This week I'll be mostly counting socks

Spot the odd sock.

There's always an odd sock.

For years we never had an odd sock. I mean never. Then one day - in 2004 I seem to remember - it happened. An odd sock came out of the wash. One of Abbie's. Since then there has always been an odd sock. I mean always. One odd sock would find it's other half and then another would go missing. At times there have been half a dozen odd socks sitting around waiting for their other halves.

This week the obsessive compulsive gene kicked into overdrive and demanded that the socks were paired up once and for all.

I got every sock in the house into a pile. Clean ones, dirty ones. Mine, Sar's, Sam's, Abb's. In drawers, on shelves, out of the washing machine, on the Aga, under the stairs, on the airer, under the bed. Wherever they were, all the socks came out and followed me upstairs for the day of reckoning. I was like the Pied Piper of Hamelin Sockelin. Just without the pipe, and the rats. I did, however, lure any odd socks out into the open, and after a huge count up banished the offending odd socks into the bin.

From this day forward let it be known that there will be no odd socks.