Most of us want things we know to be impossible. And yet the most common dreams allegedly involve one's teeth falling out, flying through the sky, and being chased or hunted. Were I a dream interpreter, I would say you wish you could afford a foreign holiday but are being pursued by a dentist waving an unpaid bill. He clearly wants a foreign holiday as well.
Our own pipe dreams have had to be revised downwards in the light of recent events. There is a Burmese saying that when an elephant has a sore foot, even a mouse will nibble at it - in other words, when one thing goes wrong, others will follow as surely as love and marriage, is that still true? They used to go together like a horse and carriage, apparently you couldn't have one without the other.
And you can bet that as soon as we need a plumber more urgently than a Lamborghini, along comes a pandemic. These days it has become true that you can't get plumbers for love nor money, because everyone else is offering them money as well, probably more than you are.
And when one household repair is needed, others follow suit, as if each is trying to outdo the others in vying for your attention. A leak in the cistern is followed by a washing machine breakdown and then a dishwasher malfunction occurs before the cooker gives up the ghost just as the warranty expires.
A window frame has ceased to be airtight and a joiner is needed - or is it a carpenter? Or a glazier? The good old Yellow Pages were quicker than Google sometimes - not that you can Google anything when your electricity isn't working, or has your PT Hub gone down? Once it's dark perhaps we'll see things more clearly by moonlight.
There are still some candles somewhere if we can find the torch. I hope Netflix doesn't start acting up tonight, offering choices with blank spaces where illustrations should be. How many tradesmen from different households are permitted in the house at the same time, and does the presence of a tv engineer and an electrical engineer count as one engineer in total if they are half-brothers?
These Covid rules are as confusing as assembly guides for IKEA wardrobes. No sooner have we placed an order for assorted takeaways - Thai food for the joiner, glacé cherry pie for the glazier - than selected restaurants open and we race towards them, hoping to arrive before the people on benches in nearby parks can beat us to the few available seats. But just as we are leaving home, the plumber arrives.
