Jaye Marie and Anita Dawes

Ani, exploring the kitchen in search of possibilities, let out a yelp and dived for cover, cowering under my chair.

“Is it supposed to do that?” asked my son, who had just arrived on his bike. “It’s not right… can’t be healthy….”

There are some things that haunt you; a looming, inescapable chasm of gloom before which you can do nothing. Except, perhaps, hope that the unpleasant outcome will delay itself just a little longer. I face one such certainty with a calm acceptance of its inevitability and in the knowledge that there is little point in worrying when there is no longer anything I can do to halt the downward spiral. All I can do is wait…

My washing machine is about to die.

I cannot complain… it has served valiantly over the years. It came to me some ten years ago, already second-hand. In its day it has…