The perils of having a clear-out

Of shower heads and QED

When the shower hose started leaking, I remembered the spare shower head that has lurked in the utility room cupboard for ages (it was probably rescued when we had the bathroom redone 15 years ago).

And now the wretched thing has vanished!

I rooted through all the reachable boxes of ‘stuff’. Then risked life and limb manoeuvring the stepladder inside the high-ceilinged cupboard to climb up and investigate the top shelf.

There I found one box of plastic Tupperware, and another of metal saucepans. For Heaven’s sake! How long had they lurked there? Down they came with me, destined for the dustbin. If they haven’t been used for ten years or more, out they go.

But there’s the rub. As soon as you throw something out, you immediately find a use for it. As evinced by the case of the missing shower head.

QED — as my Dad would have said, unknowingly echoing the philosophers of Ancient Greece. The Greeks developed the habit of writing a similar phrase at the end of their mathematical arguments — a learned version of stick that in your pipe and smoke it. The sentiment was translated into Latin, the common language of medieval philosophers, as quod erat demonstrandum, filtering down in an abbreviated form to know-it-all 20th century fathers.

And so, with QED ringing in my ears, I’m off to the hardware shop to buy a replacement shower hose. If only I had not had a clear-out.