Our fairies are on holiday…

Our fairies have been on holiday for quite a while now and this is leading to some problems in our household. What do you mean, you don’t have fairies? We have lots of fairies in our house, but sadly, all our fairies either went on strike or on holiday when I went into hospital and left all the work around the house for hubby to do which was pretty unfair given the circumstances.

Anyway, just so you know, we have a laundry fairy, an ironing fairy, a kitchen cleaning fairy, hoovering fairy and a bathroom cleaning fairy, to name just a few. We don’t have a shopping fairy as most of our fairies are actually quite doddery and don’t do anything that involves heavy lifting, or walking too far from the car! I’m sure that many women out there are either nodding vigorously to this ‘outing’ of the household fairy population and related hubbies are scratching their heads in complete ignorance – it’s either that or you are all shaking your heads sadly thinking ‘she’s completely lost it now’ – I can’t quite tell from here…

Well, to the household problems. You see, with the laundry fairy away, we have had quite an influx of hatless gnomes and it is getting increasingly difficult to find a pair of matching socks. Sadly, sock goblins are not indigenous to the UK (I think they only live in North America) so we are getting no help with this crisis. In the end, I decided to do some serious research into this problem to see if I could track down where the hatless gnomes might be living, but have had no luck as to where their normal habitat might be. My Googling actually led me to many other theories on the absence of single socks but many of them, like dark magic or wormholes are just completely batty!* (Unlike hatless gnomes of course…)

Anyway, I have tried to get hubby to do the traditional ‘fairy calling ritual’ which involves using a washing machine, laundry basket and washing line, but it simply hasn’t worked. Since hubby has followed pretty much the same rituals as me, with just slight variations as to the mix and quantity of machine contents, I can only come to the scientific conclusion that the calling only works when done by a woman. I guess in the end the only answer will be to get me completely fit and then hopefully I will be able to tempt the laundry fairies to come back…

*I was however quite surprised to find Schröedinger's Special Theory of Socks at Everything2.com. This stipulates that not only do socks in a washing machine exist in all possible states for socks, but they also exist in all possible states for other objects. Theoretically, you have Concorde , the remaining members of the Beach Boys AND Shergar riding Lord Lucan (or the other way round even), and God knows what else floating around in your washing machine. It's not really that difficult how to understand that if you suddenly leap into the kitchen and yell "Boo!", the laundry will suddenly have to resolve itself into socks. Which means that some of your socks will get it wrong, as the universe can be kind of slow on the uptake sometimes. So don't be surprised when in addition to suddenly missing socks, you also have three of some socks (of which you had two only a few hours previous) and some unidentifiable objects. This is why so many theoretical physicists are also raging alcoholics.