A neighbour who is roughly thirty years younger than I am informed me once that she experiences dreadful difficulty in holding on to objects, that she has inadvertently and unfortunately smashed more dishes than she cares to recall. Her problem is that she is afflicted with Arthritis and things just seem to slip out of her hands. It's a familiar phenomenon to me. But, of course, she has Arthritis.  I have no such excuse.

I appear to be congenitally afflicted with Klutzitis, and always have been. It could perhaps be attributed to the inescapable fact that I am always in a hurry, attempting to do too much within a confined period of time, always having multiple things on the go. Or, it could quite simply be that I am sloppy, don't take sufficient care with what I'm doing.

I have always, since I've had my own kitchen, broken friable objects like drinking glasses, cups, saucers, platters, casserole dishes, you name it. If it can be broken, I'm the one to do it. It is as though I deliberately go about challenging their right to be whole, and useful. Never inclined to utter profanities, I can be persuaded to do so when I've been unable to catch say, a pie dish, from slipping out of my hands and smashing onto the floor, inadequately held in my otherwise-capable hands.

Watching in helpless frustration as the object shatters and shards slide all over in an amazing spread of splintered rebuke.

My husband has long since become accustomed to the reverberating sound of a loud crash followed by an angry outcry, and silence. That's usually when he comes galloping over to tell me he'll look after the clean-up, even though I've already mustered the required resources.

Never a chastising word, though; he leaves that to me through the usual exercise of self-flagellation.