Beg yer pardon if I unintentionally draw forth a ghost of the concept of matrimonial rituals but I've a new spin on something old.…
Once more my lack of attention paid to the uninteresting resulted in a ransacking of my apartment by myself. I had not lost my cigarette holder, and though of interest to me, was of no assistance when looking for a bayonet. A modern one may be familiar. The odds in favour of that being the case are comparable to my wearing of blue Calvin Klein boxer shorts at the time I write this. Had you bet one of your vital organs you would be feeling that you had not wanted that matched pair of Phyllis Diller shoe-keepers all that much anyway.
I was looking for a British-made Sanderson bayonet manufactured to fit a Lee-Enfield Mk I. It was in the original sheath, was made in 1907 for the Boer War and, in its sheath, measured about 23" in length. It usually just lay on my sleeping spot amongst the ordinary sort of clutter to be expected lying about on a masculine chap's cot: a shortwave radio, the SAS survival manual (compact field version), cookies, several coiled bootstrings, 3 variations on the combat knife, 6 teddy bears, air-powered dart gun (loaded), an Eng.-Latin-Eng. dictionary, BDSM bondage guide, 3-medium sized bags of drugs, 1 container of ultra-high calorie-count fried bread, box of scalpels (opened), selection of electronics products, Kerouac's "On The Road," skin grease (high-lipid % hospital grade), box of latex gloves, minimum-trace assassination devices (or not) (could be imaginary, could be patent-pending), sci-fi, 8+ bandanas, dirt, tobacco powder, stiff wads of Kleenex, etc.
Because this antique accessory never left HQ nor was there a Lee-Enfield present that was in need of accessorizing, the space allotted for the missing item and its seeker seemed not unreasonable as a point of egress into the material survey. (Like, why not? The place is getting wrecked anyway.)
At this point the only relevant information required is that HQ is in a one-bedroom apartment with a large living room the floor of which, as well as every horizontal surface of every piece of furniture, is covered with a museum quantity of nearly infinite examples of what is meant by "stuff." There is a good sized kitchen similarly arrayed with the notable exception of the counters and cooking surfaces, an L-shaped entrance-way with a junk-surrounded passage through the centre of it, and finally, a bathroom with a bathtub/shower and the usual other Western world sanitation facilities. The HQ can also boast of three built-in clothes closets though there is no motive so to do.
Having first half-emptied the "bed" and searched its surfaces and crevices to no avail, the search continued methodically through the entire apt., using a three D-cell Maglite to focus the one-man investigative crew's attention, using up an hour to attend to every space, crack, crevice and gap. Boxes and bags were moved to check both behind and under them. "Junk" was moved to allow closet doors (which had not revealed their interiors for years) to be opened. Note: the item sought had not been seen in about 4-5 days. This is pointed out only to illustrate the thoroughness of the rescue efforts. Though much perspiration was indeed brought to light none of it was found to be hiding a bayonet of slightly less than two feet in length. Abstruse, arcane and even occult theories were built and were in their turn discarded. The morale of the work crew sank to the depth of the Marianas Trench (the deepest known point of all of the oceans of the Earth). The crew was returning to the starting point of its search, prepared to do it all over after regrouping and refreshing itself, when a small cardboard box which had once been filled to overflowing with first aid supplies was noticed on a nightstand at the foot of the folded-out couch that served as both support-for and platform-for the sleeping/day-rest pallet. Much too small to either contain or cover the cold instrument of impalement it was nonetheless moved aside so that it could not be recorded that any coordinate within the dwelling had been ignored.
Behind the box was revealed the hilt of the death-dealing steel, which had lodged diagonally at such an angle that no part of it was visible unless its seemingly insufficient disguise was radically relocated.
This is a first for your humble correspondent: not only was the lost object in the last place that was looked into, said which truism's humour resides precisely in its inevitability. The find was also made in the last place there WAS to look!
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