A Mirror, the Sun and a Princess

 

The offending mirror

I apologise if you’re expecting a fairy tale because it’s like a story from the Twilight Zone. There is a Princess, but she’s taken, there is a mirror and there is a happy ending. Do you have one of those mirrors that on the ‘a’ side portray you as someone acceptable, whereas on the ‘b side’ it magnifies every wrinkle, wart and blackhead? We have. When we relocated to Beverley I created a dressing room for the aforementioned Princess  with a lovely view over the garden, the mirror (cue Twilight Zone music) sits obediently on the dressing table.

So last week darling wife is applying nail polish when she smells burning bakelite, this may be a new nail polish, but should it really smell like that? After a few more minutes a plastic coat hanger sitting harmlessly upon the window ledge started to smoke. When you are happily polishing your nails on a bright winter’s day this isn’t something you expect. That was the moment when she realised that the back of the mirror, as a magnifier, was directing the winter sun onto the coat hanger which in turn was about to burst into flames!

Of course this may be common knowledge, but I had never given it a thought before. It creates a whole new perspective of ‘Mirror, mirror on the wall’ 🙂