The red egg
A look at the windows and what goes on behind them reveals a lot of wetness. Unfortunately, the news item was also very clear. Unfortunately, the rain showers that have kept us in a wet grip for days are not over yet. On the one hand, that is very pleasant, the terrace behind my house now washes clean. On the other hand, I could have saved myself the purchase of all those bottles with terrace cleaner. Well, they will come another time. In any case, it gives me time to pick up a tedious and postponed job: processing the mail for several weeks now.
Carefully and a little slower than my habit, I open the envelopes that are in front of me on the table. I'm not used to doing this with the left, but with the right a sore mouse arm (that's what you get when you're tapping so many stories) there's nothing else on it.
I sort everything neatly as I am. For example, a telephone bill should be placed on the stack of the bills, and the leaflet with essential offers from the local supermarket (which I know very well to ignore) on the stack on the corner of the table. That's where the empty envelopes come. I always look forward to the moment when, after all that sorting, I can slide that corner stack off the table in one smooth motion into the hungry trash that is waiting impatiently on the hazelnut carpet. Usually this works without problem, in one case I have to bend down to pick up some escaped copies and remove them manually. That's normally not a problem, although I, the meatball that I am, made the painful mistake of bending my head back up at the wrong time and in the wrong place. Oak tables are massive and, I can assure you, pretty hard. It's a good thing that I had already done all the necessary shopping at the drugstore, because a paracetamol tablet wants to be in it at such a moment. Quickly I also held a wet piece of kitchen towels against it. It cools, but otherwise it did not help so much. Later I saw that there was a big bump on my head, size egg, I'll say. The skin was clearly damaged in that spot, and some of the contents of that egg dripped down my head. For clarity, the egg yolk of such an egg is not yellow, but red...
(c) 2019 Hans van Gemert
