As usual, my attempts at industry were not successful. The dining room is too cold for creativity and I decided to bide my time and let a creative maelstrom brew as I waited. It didn’t happen.
I watched two episodes of Murder She Wrote which I don’t seem to have seen before, which is remarkable when you think of the number I have watched, then watched a film on Amazon. It’s called “Belonging” and it features Brenda Blethyn, Kevin Whately, Peter Sallis and Anna Massey. It’s a good cast, it lasts 90 minutes, and not much happens. Despite the lack of action it’s a pleasant enough way to waste an hour and a half.
Trinity Bridge, Crowland
We finished off then banana bread and Christmas cake as we watched.
I can smell potato wedges cooking as I write this, and I will shortly be doing the rest of the meal, which is going to be meatballs in tomato sauce. It’s not an ambitious meal, but it will fit in with the rest of the day. I was originally going to do mashed vegetables with it, including mashed potatoes with herbs. As darkness fell, I felt my ambitions subside too.
Tomorrow is going to be the first day of the new working hours where I have Monday off. Not sure what I am going to do, as Julia will be at work. I may well go to the park and visit the duck pond. While I’m there I may have a coffee and take some photos as I gather creativity to process into poetry. Or I may stay at home and potter around, pretending to be active.
I have sorted a few books out, with the intention of giving some away, but have merely redistributed most of them. There are about 50 piled up in the living room and ten in a bag to go. When I started I had hoped it would be the other way round. I have set myself a target of getting rid of around 50 items a week as part of the moving process. I am going to have to up my game. I am not paying to move thousands of things to a new location so they can clutter up my life again.
Trinity Bridge, Crowland. The streams have dried up but the bridge still stands.
Photos are from Crowland. We haven’t visited for a while.
Good luck with the decluttering.
It’s not going well . . .:-)
Sorry! I can certainly identify. You should see our basement. Clutter doesn’t begin to describe it.
🙂
I’m a big fan of Murder she wrote reruns, but I prefer the Cabot Cove ones. I love the thought of all those murders in a small Maine town…very Miss Marple
A bit like Morse in the slaughterhouse that is Oxford. Some towns seem very dangerous . . .
Though I’ve seen a bunch of fictional murders at Oxbridge….so maybe….
🙂 have you seen any of the Mark Williams Father Brown stories or the Agatha Raisin stories – the Cotswolds look nice but seem to be very dangerous place to live.
It’s pretty much all over England isn’t it? Just the cozy murder capital of the world…
We do have a fine record of murderous mayhem, though the methods are getting less ingenious. Agatha Christie trained as a pharmacist in the war and was very sound on rare poisons . . .
Yeah. Now the burdens are somewhat generic….i miss the good old days…
I am going to have to think of some ingenious murders and see if any books develop.
Yes!! I’ll beta read!
It is a retirement project, but if I have no work I have no excuses . . . 🙂
😉
🙂
With the books try turning over a new leaf
A pun, and good advice. Of course, when I have emptied the shelves in the front bedroom I have the quandry of whether or not to take the shelves and racking down to use in the new house . . .
IKEA Billy bookcases are to be recommended
Yes, the faithful Billy. I have been thinking of IKEA for the last few weeks.
Books–me too as far as aspiration and the circular nature of passing them around from one part of the house to others goes. The feng shui folks say to move 27 things in a day to get some momentum going. Maybe shuffling books back and forth from their original place could count as that–
27 sounds good – enough to be doable without being crippling. I will try for 27 and see what happens.
Good luck. I have even moved things back and forth just to get the oomph started, and it can work. I love that they say to ‘move it’, and yet NOT ‘move it out of the house’ or other onerous task.
It has moved. Now it must move out of the house. I have one carrier bag of books and less than a matchbox of stuff to actually throw out. Wush me luck . . .
I hate going through books! I find it so difficult to get rid of them. Richard on the other hand is very good at it and has got rid of most of his fiction and quite a lot of non-fiction. I do go through the ones he discards and take back a couple or three that look interesting! He prefers reading fiction in e-book form on his tablet and doesn’t buy himself books anymore. He does like to be given old railway tomes for Christmas and birthdays and treasures them, but of course those books are different.
Yes, different books for different things. I do read fiction on Kindle, but hate paying more than 99p for a book I don’t really own. I have quite a few non-fiction on Kindle too, but still find myself reverting to type and buying paper copies from Amazon.
Throwing or giving away books is a very difficult thing to accomplish. It is like discarding a piece of yourself.
Yes, and that is the basis if my problem with clutter and decluttering. I must be hard. 🙂
Paring down to move is an excellent plan, Simon.
If I ever had the chance to live my life again, which I won’t, I would avoid clutter like the plague. But I didn’t, and now I must waste time decluttering.
Ice storm here took down Internet and phone yesterday afternoon until tonight
No Internet? I shudder. Over the years I have come to think of it as essential. 🙂
I must give you this link https://paolsoren.wordpress.com/2020/03/08/the-fens-part-three-croyland-abbey/
I visited Crowland four years ago. It was quite a dramatic place but if you go to the link you will see what I thought.
I think you went one better than me – I don’t think, despite passing by many times, I have actually been in the church.