Remember When Your Mother Used To...?

Remember when your mother used to do the most miraculous things?
You were four years old and you couldn't figure out left from right, let alone the latest dilemma.
And she would show up with the most stupidly practical advice and it would always, marvellously, work.
Like the late night project due the next day, one grizzle and WHAM...a solution. And a *good* solution.
It always seemed, when I was young, that my mother could always make something from nothing.
And in fact when I find myself using handy solutions or old tricks I think...this is the only time I need a child...so I can teach them and wow them in the exact same way. So they can learn the tricks and be equally awed and inspired. By something so stupidly easy. I need someone to appreciate these stupidly easy events with me.

That's why, you see, I need a teenage daughter right now. I need a teenage daughter who is having friends over tomorrow and who - now that all the shops have shut and it's the middle of the night - is trying to organise her room. She'll bring out these ridiculous objects with no attachments and positively whine for me to help her put them on the wall.

I will glance around and with one visual sweep I'll eye up some wood, the saw, a screw driver and some screws.

And I'll say "Honey, THIS is how you attach three orbs to your bedroom wall without using glue or leaving a trace of knobs, nails or handles."

And then...voila...it will be done.