ohb

A little accident in the bathroom....

Don't worry its not as exciting/disgusting/interesting as it may sound. I discovered what is probably best termed as a 'souvenir' shop at my market a few weeks ago. The official market consists of various kiosks and little metal cabin things that look like they once belonged to a truck, before some industrious Russian severed them in two. They now lean ever so slightly to one side, in an attempt perhaps to find their other half once more. At weekends it is much more exciting, Russians from the neighbourhood, well they could be from anywhere really, stand around the walls of the market, selling anything they don't want, anything at all, needless to say this is where I do most of my shopping.
Anyway Russians are very fond of tacky souvenir type things, they give them to each other for birthdays, new year etc., it doesn't matter that they live in the place emblazoned on the thing, or that they have absolutely no use for the item concerned, they devour them.
Although I am becoming more Russian by the day, I haven't stooped that low, yet, I was on an incense mission, I wasn't trying to incense anyone but rather attempting to fragrance my home and relax my mind. Previous to this fabulous find I knew of only two other shops that sold incense here, and both of them are nowhere near my house or work and so were always a Saturday outing. Mid-week with no incense in sight, I happened upon this shop and their treasure trove. I have to say though, that most of their selection was of the disgusting banana or strawberry flavoured kind, but, there amongst the gaudily painted seals I found what I was after. Since then I have been an irregular customer, last Saturday as I was waiting to point, mumble and motion to my preferred scents, I spied a pile of incense coils (for the uninitiated these of spirals of incense that you hang). Needless to say I bought loads of them, well I thought I bought five but when I opened the little envelopes there were three in each one.
These are, I find particularly effective as they burn for ages and are not overpowering. So delighted with myself I toddled off home. Now, the last few days have been a torment of trying to find an appropriate place to hang them. I've tried tying a piece of thread around the centre and pinning it to my curtains, hanging them from the branches of my plants (singed a few leaves) and today I thought I had it.
I have a piece of fish gut in my bathroom that acts as a type of makeshift washing line, perfect, or so I thought. At present I have some photographs pegged to it, I suppose in an effort to make myself feel like I'm doing something creative, though they were all developed and printed by Kodak. Having dangled the coil from the fish gut, I went off to try and motivate myself to wash the growing pile of dishes in my sink. Sitting at my desk, not having washed the dishes about ten minutes later, I heard what could be exaggerated as a 'crash' but was actually more of a clatter. Thinking it was someone at my door, I hastily put out my cigarette (no smoking house) and went to investigate. Then, when there was no one at the door I had a look in the bathroom, I can't fault the incense, it had been performing perfecting and working its way around the spiral. however somewhere along the way it had decided to latch onto the cat gut and split it in two. So now, I've no washing line, but when I was picking up the photos, I spied a nail jutting out about two inches from the wall above the toilet, and thought if I were an incense coil that's where I would like to spend my last hours, its an ill wind that blows no good.

posted by orlagh @ 2:38 pm