stairway to filch

"The reputation of a thousand years may be determined by the conduct of one hour"
- Japanese proverb.

STAIRWAY TO FILCH

I have no idea who took this photo, when or why, but i cannot waste it.

Everyone knows that my gals' jewelry was stolen from a shelf by my bedside in a dressing room aisle joining my bedroom with my mother's - now known as Thief Alley.
Taken to Villa Thefti in Tuscany, handed over to my 'fence' brother ... and apparently lost.
To the humiliation of the filch, I happened to be watching a DVD and noticed my jewel box on the dresser - which is how the theft was busted so quickly, and where this photo comes in.

• Out of camera range, to the right, is the bedroom where I was watching the DVD and uncovered the filthy filch.
• The steps leading up go to the study where the two co-purloiners happened to be when I emerged to confront either and demand an explanation.
• On entry to the 'study', my mother was sofa'd directly ahead, riffling thru a mag, my brother was to my left at his work easel.My mother offered 5 different (and wildly differing) excuses for my property being downstairs ~ weary gire galore, altho' I didnt know the excellent phrase back then. But i soon caught up because every subsequent mention of the theft - usually over the torture rack of the Dementia Repeatia kitchen table where i was trapped mere inches from the relentless blah blah flahr blucking fah of endlessly repeated news of the dullest and deadest.

  For my brother, I used to tease my mother about his reaction: he was busy at work and also shamed and busted at having left the loot out so visible. The intention was that I spend my stay there in complete ignorance of the theft, return to Corfu as my mother went to London, check my jewels on my return and call the police on Tasia and/or Kostas.

• At dinner conversations when the topic came/comes up, I describe it as my brother being so thrown by the disgrace that he pleads work and asks my mother and I to take the shaming and shouting elsewhere. The funny thing is that everyone who hears the story throws their hands up and covers their eyes at the very thought of being nailed excrement-handed ... and confess that they would have done the same, anything to buy time over grasping at straw excuses.

How very odd that this meaningless dull photo exists. Dull for everyone except students of the Piece of Work

Comment link - De Chirico