In pursuit of flannel

When I cracked open one eye this morning, I could hear the wind pawing at the garden . The television was on, but the volume had been reduced to zero. I will often do this in a state of semi-wakefulness, now that the off button on the remote only seems to function intermittently. A prolonged infomercial for mattresses, that are manufactured from foam springs, was playing, as it always does at this time of day. Maybe the intent is to capitalise on the vulnerability of those reluctant early risers, who feel they should have slept better and for longer.

Still in bed, but now partly uptight, I observed, through the larger of the two windows in my bedroom (I never draw the curtains) the leafy boughs of some tall trees, on the adjacent golf course, churning in slow motion against an overcast sky. My thoughts turned to the headless trout that had been left to defrost on top of the small fridge, next to the washing machine, and how a new mode of cooking it would be required if a barbecue was off the cards.

Now fully upright, and gazing out through the smaller east-facing window I noted a grey bathroom flannel that was being dragged over itself in fits and starts, across the garden towards the decrepit apple tree; forming a temporary, Velcro-like adhesion with the mowed lawn, before it was again dislodged by a gust of wind.

For reasons that remain unclear, the flannel had been demoted from its prestigious role as wash cloth to downstairs cleaning rag; specifically to remove the residue of polish that is applied to the flesh-coloured kitchen floor tiles during their semi-annual buffing. In the aftermath, it gave off such a strong chemical odour that it was banished to the lower tier of the back steps outside the kitchen door, sentenced to live the rest of its life as an outdoor flannel, with many further falls from grace waiting for it over the horizon. The unseasonally strong winds had imbued it with an ungainly semblance of ground level flight, akin to those early attempts at human aviation, as it sought a better life for itself elsewhere. I thought of the Japanese Tsukumogami – those household objects that are thought to attain sentience on their 100^th birthday, though the flannel was nowhere near 100 years old. I admit that I am ignorant to the lifespan of bathroom flannels in captivity, or whether any peer-reviewed studies have carried out in this area.

This is how my day commenced: Barely dressed and half-asleep, having sneezed down the front of my T-shirt, staggering, bent-over, across the garden lawn, attempting to re-capture a flannel, as if it was a chicken that had recently flown the coop.

On my way back upstairs, I noted that the string of cardboard Union Jack bunting (the small flags captured identically in mid-wave) had been pulled off its moorings and was well on its way to flying at half-mast.

An oft-referenced scene in American Beauty (a film that has fallen from grace, owing in part to the off-screen behaviour of its lead actor, Kevin Spacey, and to a wave of joyless neo-puritanism that apparently finds elements of the story problematic) is that of a plastic bag dancing in the wind; the underlying message being that life is filled with unlikely moments of frail beauty that we are too self-absorbed to take notice of. That may be true. However I suspect that, far more common are those flannel-chasing moments, where inanimate objects make a break for freedom and run amok like miniature Frankenstein's Monsters, pursued by their hapless masters to comedic effect.