This is grannyw, how may I help you?

Entirely due to my own desire for publicity, self-aggrandisement, notoriety, whatever you like to call it, my number is Out There. By which I mean that it is not unknown for the phone to ring at any time of the day or night with a query for me to answer. (So, I have to know that I exist somehow, eh?)

On more than one occasion - and I am shamelessly bragging here, no bones - the DSM has actually been reduced to silence by the sheer brilliance of my ability to trouble-shoot spinning problems over the phone. I think he has delusions that I could set up a spinning-related premium number service, and make our fortunes. Or, rather,in my view, not.

So, this morning, the phone rings. (Have you cat-people ever noticed how a ringing phone is a signal for the many hundred cats in any household to instantly wake up, leap off the bed and thunder to a position half-way down the stairs, crashing to a halt at that point and stretching their bodies out so that you cannot get past without risking their and your life and limb? Or, if downstairs, some similar scenario involving chairs, knitting, whatever? H'mm.)

But I digress. Picks up phone, answers in approved 1950s, mother-trained fashion with number. "Is that mumble mumble?" This sounds sufficiently like my name for me to answer in the affirmative. "I believe you supply replacement parts for spinning.....machines." No, I say, I do sell hand spindles, and teach, after a fashion, but not spare parts for wheels. "OH. Well, perhaps you could help me. I need a...one of those things made of wire that you use for fishing your yarn through." Ah, yes, I riposte sagely, you mean an orifice hook. "A what??" Repeat from me. "Oasis? hook? Could you spell that please."

O....R....I....F....I....C....E

"Oh. Oasis. Well, can you tell me where I could get one?" I point out that there are quite a few suppliers. But - and here comes the reply of great genius guaranteed to impress any husband.

"You could find a paper clip, and straighten it out all but for one little curve, and then you could use that."

"Oh. Thank you very much for your help."

This was meant to be an essay on forays in to cotton spinning territory, but that will have to wait.