Some months ago I spoke about the out-of-the-way places around my town, places most people don’t visit, probably because they don’t know they are there. Today I had been working hard in my garden and had to change my clothes. I put them in the washing machine together with other clothes and set it running. There is a chair in the laundry room and I sat on it for a few minutes, mainly because I wanted a little rest. I watched the machine start its cycle, fill with water and begin the wash. Now you may not realise this but clothes soak up water so the machine has to allow more water in until the correct level is reached. This is quite normal but what I noticed was that the timer reset itself too. Initially it showed 1:21 and during the fill cycle it dropped to 1:19. When the water level had been reached however the timer reset to 1:21. I had never noticed this before even though I use the machine often. At first I wondered what was going on but then realised that if the water pressure was very low it could take quite some time to fill the machine with the consequence that the wash cycle would be reduced. That is why the machine resets the timer once the water level is reached. Now I am not writing this to educate my readers but no doubt that has been done. What I wanted to say was that there are probably many things like this which happen right under our eyes but we don’t really notice. I will ask a question of you here to prove my point. Assuming you have wallpaper on at least one wall at home, could you describe what it looks like without going to see it? You may be surprised to know that you can’t, at least accurately. This is why the police have difficulty with witnesses who cannot remember exactly what they actually saw. It seems we only take in essential information in any situation. I just asked E if she could describe one of the pictures on the wall in the room we are both sitting in at this moment and she had difficulty in describing it accurately even though it has hung there for many years. We have a picture of the two boys together when they were quite young and she described that one without any difficulty at all. It proves a point I think. Things that are not really relevant to our situation at any given time are usually not noticed at all.

Shirley Anne