Defining Catastrophe

Coming home from our morning walk in the park I experienced one of those rare moments in which everything seems aligned and joy clicks into place.

It was short-lived.

I saw the puddle of water on the kitchen floor first, and then, after my brain had started sifting through the possible ways it could have got there, it settled on the direction from which unexplained water has usually come, above.

My daughter was in the shower, the water from which was coming through the kitchen ceiling.

After she’d come downstairs and joined me in the kitchen we peered at the wet patch and the water dripping through it at an undiminished pace.

“Why is it still coming through now that the water is turned off?”

In answering her question I noticed myself doing something I frequently do but often find it hard to stop.

“I’m not sure but I hope it stops soon because I don’t want the ceiling falling down on us.”

“Can we get out of the kitchen because I’m scared now,” she said.

I didn’t really think the ceiling was going to fall down on the strength of a six-inch square of wet plaster but I have a tendency to make a catastrophe out of a challenge.

I’ve been doing it with the dog recently over her damaged claw.

When the vet said he may have to amputate some of her toe in removing the nail my reaction was, internally, disproportionately emotional.

This week I even managed to get despondent about the amount of dust that was accumulating on my desk now that the weather is so warm that I have the windows wide open all day.

The counterbalance for catastrophe is, I have found, unrelated to self-criticism at sweating over life’s minutiae.

A while ago on the podcast, we introduced a new feature where Martin and I compare things we’re grateful for each week.

I thought it would be easy to do but I’ve found that I have needed to look harder than I imagined I would.

Gratitude is like a muscle in that the more you exercise it the stronger it gets.

I’ve also found it useful to go searching for it at, perversely, the exact time I realise I have much to be grateful for rather than when I’m feeling that I don’t.

You wouldn’t need to have any interest in football to recognise that seeing a supremely fit sportsman collapse in a heap on your TV screen with what appeared to be a heart attack is disturbing.

For all the terrible scenes of grief and concern what really struck me at that moment was the transitory nature of life. How easily and quickly it can be gone.

It slows me down when I see something of real catastrophe rather than the type I can often manufacture myself through wet ceilings and dusty worktops.

I opened the doors to the garden and made the dinner with greater care and precision than I might have done, accompanied only by the sound of the blackbird singing on the top of the church.

My daughter baked some cookies which I chewed and tasted with extra relish accompanied by a cup of tea more carefully brewed.

Then I watered the garden, making sure every plant got a good soaking into its roots, and I stopped halfway up towards the house to smell the sweet perfume of a white bloom that comes at this time every year. I don’t know what it’s called but it’s more predictable than most things and definitely more predictable than life and, for that, I’m grateful.