It should be me that has the keener sense of smell.

Later that day I accidentally broke a bottle of Zoflora. I could smell that. Bert is sitting in the next room, smoking.

Can you smell that?

Yea! Zoflora.

I walked into the next room and I couldn't smell anything. Worrying. Yet when the cat shit in the wet room I got that whiff. Of course, I looked it up on the internet. It could be a cold. I haven't got a cold. It could be nodules. No thank you! It could be something totally drastic the same as the person had whose funeral I am going to tomorrow. Or Bert could be gaslighting me. But he hasn't the imaginative powers to do that. Nor is he mean enough. And he could smell the Zoflora from the next room.

I wonder what the hamamelis does smell like.

Scrambled Eggs

Bert said something terrible to me this morning. He didn't know it was a terrible thing. In fact, I'm sure he that he was just making me a kind offer. This is what he said,

Do you want scrambled eggs?

I said,

No! I don't.

I did not explain. I did not say 'No thanks. I had sourdough toast and brie for breakfast.' I just thought, why not boiled, why not fried, why not poached? Anything but scrambled. Why scrambled when you, my dear husband, have probably cleaned scrambled eggs from a saucepan less than ten times your entire life.

Every time I get this way I am reminded of an awful Jilly Cooper book that I read centuries ago where the romantic lead dismissed an ex as 'one of those girls like scrambled egg, amazingly easy to make, but impossible to get off the pan afterwards.' Such a cruel remark. I never did like any of the characters in Jilly Cooper novels.

I was still feeling discombobulated about Bert's breakfast choice when Hannah got home and told her about what was annoying me and she said that Paulo Coelho had something to say about that. Well, he usually does. She gave me the gist of it and I immediately felt better about the whole thing. I checked it out and it goes like this,

'When you're washing up, pray. Be thankful that there are plates to be washed; that means there was food, that you fed someone, that you've lavished care on one or more people, that you cooked and laid the table. Imagine the millions of people at this moment who have absolutely nothing to wash up and no one for whom to lay the table.” 
― Paulo Coelho, The Witch Of Portobello

So there you go - if you want a guide to decent living Coelho trumps Cooper every time.