New Year... no socks

So it's 2010 and unusually for me I am at home without my children. Their beloved Grandmother took pity on me and has spirited them away to London so that I can study (theoretically, although all I have done thus far is sleep, eat, sleep a little bit more...) for my training course. Colchester has a festive sprinkling of snow, the temp is in the minus numbers and I can't find any socks.

That in itself is not unusual, as in a small house with three children; two of whom are on the Autistic Spectrum, you'd be lucky to find anything, with or without your Sat Nav! However a benevolent relative gave us a large collection of new socks (in matching pairs) and somewhere on the grand tour of the M25, the sock collective has been misplaced.

This is a very disappointing start to the year. By my usual standards, it normally takes until the end of February for the Christmas socks to become foundlings. This situation is normally redeemed by my Birthday at the start of March. So I have checked the dogs beds as Beans, the reprobate labrador (18mnths) is normally the culprit. No socks to be found. My mother and other female friends have suggested that my orphan sock collection, lovingly kept in a basket in my bedroom; is indicative of my mental state. I heartily concur with this surmise.

The sock collective is a colourful congregation of individual, cotton characters all with a story behind them.
Nothing matches, many have holes courtesy of the labrador or JJ who is a sock terrorist.
Every sock is important and so cannot be thrown away or unloved. The socks mix nilly willy, indifferent to socio-economic background; occasionally hurling them selves over the top in highly over optimistic attempts to belong or be useful.
There are socks in there from when A was born and thus serve no useful purpose whatsoever unless an art and craft project might suddenly require a solitary, size 2 GAP infant stripy?
But I can't throw them away?

However the visitors are interesting. There are solo socks from many visitors over the years. The after school play date socks, the trampolining visitor sock; the baby droppy- off- tiny- foot sock; the sledging with friends sock; the Halloween guest quick costume change sock; the bl**dy labrador ran off with the other one sock? The list is endless. Of course a wise woman would throw them all away, ethnically cleanse the laundry basket and the undies drawers of the aforementioned children, and start again. Hence the Christmas socks. But I've lost them.
Thus begins a new decade of unadulterated chaos. But no one is unloved or unwanted at least... even the low -cotton/ high polyester mix amoungst us.