Clumsy + Flu = Certain Death

I am the absolute clumsiest person I know. In fact, that was my father's argument for why I should opt for an in- family arranged marriage, because no outside man would tolerate my destructive habits.

Mr Zeus has warily resigned to buying eight rather than six when we buy new glasses or plates, to leave me allowance for the breaks that are inevitable when things pass through my hands. Sometimes they don't even have to pass through my hands. Once I picked up a glass from the shelf and it's neighbour paused for a few moments before hurling itself off the edge. Mr Zeus gave me that look, and I protested "But I didn't even touch it this time!" Z2 had witnessed the event and confirmed, between laughs, that I had indeed broken a glass without even touching it.

This winter in Barcelona we acquired two absolutely beautiful handmade champagne flutes decorated with delicate wisps of melted glass. Mr Zeus had wanted to blow the budget and buy a set of six because they were so lovely, but I reminded him who he's living with. They had sat for months on display in a shelf before we put them away, worried that the next rumble of the earth might send them flying.

Two nights ago we were searching for something to sip with our meal and I found a little bottle of champagne someone had given me as a gift. We cracked it open and what better glasses to drink from than our two beautiful, delicate-stemmed Barcelona glasses? And naturally, obviously, I broke mine before I'd even finished my drink. And how I broke it! I went to get seconds and when I sat back down the edge of my plate cracked a line into the top of poor little champagne flute.

Either it was my mega clumsiness at work or I was being punished for a) consuming alcohol in the Holy Month b) making a pig of myself in the Holy Month.

This morning takes the cake, though. I currently have no sense of smell at all and when I woke up today I felt more half dead than half asleep. A strong cup of tea was in order so I set a pot boiling (we are cursed in that every electric kettle we own quickly dies) and began my morning routine of reading online newspapers.

A good ten minutes later I decided to attend to the noisy bubbling of the pot and when I turned, great big orange flames were leaping around next to it. Two kitchen towels that had been too close to the hob had caught fire so silently, so unodourosly, that the whole kitchen and indeed house could have started burning down around me while I sat clicking through the Guardian. I'd be found passed out with my browser clicked onto something embarrassing like "Best of WHAM! In Pictures". The headlines would read "WHAM! Fan dies in Kitchen Inferno".

And that's how flu kills.

Image: http://tdx.konn.org/uploads/2006/09/broken_glass.jpg