Wednesday 25 November 2015

Losing it



He jumped down from the bed,
took off his pyjamas and looked for his trousers.
He looked on the chair where he'd left them and
he looked on the floor under the chair -
and then he looked through the chest of drawers
in case they were there.
But they weren't.
They were nowhere.

You wouldn't think it was possible to lose a pair of men's trousers
in regular rotation.
Especially as there are no other men in the house at present.
Naturally it was assumed that they were somewhere in the washing cycle.
Laundry basket. Washing machine. Airer. Ironing basket.
Nope.

'But they must be somewhere,' said Little Bear.
'Trousers don't disappear.
I'll go and ask Old Bear.
He'll know where they are.'*

But Old Bear didn't know where they were
because they weren't her trousers.
But once she knew they were missing she was a woman possessed.

She re-examined the washing cycle places.
She looked in the wardrobe.
She looked amongst her own trousers.
Just in case.
She looked in other people's wardrobes.
Just in case.
They wondered if they had been taken to the cleaners.
Nope.
They wondered if they had been left in another house
because they had stayed away,
but no, that would have meant coming home in underpants.

But they must be somewhere, she wailed.
This is ridiculous.

A suspicion was entertained that Old Bear had taken them to a charity shop.
But she knew that she had done no such thing and was very indignant.

Time passed.
They began to believe that trousers could just disappear.
Just like her favourite necklace or the bee brooch.
And then one day a strange flash of intuition
pierced Old Bear's befuddled mind.
She looked at the laundry basket 
and held her breath for she had remembered something.
The basket has a drawstring liner so that you can lift the washing out
and sometimes people drop things into it
before the liner has been replaced.
And then the liner is brought back upstairs
and popped back in -
on top of whatever lurks in the dark at the bottom.

You are ahead of me.

Now we must turn our attention to the missing metal tape measure.
Used only yesterday for measuring up pictures
that are being re-hung on the freshly painted walls.
It is a new tape measure, self-locking and retracting.

Could it be in the laundry basket?

*Little Bear's Trousers by Jane Hissey.

12 comments:

  1. Wonderful! We have that book too, love the story. We've also lost trousers... I'm laughing about the charity shop accusation. As if you would do such a thing. Glad the mystery was solved in the end. CJ xx

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  2. Brilliant. I like that you have a category called Grrr.

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  3. not only did you find them
    but you had fun writing about the search

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  4. Well done for thinking it through and retrieving the lost trousers. I am having the same problem with a black T-shirt. I still haven't found it and have had to buy a replacement - I guess it will show itself one day when I least expect it to.

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  5. Did you lose my blogpost by any chance?

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  6. You are the finder of things, as I am in this house. This did make me smile.

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  7. Reading Little Bear's Trousers was a treat, and reminded me of a bit of the plot line of a book I once wrote and illustrated about some lost mittens. No publisher wanted to publish the book although I did get some sweet letters.

    Hoping you will soon find that tape measure. Is it one of the kind that have a sort of snap, flash retractable feature to spin the tape inside the circular case? I'm a fan of such tapes and sometimes just take mine along with me in my bottomless tote bag for the pleasure of measuring items I might, might wish to buy.

    xo

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  8. Ha ha! Oh yes, how very familiar!
    "Where have you hidden my .....?" (Fill in the missing word) syndrome.
    If it isn't in any of the usual places it's going to be in an unusual one. Or it's in a usual place but you haven't got your looking eyes in. (Or you're "looking with men's eyes" as my daughter-out-law puts it).

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  9. Lovely. Any news on the necklace? I remember that post. It resonated with me.

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    Replies
    1. Yes I had a similar one made! I'm still missing the old one though.
      http://usefulorbeautiful.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/lost-necklace-update.html

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  10. We love that book. Men are rubbish at looking for things when they have lost things everyone has to stop and find it for them!

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  11. We have similar conversations when his stuff goes missing, which it does regularly, and I am always in the frame - I must have stolen it to wash it secretly or otherwise removed whatever it was. Then he finds it... Apologies don't seem to come easily either.

    Loved 'Little Bear's Trousers' and still have the book in a chest, ready for the grandchildren who will no doubt arrive in a big rush one day. We do have 7 offspring between us, so there have to be more grandchildren eventually, surely.

    Glad you found the tape measure but how did it disappear....

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