The mystery of the fleece

For the past two days or so, I've been without my beloved and well-worn fleece jumper. Purchased a long time ago — in a continent far away (Cusco, Peru, after my Kathmandu fleece became one of the first victims of this trip) — it may be cheap and falling apart (and grey and ugly), but it's kept me warm through a great many ordeals. The two of us have together endured hardships across the globe, and we now share a very special symbiotic bond (en Anglais: I've grown rather attached to it). After my very big night on Wednesday evening, I thought I'd lost it.

On Thursday night, I looked for the fleece in my room: and unable to find it, I looked around Flannigans when we visited it that evening. No luck — fleece was nowhere to be seen. Last night, I decided that the situation was getting serious: I went early (before all the crowds) to both Flannigans and Highways, and thoroughly searched the clothing areas in both venues. Still nothing. Dear G-d: could my fleece be lost forever? As crazy as it seemed, was it possible that in this elite, upmarket Austrian ski-resort village, someone had stolen my smelly, unfashionable, tattered old jumper? Surely not: around here, even a thief wouldn't be seen dead running off with a jumper, unless it had a designer label clearly stitched onto it.

This morning, however, the mystery of the fleece was solved. It was right there in my room the whole time! It had just been sitting on top of the coat cupboard, innocently waiting to be rediscovered. I could have sworn I searched the room thoroughly on Thursday — I definitely did look on top of the coat cupboard — but apparently, my search was not thorough enough. Clearly, my item-finding skills are even worse than their abysmal usual, when I'm hung-over after a big night out. Anyway, I'm very relieved that I found it: although I only have another week or so in freezing Europe, a week is still a long time to be cold! And besides, like I said, I'd hate for that symbiotic bond to be destroyed.