A busy retirement schedule is a smashing way of life

I refer to my penchant for clumsiness and general ineptitude, which in recent weeks has seen me smash two cups, and a much treasured china teapot, without really trying.

I have to say I wasn’t entirely to blame for the first cup. We were sitting in the conservatory enjoying a brew when the dog came in out of the garden in her usual excitable fashion, and whisked the cup off the table with a boisterous sweep of mighty tail, and it shattered on the tiles.

Fortunately, it was empty, but I was still afforded a basilisk glare by Mrs Hextol.

A few days later, we were outside in glorious sunshine in the garden, and I was going through items in my fishing bag in readiness for my first fishing trip for many years.

I carefully put my coffee cup on the ground out of reach of swishing tails and careless elbows, and started rifling through 30 years’ worth of rusty reels, knotted nylon and viciously barbed hooks.

As more and more stuff accumulated on my knee, a reel slipped off – and instead of landing on any of the hundreds of paving blocks at its disposal, it hit the rim of my cup, knocking a significant chip out of the china.

Mrs Hextol had been in the kitchen, but she was out like a shot, eyes ablaze, before I could slip the stricken cup in the bin.

But the rollicking I got was nothing compared to the one I received just a few days later, when I smashed the ornate china tea-pot which sits on top of the freezer. As far as I know, it has never been used to make tea, and the only time I have seen it used is by the two five-year-old granddaughters, who fill it with water and ply it vigorously at their endless tea parties.

Mrs Hextol asked me to move the freezer so she could clean behind it, and I foolishly thought that the tea-pot would stay in place while I eased it forward less than a foot.

A despairing wail from Mrs Hextol established that this was not the case, and within an instant there was the ominous crash of a heavy object hitting the floor. Once I had picked myself up, I thought the teapot had somehow miraculously escaped damage, but closer inspection revealed that the handle had snapped off the lid, and the spout was an inch or so shorter than it had been before its untimely descent

I examined the bits and found that for once they were all present, and I was confident that I would have no difficulty in sticking them back together with my ever ready tube of superglue. A withering glance told me that was not acceptable, and the tea-pot joined the two cups in the china graveyard.

Despite the rejection, I was mildly relieved, for superglue and I have an uneasy relationship, which usually ends with my fingers permanently welded together and those things which I am attempting to glue remaining stubbornly in several pieces.

I sometimes wonder whether the uncanny ability to break things is a genetic trait, because when I was growing up, we didn’t seem to have any china cups or plates in our house. My siblings and I all had different coloured plastic beakers to drink from and different shaped enamel dishes to eat our corn flakes at breakfast time and I seem to remember a lot of meals were eaten off army style tin plates.

We thought there was nothing unusual about this, until it came to the school Christmas party when we had to bring dishes from home to partake of the festive repast. We clanked up for jelly and ice cream me with my yellow rectangular dish, my brother with a similar vessel but in lime green, and my sister with her round white dish with the navy blue piping round the rim,

There was a stunned silence from the rest of the school, until some youthful wag unwisely commented: “Flipping ‘eck, the Hextols have brought dogs’ dishes”

The playground consensus afterwards was that the ensuing fight provided a far more satisfying spectacle than the scheduled slide show on butterflies, and there were still bits of jelly adhering to the canteen ceiling in the summer holidays.