So, I went to the cinema yesterday instead of continuing with the Stuff purge because in the morning I wrote out every long-outstanding job that needs doing in here, looked at what I'd written, and thought hey, that's not so bad, I've got time to go to the cinema today.
Anyway, today it was back to The Great Tidy Up, attacking a different flank of the Stuff mountain - the arts & craft hoard.
First, I went through my button tin, wool collection and sewing things, and made it all fit into two boxes instead of three. What came out will go to the charity shop on Monday.
Next up, the magazine pile.
I like making collages, so I keep a lot of magazines. I mean A LOT of magazines. To try and reduce them, I go through the stack from time to time, cutting out things I think I might be able to use. These cuttings go into folders and boxes. There are A LOT of folders and boxes, in several different places, and everything's just bunged in, there's no attempt to organise it.
Until today.
I got halfway through sorting the contents of one box into Sensible Categories before flaking out, exhausted.
(The reason for that is explained in this article: The three-or-four hours rule for getting creative work done. This is why I bookmark so many articles, so there's always something I can turn to to justify my paltry attempts at adulting.)
But it was a start. And I'm looking forward to picking the job up again tomorrow - it got my creative juices flowing just seeing this stuff. I thought that particular spring had dried up long ago.
I found my anxiety doodles from April and May 2020, when we first went into lockdown and it felt like the end of the world:
A blank A5 piece of card, a fine-nib pen, and I could forget everything for a while, quietly absorbed in drawing tiny circles until the white space had gone.
I turned some of them into postcards to send to people:
And I made a whole booklet out of them to post to a niece, because I was scared and trying to reassure myself:
I found collages I'd made before the Dominic Cummings weekend, after which it all got a bit too much and I ground to a halt in everything except basic survival functions:
So this urge to purge, for me it's a sign of life. It's the headspace I was in back in February 2020 before the world closed in; it's about looking to the future. Fresh starts and all that. Out with the old to make space for the new.
The fact I'm turning my attention to these jobs again, after so long of not being able to do anything at all, fills me with hope, it really does.
Took a spur of the moment trip to the cinema to see The Sparks Brothers documentary today, which was an absolute delight. You came out uplifted and smiling, which is a nice way to leave anything, and glad they're finally getting the popular acclaim they deserve.
I didn't know much about Sparks before I went in, except for liking the only songs of theirs I knew, This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us and Beat The Clock.
Like the talking heads in the film, I also remember being utterly freaked out by Ron on Top of the Pops in 1974. I was seven, didn't understand why he looked like Hitler and stared like that, and nobody in my family could adequately explain it. It was a relief to find out today it wasn't just me who'd found him terrifying:
By the end of the film I still didn't know much about Sparks in a personal sense, except that they both seem like genuinely cool people. There wasn't a shred of ego to be seen in either of them, they work hard, they're smart, they're funny, they create unique music and what they do is more art than pop. It was an inspiring two hour twenty minutes. And of course now I'm a little bit in love with Ron.
I'd forgotten Sparks were referenced in Paul McCartney's Coming Upvideo:
Russell deadpanning 'well if Paul McCartney thinks my brother's good, then I'd better start respecting him' was a great moment.
A joyous film.
Photo du Jour: A Tweeter In Woofer's Clothing
PS: Mark Kermode wrote a wonderful review of it here.
I've invented my own bit of folklore: if you see a fish, that means it's going to be a good day.
It's clever because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy, yeah? If I'm looking at a fish, it means I've torn myself away from the sofa - I'm outside, I've left the house, I'm not sitting at home like some weird troglodyte. And, in the case of a Roath Park fish, I probably did exercise to get there.
That's got to be good. Or at least better.
(There's also a sub-clause, in that if I look for them at a place where they usually are and DON'T see any, I can claim that anyway, because where else are they going to be? They haven't just nipped to Sainsburys or gone to play football, have they?)
Anyway today I saw a fish. Yay!
Fish? Fishes? Fish. I got to the park early, these ones were hanging out at optimum fish-viewing spot no.2; my fate was sealed.
The little egret was up at the lake - long time no see, fella:
As was Terry, who only comes out on sunny days:
A crested grebe was also swanning (...grebing?) about, looking ravishing:
And, er, there was this guy:
I ate an al fresco lunch at the cafe, then spent a while being mesmerised by bees:
Thus fortified, I dropped off two big bags of Stuff to the charity shop then rearranged the van to make room for the potentially-for-sale books.
They're under the bed in there now, and not on the floor in here, which is definitely good.
It got me down a bit today. I was going through old cards and letters, and it just reminded me of everyone I've ever lost.
So I need to do something else tomorrow - go out and see daylight or something. I hear that's very popular these days.
There was a bit of an end-of-the-world vibe going on in Morrisons' car park in Barry just now:
I drove out to Barry after dinner because I suddenly noticed how stir crazy I felt. Apart from a quick walk round the lake on Monday night, I hadn't left the flat in over a week.
For a joke late last year I changed my Twitter bio to "the Hiroo Onoda of UK lockdown," but it's true.
Today's Photo: Keep Calm And Vandalise Life Saving Equipment
"Clutter has only two possible causes: too much effort is required to put things away or it is unlcear where things belong." - Marie Kondo
I spent the day tackling a small part of the paper mountain.
If you want a terrifying glimpse into how my brain works, read on.
As mentioned in January, one of the reasons I wanted to resume this blog is that I hoard information, and consequently my life is cluttered with an ever-increasing number of notebooks, diaries, cuttings, leaflets, magazine articles worth keeping, snippets scrawled in exercise books and onto odd bits of paper, images I saw and liked, and instructions for important things like this:
My flat, in other words, is a repository for endless ephemera. And instead of being organised about it, it is utter chaos.
Adopting the Kondo advice, I now have a notebook specifically for recording quotes, a couple more to stick images in, another to jot down books I'd like to read, and so on. But there is still way too much disorganisation, because the stuff comes in faster than I can keep up with it (yes the internet has been the bane of my life, thanks for asking).
If I post things on here, I thought in January, I can throw at least some this crap away feeling like I acted upon it in some small, perhaps even useful for future purposes, kind of way.
Fine, if I ever manage to get round to catching up with a backlog spanning many years.
Today I went through a box of stuff I'd swept off the desk a while back in order to tidy the desk (so much of my 'tidying' involves moving things from one place to another, instead of acting on, organising, or getting rid of it). The box contained eleventy million random jottings I'd made about interesting topics and general curiosities - quotes and excerpts, books to read, doodles and diagrams, snippets of creative writing, things to watch, music to listen to, places to go, things to see and things to Google. Most of it came from an A4 pad that got filled up in 2016.
The first thing to do was put the laptop on Flight Mode. After that I typed everything I came across that needed a follow-up search into a new tab, and left it there to come back to later, rather than interrupt the flow of methodical organisation/destruction with tantalising distractions.
At close of play, most of the info had been scanned or transferred to a dedicated notebook. I'd opened 22 tabs. Here are those searches, plus results:
7. [Redacted] - the name of a girl I went to school with. No results, but a subsequent peek at the old girls' association FB page found her on the Head Girls board:
It also came up with a photo (from 2011) of faces still instantly recognisable despite not having seen them for almost 40 years:
(By a curious coincidence, I started following one of these people on Twitter via a mutual follower without realising who it was. I haven't owned up. For the same reason I haven't - and wouldn't - go to any school reunions. Autism FTW.)
15. The Soap Co Keswick. Concerning that they haven't tweeted since 2019 and the link to their website is broken. Hope they're still in business - they're wonderful.
16. free katharine hibbert book - turns out this is a booked called Free by Katharine Hibbert and not a free book by Katharine Hibbert. Never mind; it still looks well worth a read.
17. Upbeat Sneakers - saw them supporting The Beat at Clwb Ifor Bach a while back and even though the entire band looked about 12 years old they were great:
20. 21 Pembridge Crescent. My mum is listed as living here in the 1952 electoral roll. She'd been working in Cambridge in 1950, and in 1953 or 1954 she met my dad in Leeds. She was a manager in the HMSO, and got sent to places to open new offices. When she got married, she had to resign, because the civil service didn't allow married women to carry on working.
It's a lifelong regret that I never knew this sparky, efficient, managerial person, only her subjugated, defeated shell. Marriage to my dad and three kids didn't really work out for her, but she kept at it gamely til the bitter end because that's what you did in those days:
21. gogreenbatteries.co.uk - a successful eBay order for camera batteries back in the day; would use them again.
22. Kerrenhappuch Chick:
According to a family tree, Kerrenhappuch Chick was the great-great-grandmother of my paternal grandfather's grandmother. With a name like that I thought something might've come up, but no.
(Leaving out the inverted commas just found a load of dubious sites featuring the word 'chick').
Somewhere along that familial line, a Long married a Trump. Finding out there was a Trump in my heritage was a shock, but the record shows it is not the same batch of Trumps, so it's fine.
I might adopt Kerrenhappuch Chick as a nom de plume; it's fabulous.
From a vast stack of paper I'm left with two films to watch, some articles to read, and a whole load of crap in the bin. Even though I realise that in the grand scheme it was a total waste of time, I'm still calling this a productive day.
Genuinely can't believe I've managed to stick to the routine of posting on here daily - it's been 206 days now. This is no mean feat when you have ADHD and absolutely nothing to write about.
Today's round up of good stuff:
I loved this story about a musician who made music with the Golden Gate Bridge:
I hear music in random sounds all the time, and even in some patterns I see, so it's wonderful to find someone actually make it come to life.
I enjoyed going through the replies to this Twitter question that asked, what song were you most surprised to find out was a cover/ sample?
In honour of Amy, who we lost ten years ago this weekend, here's Valerie:
An old Financial Timesarticle about dying seaside towns hit home; I've been longing to move to Blackpool recently, and absolutely for these reasons:
"People have a positive association from their childhood... When something's not gone right in their lives, [when] there's a problem, [when] they're running away from something, then people do tend to come to Blackpool, and the cheap housing helps drive people here," he says. One friend of Hopkins' puts it more bluntly. "It's a drop-out town."
I even spent Friday afternoon on Zoopla (before I read the article) looking for cheap flats on or near the promenade.
Oh wow. My mind exploded with ideas on seeing this photo.
It's long been a dream of mine to hawk secondhand books from a converted cargo bike - just rock up to the beach on a sunny day sort of thing, not a proper business, more of a pocket money hobby.
I've now carefully set aside the huge pile of books I was going to try and flog to a bookshop, and have been investigating shelves for a van version of the bike dream, instead. It could be something interesting to do this summer, if I can summon up the nerve.
I'm still busy trying to tackle the perennial problem of having too much stuff. Books and DVDs are being added to the discard pile each day, and old diaries are being scanned before they go in the shredder.
One day I will have No More Stuff and it will feel miraculous.
This month has been a pattern of weekends away and the rest of the time sitting around at home in my pyjamas, so I thought I'd shake it up a little this weekend by not going away and just sitting around at home in my pyjamas.
Today broke the weather records again. I can't even.
The future's here, folks.
Managed to part company with the sofa long enough to go through the wardrobe, looking for things to throw out. Trying on jumpers and skinny jeans in this weather is no laughing matter. Got a fair old pile of stuff that no longer fits, and things I bought to wear to the job I won't be going back to. A bag of tights went in the bin. Tights! It makes me laugh that I even owned any.
After a bit of seagull bother, I stopped putting food out for the magpies for a while, and chased away any persistent gull visitors until the balcony became a less popular destination.
Today I decided it was time to invite the magpies back. I put out some grapes and dried mealworms on the windowsill, a plateful of water in case they were thirsty, and the washing up bowl with a couple of inches of water in the bottom in case they needed a refreshing dip.
They loved it. Despite the windows being fully open and me lying there watching them from just a few feet away on the sofa, all three of them kept popping back throughout the day to hoover up their snacks and demand more.
It was lovely listening to them crunching on mealworms. I get similar happiness from listening to horses or sheep grazing in a field, or from hearing ducks and swans slurping up pondweed. There is something delightful, gratifying, in it.
(For some reason I do not find listening to humans eating quite as enchanting.)
There was plenty of activity at their water park too, only I couldn't see what they were up to down there without disturbing them so had to try and guess from the noises drifting in through the window.
That, and reading the entirety of Girl A by Abigail Dean, was the sum of the day's activities.
What worries me is that not only do I find it hard to take part in real life these days, but I can't remember why, pre-pandemic, I even wanted to.
Combined three tiny but long-overdue chores - dropping things off to places - with a bike ride up the Taff Trail this morning.
While expending less energy than walking - you're sitting down, it's flat - you get there quicker and generate for yourself a lovely cool breeze. Win win.
I had a look round Forest Farm as I was passing, but there wasn't much wildlife to see. Anything with any sense was tucked away in the shade. A passing family complained about the lack of ducks: "Usually there are hundreds."
This mallard wondered why, in herself, she was not enough:
Leaving behind the existential waterfowl, I came home to flop on the sofa for the rest of the day. It's hotter than yesterday again, hotter than 1976, hotter than the surface of the sun.
