Tag Archives: clutter

Carrot & Ginger Soup

Prestige Pans to Thunderbird Wine

12 Replies

Julia has gone to the gym. It is the final day she will be able to use her membership and she has decided to treat herself to a run and a sauna. I have been left at home with the washing up and the preparation of lunch. So far I have researched an article, done most of the washing up, thought about soup and started to write a blog.  It’s close to the plan she had in mind for me, but probably not close enough. However, compared to doing a couple of miles on a treadmill followed by lightly boiling myself, I prefer my morning to hers.

Over the next few weeks we are expecting several more deliveries as we squander our pensions on comfort, including a second new bed, a new freezer and various other fripperies.

vegetable Soup

Meanwhile, there is little to say. We are gradually packing 35 years of memories/clutter and dispersing it to bins, charity shops and (mainly) to the new house. There is going to be another sorting when we get there. I have already started going through my books again and the ktchen equipment is building up. My pans are nearly 50 years old. They are Prestige copper-bottomed pans but the years have made their mark and we were recently offered a newer, similar set. Then we were offered three more pans. I accepted one lot, not knowing that Julia had accepted the others. The same goes for many things – we have accumulated things over the years, some of which were stored upstairs or in the garage. It’s hard to turn things down. We have six corkscrews now we have sorted them all out.  Nobody needs more than three (one to use, one as a spare and one for the picnic basket).

In fact, nobody needs corkscrews anyway, as a lot of wine seems to come with screw tops. It’s one more sign of falling standards. There was a time when only Buckfast and Thunderbird came with screw tops and they were not the choice of the sophisticated social drinker.

And there you go – memories. I started with clutter and moved ont to my mis-spent youth. Now, before Julia arrives, I’d better get on with doing something useful and terminates my mis-spent dotage.

Carrot & Ginger Soup

Carrot & Ginger Soup

Photos feature pans. It’s the best I could do.

Some thoughts on Rammle

11 Replies

I just had to edit a post from a few days ago. I’d written 2012 instead of 2021. I know I leave typos in, but I now wonder if I’ve put some wrong dates in. If I have, nobody has mentioned it.

A couple of months ago, I had a move round in the dining room. In looking for some things I disturbed a neat pile of boxes on my table (and a few others that were carefully stacked next to my typing table. They were tidy, I promise you. I churned things round, as I was in a hurry, and made a promise to myself I would tidy it next day. I didn’t get round to it. But I have noticed that the mess has grown and spread. It now looks like a subterranean volcano of rammle has built up under the house before venting itself in my dining room. It’s like Narnia in reverse.

I had to look rammle up. I use it in speech but you rarely see it in writing as it’s a dialect word and not much used by the university educated prats who write most of our news. Look up rammel and you get a German page followed by a British politician, then Erwin Rommel. Look up rammle and it asks you if you meant ramble. I didn’t.

Working on the knife sharpening theory I am now going to work on the rubbish pile and sort it out over the rest of the week (interspersing it with my similarly paced writing of my presentation for next Monday).

Service records show that the recipient of these medals (known as a 1914-15 trio and Italian Bronze Medal of Military Valour didn’t go to Italy during the war, just France. This wasn’t uncommon, as the alllies used to send batches of medals to each other for award to troops, almost as a superior sort of souvenir. I’m not sure what he did to merit a medal, but his records also show that he was admitted to hospital with  VD just days after reaching France. I suspect his embarkation leave had been spent in the traditional way and had come home to roost.

The medals in the header photo belonged to Superintendent Tacey of the City of Nottingham police. His service records indicate rapid promotion and a mention in despatches for his hard work during the war. He did go to Italy for a while. They will both be featured in my presentation on Monday. Not long now . . .

Good Intentions and Old Photos

34 Replies

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.

Here’s the answer. What is the question?

20 Replies

Two pairs of cheap reading glasses – both broken.

Eight pens.

One pencil.

Two pairs of hairdresser’s scissors.

A selection of sticking plasters.

A wedding anniversary card from Julia with cute teddy bears on it.

The Card

The Card

Ninety three pence in 10s, 5s, 2s and 1s.

A pair of binoculars, approximately 25 years old.

A key chain with a key on it. It belongs to a briefcase I don’t remember using for thirty years.

A tub of damp chewing gum pieces.

A spray bottle of windscreen de-icer.

An assortment of painkillers and indigestion pills.

Two Euros and fifty cents.

Garage bills.

Lots of scrappy bits of paper. Some with notes and ideas on them. Some with unreadable scrawl on them.

A jeweller’s eyeglass on a neck cord. I wondered what I’d done with that.

An Order of Service for my cousin’s funeral.

I could probably turn this into a poem.

But the answer is…

…do you recall the slight car accident I had last year, the one where they had to take it away and touch up a wheel arch? Well, I had to empty the glove compartment and door pockets of the car. I did so, put it all in a shopping bag, added it to the pile of chaos in the house and forgot about it.

That list is the contents of the shopping bag I just found.

It was, I admit, an unfair question,

Even I didn’t know the answer until I got to the de-icer.

There will be more later, but I’m leading in gently. It has been one of those days and I’m going to sit with Julia, who just arrived home, and have a cup of tea,

 

Clutter and Anticlutter

19 Replies

You may well be familiar with the concept of matter and antimatter. Or you may not. If you are, you don’t need me to explain it again. If you aren’t, I suggest that you consult Wikipedia or Dr Who, which is where most of my scientific knowledge comes from.

All I know is that when the two meet, the consequences are not good.

Clutter and anticlutter are slightly different. When the two meet there is no mystery of quantum physics or annihilation. There is merely a sigh, an old-fashioned look and a patient explanation.

You see, clutter is the undesirable accumulation of a husband. Anticlutter is the vital stock of craft supplies belonging to his wife. Things like paper straws, cardboard oddments and the fleeces of Jacobs sheep are essentials. Ordnance Survey maps from the 1950s, military cap badges and comic postcards are mere detritus.

When the two meet anticlutter survives, or even expands: only the clutter is annihilated. And possibly the husband, if he objects.

That, at least, is how Julia explains it.

 

Things I Think About in the Car (Part 1)

23 Replies

Just one trip to the other side of town to take Julia to work has given me more than enough subjects to fill a blog for a week.

One is obviously the morality of taking the car to work when we have a good bus service in Nottingham, and trams that run close to where she wants to be.

Two is the fact that she had four bags with her. Two contain things she is removing from the house. One is phone, sandwiches and such. The fourth is stationery and gym gear. Would she take four bags if she had to use the bus? Discuss.

Three – why do women need a bag to carry the things that go in my pockets? Even in summer I can manage, with a jacket in winter I have a pocket surplus.

Four – decluttering.

Five – decluttering, with special reference to the two bags she has removed today. One only arrived yesterday, the other last Saturday, so my view is that they represent clutter rather than declutter, particularly as most of the Saturday stuff is still here.

Six – the theory of two steps forward and one step back,  and how it applies to our decluttering policy.

Seven – differential decluttering. Her stuff is essential (I am told) but mine is fit for the skip.

Eight – do I need treatment for my obsession with clutter?

Nine – design of roads, junctions, traffic lights, bus lanes, cycle lanes and such stuff.

Ten, with reference to Nine, is all this done to make driving so hard we use buses?

Eleven – what is actually in the bus drivers’ test – bullying, cutting corners, pulling off at short notice, providing cyclists with near death experiences? (This question was asked early in the journey, but asked again as I tried to change lanes with a bus bearing down on me.)

Twelve – should I have bought one of those flats by Trent Bridge when I first moved to Nottingham?

Thirteen – would we have had a family if we had a flat there?

Fourteen – if we had a flat, and a family, and had moved, would we have less clutter?

Fifteen – am I obsessed with clutter?

Sixteen – if I had realised that you only had to do five years in the French Foreign Legion would this have altered my attitude towards parenthood?

That covers the journey to work and the first few hundred yards of the journey back. For the second part, which is just as interesting as the first, please call back in a later.

 

 

 

Zen and the Art of Procrastination

14 Replies

It’s time to start sorting out my life. How many times have you heard that? I know I’ve said it several times.

As things stand, I’m not reading books, I’m not reading blogs and I’m not getting enough decluttering done. That’s not to say that I’m idling my time away, I’m still writing, I’m still cooking (in a determondly average sort of way) and I’m spending time on ebay.

I’m happy with the writing time but the time on ebay needs decreasing. Originally I was looking at it with a view to learning current prices and looking at starting to sell on ebay again. It hasn’t quite worked like that and I’m back, once again, to collecting.

The intention was actually to clear the house and live a life of zen simplicity interspersed with the holidays we’ve not had over the years.

It has struck me recently, as I’ve sat cogitating my hospital experience and the nature of mortality, that I’m on the downward leg of the journey to three score years and ten. I’m 60 next birthday (as I was recently reminded), and this isn’t a two way street.

I’m also mindful that health problems prevented my parents carrying out their retirement plans. They still had a long and happy retirement, but it wasn’t the one they had planned. In fact Dad is still with us and still enjoying himself. However, he would probably be enjoying himself more if things had gone to plan.

So there you are, a slice of philosophical misery. Not very cheerful but something I wanted to talk about for some time as it’s important, and I’m interested if anyone has any views.

I’ve been meaning to write it for some time but I never get round to it.

A Start to Decluttering

21 Replies

No, not the books!

 

I decided it was time to get rid of some clothes.

There were three shirts that don’t fit. I’d been hanging onto them for years, meaning to get on with the diet. There was also one that, with hindsight, had been an error of judgement. Beige with alternating shiny and matt stripes. I’m not yet ready for two-tone beige.

Two pairs  of trousers. See diet comments above.

Finally I shoved some ten-year-old vests in a bag marked “For Rags”. They are still quite wearable, but as I find myself exposing my underwear to hospital staff more regularly I’ve decided to upgrade.

It was a toss up between that or  cutting them up and composting them (they are 100% cotton so would compost down nicely) but laziness won.

In case you are wondering – yes. Cotton underwear, wool socks and leather/cotton gardening gloves have all gone through my compost bins, never to be seen again.

The theory is that by getting rid of clutter I’m going to have a better life.

 

The picture shows Julia doing the complicated bit at the clothing bank while I  sit in the car. You probably guessed that from the wing mirror.