Take a look at our lovely … thingie.
In the picture above.
Cute isn’t it?
Not too big, not too small, you will agree.
Neither is it too wide or too narrow … just a perfectly proportioned ring-within-a-ring, attractive red-apple-hearted, sturdy bronze-legged … thingie.
Ideal for …
We still don’t know.
Have it for years now, and haven’t found a use for it.
Yet.
It’s just there, in the kitchen.
Something you like, have even become attached to, but heck if you can find an actual use for it?
It’s supposed to be for putting hot pans, pots or plates on, some bright spark told us once, but nah, not steady enough or necessary anyway on a perfectly decent dark granite worktop, thank you.
Sure we move it around now and then, and we even brought it into the sitting room for a while.
Put candles on it. But they didn’t look quite right, and back it came eventually to the kitchen.
Have you got your own thingie at home?
Something you like, have even become attached to, but heck if you can find an actual use for it?
So many gorgeous, thoughtfully purchased or gifted — expensive even — utensils, bowls and holders have come and gone, but sturdy thingie lives on …
Useless but strangely beguiling.
Can’t find it in us to throw it out.
This home of ours will fall to the ground someday, a pile of rubbled memories and Ikea bookcase fragments … and the future archaeologists of the past will come, with their hologram’strings’ and their superscopic ‘stakes’, and their old-fashioned trowels and their new-fangled theories.
Amid rumours of a most intriguing find … an unusual, bronzed object …
A young dust-encrusted intern will toil in the 23rd-century sun, having first cracked open the compacted surface soil and debris with his trusty mattock, cutting carefully into the past with his hectroliptical laser ‘pickaxe’ and delving with his polycarbonate shovel and his informed enthusiasm.
The team’s hyperspectral sensing systems will have led them to this site, just outside a small abandoned town north of the city of Dublin, in Western Trumpland.
Golden Ridge, they had called this ancient settlement, something to do with the first new potatoes of the year growing there, when it was farmland.
Once a lush market-gardening oasis, rich in its own produce and heritage, the multi-galactic ‘food’ generating corporations will have laid waste to the economy of the whole area, and centuries of neglect by governments, local and interplanetary, won’t have helped either.
But the team’s tomography scan of the underlying soil will have yielded an intriguing 3D image of a small, circular, multi-ringed vessel … with what looks like an apple shape at the centre, down about two metres.
This was no job for the mini robot digger, fresh-faced Thomas J Delap had begged his boss to let him do this delicate job himself.
Down, down he will burrow, painstaking and thorough, eager to please his gruff but dedicated chief, and he will stop immediately when the sun catches that first bronzy glint.
He will run to Professor Blowhard, who will, of course, take over and later claim all the credit, after he finally brings … thingie into the light of that far off day.
The scraps and fragments of cups, candle-holders and HP printer cartridges will have been routinely bagged and filed away … but thingie will have this ambitious man and his learned colleagues guessing.
Oh, the papers they will ‘write’, the brandies and fine dinners they will consume, the exclusive symposiums they will cajole and browbeat funding for, dedicated to thingie, drawing prestigious scholars from around the planets …
Reputations and careers will be made and unmade, as they sift through their hypotheses and their presumptions, and snort derisively into their Dingle gin and plutonics, trying to work out what thingie was used for.
Social media will finally get wind of it, the leaked photo will go viral on Mars.
All the more reason not to throw it out …
And find a use for it … one day.
Has to be something …
What do you reckon?
It’s over there under the front window, near the microwave.
Nothing on it, but, hey, it’s part of the decor …
Not a utensil, and not quite an ornament either, a … thingie
Besides, it was a present.
He will run to Professor Blowhard, who will, of course, take over and later claim all the credit, after he finally brings … thingie into the light of that far off day
From a Hungarian friend married to a Kerry man.
Haven’t seen them in years. But we still have our thingie.
The apple heart is kind of cute, though, isn’t it?
Nice shade of red.
Rustic red, I call it.
Rusty red, more like.
Red is a funny colour, you’ve got to admit.
Too red and we’re talking garish. Look-at-me lurid. Loud.
Not red enough and it’s insipid, deadening.
Disheartening even.
The right red in a coat is daring, dashing and dangerously alluring.
Beyond cool.
The wrong rouge and, sorry madam, but you are a sartorial sniggering-stock.
Lost to fashion
Beyond redemption.
Don’t look now …
Ferrari red in cars is bad-boy compelling, or vacuously vulgar.
Depends who’s driving.
It can be kind of guilty pleasure cool.
Something Tom Selleck would drive in his heyday …
But thingies’ apple-heart red?
Perfect.
There has to be something we can use it for …
Something that will look wonderful on it …
Have you thought of anything yet?
Put a teapot on it, you say?
Oh, we have, but it didn’t sit comfortably.
None of the seven did.
See it’s just not quite, spirit-level flat.
Maybe if we bought the right tea-pot?
C’mon, seven is enough, don’t you think!
Think … it’s a perfect width for … what exactly?
A butter dish? Salad dish? Goldfish bowl? Cactus plant holder?
Microscope? Hatstand …
You’re getting silly now!
Maybe if we moved it out of the kitchen again we’re find something to put on it.
But what?
A lamp? … Too small.
Cactus plant? Not steady enough.
But it’s so unobtrusive, and a nice height, for …
Whatever!
Sturdy too, perfect to put … what on?
See?
No natural fit. Or place.
See the game is already up when you have to think of things it can be adopted for.
Rather than suggest itself for.
Create its own need, or use.
Like a normal utensil, holder or stand.
All ideas considered …
- Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed it, try another one! Follow my blog and you won’t miss out again.
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EndaStories 
Good start to the week. Some might call it a trivet, or is that trivett , thing is better.
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Excuse me … it’s a thingie, Paul!! Hehe
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Whoops, just realised there is such a thing(ie) as a trivet, Paul … you are correct, I’m sure, but I think it is as good as useless, as in why would you have a thing specifically just for that? Like the triangle player in an orchestra: they build it up, and they build it up, and then the player hits his little thing that goes ‘pling’! Why bother!
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The Apple is the giveaway for me: it’s a prototype wireless charger for mobile phones, dating back to the days before mobiles were invented, designed by Theodolite Jobs (you know who’s great-great-great grandfather).
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Good answer Clive, maybe not the right answer, but a good answer!! Or maybe it is the right answer!
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Worth a guess, I thought!
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Ah, I’ve been looking for one of these – Clue: a present from a Hungarian friend. Don’t throw it out. Write my name and phone number on a piece of paper and stick it underneath. If I don’t go before you, when your kids are clearing out the house, they can mail it over 🙂
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It’s a goulash pot holder, then, maybe?
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This makes me smile. I have a few thingies in my house too, things that will make archaeologists wonder. 🙂
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We all have!!!😀
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Keep them wondering, Lisa!
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I agree with the previous commenter: I think it’s a trivet. It’s something you put hot things on so they don’t burn your countertop. I have some thingies that will make archaeologists shake their heads too.
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Technically correct, Laurie, but I’m still not convinced!! Too obvious. Maybe if your work-top was made of tar or soft plastic. Ours is granite, and dark so utterly unnecessary. Hence, alone it stands, unused and yet strangely wanted!
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What a fun post. I think your thingie is to put hot serving dishes and pots on at your dining room table. For example, when you take a hot casserole out of the oven or if you make a big turkey for Thanksgiving, you put it on that for presentation at the table.
I don’t have any thingies. I don’t like thingies hanging around. If I’m not using it, I give it away.
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I get the casserole holder thing(ie), Yvonne, but it’s not very good for that … but it’s kind of cute: that’s why it stays put! hehe
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Definitely one to go in the charity shop box ! I hate clutter and stuff I don’t use anymore. Anything called a “thingie” in our house would have to go haha 🙂
Thanks so much for linking up at #KCACOLS. Hope you come back again next time!
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Thank you
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Thanks for visiting my blog! My first guess was that your thingie is a trivet for holding hot dishes, but you said it didn’t work well for that. Maybe that’s what it was supposed to be, but it didn’t come out just right. It could hold a potted plant, maybe, with something under one leg to even things up….but then you couldn’t see that cute little apple. I have a number of thingies, too. At some point I’ll ask myself WHY am I still dusting this? But instead of getting rid of it, I put it in a box in a closet. Every now and again I’ll donate a thingie to a thrift store–maybe someone else can figure out a use for it. For now, yours is a conversation piece,
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See, now you’re taking about it too, Barbara, hehe!
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I say hand it from an area of the room, like a hanging plant – then watch as everyone tries to figure out why you did that next time they come to visit. It will be a great conversation starter, just a trivet hanging in the air. #DreamTeam
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hang, not hand. Autocorrect beat me.
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I think it’s the apple that is most confusing, It’s got to be a trivet, although not a good one, but why put an apple in the middle? I do think it looks like it would survive a nuclear attack though, so definitely one for future archeologists to figure out. I have thingies, made from glass when my eldest was working at the glassworks. He made all sorts of weird thingies, mostly marbled glass and looking a bit like mushrooms. I have a whole shelf of them.
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I love a good game of trivet pursuit, Anne! I also love glass figurines, and your unique pieces sound fab
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I think we all have those thingies lurking around our houses, useless thingies that we just can’t beat to part with. Your thingie looks like someone’s design and technology project!
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You reckon? I wonder how they got on? hehe
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We have so many thingies in my house too. I thought I did well when we moved house to declutter but there was still so many random things which found their way here. lol
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And they have a habit of sticking aorund in our house, Kim!
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Perhaps it’s meant to set a potted plant on?
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Could do – if it was steady enough, Jean!
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Never found a round trivet I would trust to do it’s job correctly, I prefer glass worktop savers.
As for a use….why not tie in upright in a tree and hang some fat balls for the birds from it.
MY husband has a loft full of things we may need one day as well as 3 sheds with the same sort of junk in them. #WotW
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My dad had two sports jacket pockets full of thinges, mostly small, he would unload on his dressing table every night. He collected stuff,and things that ‘might be useful for something’! Thanks Elaine
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I loved your vision of archaeologists from the future discovering the ‘thingie’ and trying to work out what it was once used for. I’m not entirely sure what I would use your thingie for either but I think that it is some kind of trivet, but maybe not the most well-designed one especially if it’s a little wobbly on the countertop! #WotW
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Yeah, a badly designed but kinda cute trivet about covers it, Louise
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It probably is a trivet. But I am with Heather when she says to hang it from somewhere. As a ‘wotzit’ it makes a great conversation piece! #KCACOLS
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It does that Jo! made a good blog conversation piece anyway!
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I feel you should embellish it to confuse the future archaeologists. Maybe weld a toggle switch on the underside and two hooks on the side, but not opposite each other. Add a few tally marks. That always gets them excited. You’ll end up with something that suggests it’s a trivet, but can’t possibly be, due to these other bits. #wotw
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Now you’re talking, Cheryl Confuse the stuffing out of them — and make for more interesting learned dissertations, theories and Phd theses!!!
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I have a house full of things I can never get rid of as they may be useful ‘one day’. I always want to repurpose things but usually they just sit there for years 😦 Thanks for linking up with #dreamteam
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Yes, the art — or scourge of repurposing, Laaura!! hehe
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I’ve got a big fruit bowl on a table in my kitchen that would look much nicer perched on something like that. It would also look better if it had fruit in it, but one thing at a time…#KCACOLS
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Hehe, you are right, Jeremy: too much progress in one move!!
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