Everything has been running a bit slow at No.5 this morning, not only because of the gloominess of the grey day, but also on account of our colds, especially mine (which is worse than Chris’s).

While I was on my phone a little earlier my eyes were drawn to something brown on the wall outside on the balcony. At first I thought it was a dead leaf stuck on the rough surface but, no, the brown thing moved, and it was heading towards a plant pot. I marvelled that he must have been on the go all night, climbing up the exterior wall to the top of the balustrade; nevertheless, the plants being my priority, I braved the wet outdoors to deal with the stoical slimy snail. In honour of his achievement in almost reaching his goal I took his photograph once on the wall and again on the balustrade, where I placed him in order that he might see the extent of his travails; but he was nervous and tucked his head under his shell. Shortly he was sent flying through the air and into a neighbour’s garden.

Talking of snails and things going slowly, recently a bachelor friend of mine hired an Eastern European lady to do the cleaning. Her work in the kitchen and bathroom was absolutely fine; likewise, dusting and bed-making were jobs that she breezed through. In fact, all chores were done well and within the usual time frame one would normally expect those jobs to take – all except for the hoovering… The new cleaning lady took an astronomical fifteen hours to hoover my friend’s two-bedroom house! He should have been more careful when he looked at her particulars – she was a Slovak!

This came in to Chris’s emails yesterday morning. Somebody found the funny side.

Take a Master and Commander (a regular old Captain Birdseye with a taste for fishing) and a couple of young novices; give them a little boat called “So What?” and an early start on a beautiful sunny morning on the Southside of Brisbane. Take the cheeky boat to Victoria Point (where the ferries leave for Coochiemudlo Island) and ease it off the boat ramp into the water of Moreton Bay.

Start engine of perky boat first time and venture out into the bay… for two hundred and fifty metres. Find that engine stops abruptly for no obvious reason and try to restart… too many times to count. Discover that the tide is taking wilful little boat in the direction of the ferry jetty and, quickly, throw out anchor. Also put out fishing lines (Captain Birdseye never misses an opportunity) while considering what to do next.

In the blink of an eye a one metre long mud shark lurking close to shore (according to the good Captain) likes the look of the Captain’s speciality squid and decides to have it for breakfast. After a mighty tussle the shark is netted, de-hooked and swimming back in the water. Before long one of the novices feels a strong tug and sees his rod bend in the middle – another big one! After a long and exciting battle the second shark, almost as large as the first but a different variety, makes it on board for a quick bit of surgery and is soon back in the salt water (which is good for his sore mouth). But the stubborn little boat still has to make it back to the boat ramp…

Captain Birdseye is not worried; he is prepared for any mishaps at sea (or on shore in this case). He puts the back-up engine, albeit just a little one, into action and thirty minutes later they arrive at the ramp. By midday they are home for lunch (maybe fish fingers).

The captain laughs as he considers what he shall tell other fishermen when they ask (as they always do) where the best fishing grounds are… He decides he will not tell them to anchor two-hundred and fifty metres from the shore, near the ferry jetty at Victoria Point – it will be his little secret. He doesn’t fancy answering any difficult questions like “Why take a boat?” Do you say “so what?” – precisely.

It wasn’t the end of the world, of course, but it felt like it…

“Better keep at it,” I suggested to Chris.

“I will,” he agreed, “it might take some time though. First I have to establish that it’s really dead. How did you find it?”

“Dead as a dodo. Everything is dead.”

“I suspected as much,” Chris looked concerned, “mine’s the same but I’ll take a look upstairs to make sure I’ve done all I can at our end before I call someone.”

“Can you still call out?” I asked. (I meant on the phone.)

“I hope so,” Chris didn’t sound very confident.

“What if you can’t? How are we going to manage?”

“Everything will stop – it will be the end of our world as we know it,” Chris tried to add a bit of levity.

I laughed halfheartedly. Inside I felt rather panicked and desperate. I wondered how long we could last out before going mad…

From the kitchen I heard Chris talking on the phone, then he took the phone upstairs.

“How is it now?” Chris called out (this time to me downstairs, not on the phone).

“The same,” I said, “no signs of life.”

A long while later Chris came downstairs. He was tired and crestfallen.

“He was quite a nice chap,” Chris enlightened me, “but he didn’t know the answer. He’d never come across anything like it before. He thought it was something to do with us. I couldn’t understand his accent very well and we were both tired by the conversation so when the line went dead I didn’t really expect him to get back to me – and he didn’t.”

“So what shall we do?” I asked anxiously.

“Well, we could do like he said and wait five days for the new…” Chris began.

“Oh my God! Not five days! Darling, I don’t think I could last out for five days, or four, or three….” my voice became a little high-pitched.

“But we don’t have to follow anyone else’s advice…” my husband smiled, “I have another idea. Somehow we’ll have to live without the Internet for one night and in the morning we’ll go out and buy a new router.”

And that’s exactly what we did, which is why I’m on top of the world again, tapping out my thoughts to the world. It’s funny to think how our world has changed so much over the last decade; how reliant we are upon a technology that is frighteningly alien to many of my generation and how easy it would be to destabilize a population…

I do a lot of thinking in the shower, especially when I’m in there for a bit longer than usual washing my hair. Sometimes I formulate great stories in the shower, or future masterpieces in oil; other times I try to work out what my dreams mean, and occasionally I just have a secret few tears to myself for whatever reason because I think nobody will hear me crying, and also because the water falling over me seems rather cathartic (not that I ever want to ‘wash that man right out of my hair’). This morning I was thinking a lot in the shower (as I washed my hair) but this time there were no tears or stories, or wonderful artworks in my mind; it was a mystery!

Almost exactly a week ago I bought a four-pack of pretty pink disposable razors for the princely sum of eighty-nine pence. They looked good and the “Triple blade system – specially positioned to give you a closer shave in one single stroke” sounded just the thing; the rubber grip handle promised “greater comfort and control even when wet”; and the glider strip was there to “reduce irritation” and the pivoting head was for “greater control”. In spite of the low price, those pink Trinity Ladies Razors had to be the business because they also carried a warning: Keep out of reach of children and babies. Misuse can cause serious injuries.

I had a little laugh to myself – one of those wry laughs – because I had been using one of the pack of four, Triple blade system, disposable razors every morning for a week now and there was absolutely no evidence of any serious injuries… to even a single hair! I ran the razor over my legs again and I checked, futilely, for the expected smoothness of a close shave. Now wouldn’t you think that even a cheap razor should be of merchantable quality? Okay, they were only eighty-nine pence but surely they should work properly at least once?

“I’m going to take those razors back and ask for my eighty-nine pence back,” I thought to myself, “so much for the pivotal head with the triple blades”. And with that I held the pink razor closer to my eyes for an inspection (albeit without my glasses on).

This time I laughed heartily out loud. In fact, I had a fit of the giggles so loud that Chris popped his head around the door.

“What’s so funny?” he asked.

“All week I’ve been shaving my legs with a new razor…”

“With plastic over the blades,” Chris interjected correctly.

I know, yet again I “should’ve gone to Spec Savers”!