Last autumn, we went on holiday to Argyll.
Anticipating typically awful west coast weather, my other half took an amusingly rude cross-stitch pattern with him, which he was making as a present for a pal.
He’d only managed to stitch a single swear word before the holiday and, thanks to surprisingly usable weather, the week passed by without any further stitches being crossed.
We returned home, and instantly the puzzlement started. Where was the bag containing the cross-stitch?
He vividly remembered putting it in the car boot in Argyll with the other luggage, so I searched our home, confident I’d find it somewhere blindingly obvious.
It was nowhere to be seen, so he then did what we all do in these situations – checked the last place the lost item was seen. In this case, the car boot, over and over again, as though looking a fourth, fifth or even sixth time would make it magically appear.
It didn’t. Indeed, there was nothing in the boot. It was clearly, very definitely, empty.
Was it all a cross-stitch up?
The situation was baffling, but I clung to rational explanations, suggesting it had perhaps just blown out of the car when we were packing up. It had been very windy, after all, so it wasn’t a stretch to imagine the bag being whisked away, unnoticed.
No, he clearly remembered laying it on top of the luggage and shutting the boot.
“Maybe it fell out later,” I suggested. “Did you stop for petrol?”
No, he hadn’t stopped anywhere.
“Well, then… It must still be in the holiday cottage,” I said.
I hoped, for his sake, that it was. But, for my sake I hoped it wasn’t.
I was mortified at the idea of the kindly old landlady finding the bag, peering in and then seeing that single rude word staring up at her. It was a lovely cottage and I doubted we’d be invited back after that.
But, I knew it couldn’t be there. I’m a stickler for leaving holiday accommodation as I find it, so would have spotted the bag during my pre-departure vacuuming and obsessively repeated inspections.
“Ach, he’s put it down somewhere VERY safe and can’t remember where,” I thought. “Yeah, it must be in our house.”
In the end, I chalked it up to my partner’s forgetfulness and moved on. It clearly still bothered him, though.
A parallel universe seems the only sensible explanation
That was October, and there have been many trips in that car since then. Many fillings and emptyings of the boot. No cross-stitch.
But, then, two weeks ago, he opened the boot and there it was. All by itself – as obvious and as baffling as finding an elephant sitting on your toilet.
Inwardly, my brain does panicked existential somersaults because nothing else can explain where the rude cross-stitch has been all this time
In situations like these, when logic takes flight as easily as lost objects, my better half falls back on quantum mechanics and parallel universes. Can objects, perhaps even people, slip out of our universe for a while and then slip back in?
Ugh. Outwardly, I dismiss it with a nod and a chuckle but, inwardly, my brain does panicked existential somersaults because nothing else can explain where the rude cross-stitch has been all this time.
Our sunshine and snow spent January elsewhere
Four days later, the Met Office published their UK weather stats for January, including the monthly anomaly maps that show deviations from the long-term averages.
January was, without doubt one of the greyest months I’ve ever endured. Day after day of benign but boring anticyclonic gloom. No frost. No snow. No wind. No sun. Nothing. Just low, thick, grey cloud. I genuinely couldn’t recall a less sunny spell of weather.
So, when the Met Office maps showed an anomalous blob over my wee corner of eastern Scotland, saying we’d had 170% of normal January sunshine, I was utterly incredulous.
Being a weather geek, with my weather station and constant gazing out of windows, I’m pretty well tuned in to this stuff. I’ve never been surprised at Met Office stats. But this? Nope, something wasn’t right.
So, Jan 2022 ends up being my 2nd warmest Jan by a clear distance. Persistently mild nights. Max of 12.5C was warmest Jan day I've recorded. 2 days with snow falling, 1 with snow lying, so matches Jan 14 for snowlessness…but that was a rather cold January in comparison. #Fife pic.twitter.com/kTsIOv1PqC
— Ben Dolphin (@CountrysideBen) February 1, 2022
Cross-stitch in my head, I started wondering whether I’d unknowingly spent January in a parallel universe. Or maybe the Met Office had? And now I’m even wondering if that’s where this winter’s snowfall went?
Is there a greedy universe out there with all our snow on top of their own? If so, will it all come back to where it belongs, like the cross-stitch did?
Was the cross-stitch sent back deliberately because that universe doesn’t appreciate swearing? My head hurts thinking about it.
One thing’s certain, though. If and when the snow does come back, you just know it’ll do so in April.
Ben Dolphin is an outdoors enthusiast, countryside ranger and former president of Ramblers Scotland
