Tidy

I've been having a bit of a clear-out this week, partly in despair at the enormous tottering mountains of magazines, paperwork and books in every corner of the house, but mostly in a desperate effort to make the annual pre-Christmas house-cleaning less arduous in a few weeks.

It started more or less by accident yesterday, when I was sorting out laundry. I ought to draw a critical path analysis diagram to illustrate the path of progress I took.

Step 1:  Sort out a load of laundry and put it in the washing machine.  Decide to tidy up my Heap of Shame in the corner.

Step 2:  Pick up assorted items of clothing on the floor, sort through and either hang up or place in laundry basket.  Stand back and admire empty spot where Heap of Shame previously lived.  Decide to hoover the bedroom.

Step 3:  Fetch hoover, realise that Mr WithaY's Heap of Shame threatens to overwhelm his half of the bedroom.  Suggest* he sorts it out.

Step 4:  Decide to clean window frames of black filth and mould while he sorts out the Heap.   Fetch cleaning wipes from the bathroom.  Clean bathroom sink, bath and shower with cleaning wipes, as they're all a bit grubby now you look at them.

Step 5:  Return to bedroom.  Clean all black filth from window frames.  Decide to dust window ledges, as they are grey and fluffy rather than white and shiny.

Step 6:  Fetch duster from study.  Find furniture polish cleaning wipes in box with duster.  Realise desk is very grubby.  Clean with furniture polish wipes.  Move dressmakers form out of study onto landing to be put back in the loft later.

Step 7:  Mr WithaY, taking a break from sorting his Heap, scrambles up into the loft to put the dressmakers form away.  Both stand back and admire the empty spot in the study where it used to be.

Step 8:    Return to bedroom.  Dust window ledges.  Realise every other flat surface in the bedroom is also grey and fluffy. Dust everything else.  Raise huge clouds of dust.  Re-dust window ledges as a result.  Finally, with Mr WithaY's Heap of Shame cleared, hoover the bedroom floor.

Step 9:  Hoover the landing, study, spare bedroom (in a cursory manner, then shut the door on it), and finally the bathroom.  Oh, and then the top half of the stairs.

As you see, this endless displacement activity type of cleaning goes on in an indefinite loop, until you run out of cleaning wipes or the hoover needs emptying.  In this example, it ended with Mr WithaY making us a cup of tea, thus cunningly breaking the cycle.

This morning I was planning to get all the ironing done. My ironing routine is simple, but effective.  I put the TV in the bedroom on, find something fairly unchallenging to watch (Frasier, Star Trek, Big Bang Theory, as examples) and then stand there for an hour or two, turning a basket full of scrumpled tatty-looking rags into several neat piles of pressed folded clothes.  It's deeply satisfying, in a low-grade way.

I was thwarted by the weather.  (First world problems klaxon here.)

The satellite link to the upstairs TV is badly affected by the weather. If it rains, even a little bit, the signal breaks up and the programme becomes unwatchable.  Clearly, I cannot be expected to iron without the amusing exploits of American actors to keep me occupied, so I have to put the iron back down with an exasperated sigh, and go and do something else.  And here we are.

One thing I could do is go and sort out Mr WithaY's dressing table.  I was browsing through a gift catalogue which arrived with a weekend newspaper, trying to find something that wasn't related to golf or coffee** and I spotted a Gentleman's Tidy.  Something like this, but made in faux leather rather than wood.

I seriously considered ordering it as a Christmas present, and then I thought a bit harder about what tends to occupy Mr WithaY's dressing table.

Among the usual litter of aftershave bottles, toiletries, cufflink boxes and a clothes brush, yesterday there were:

Several pairs of clean pants, neatly folded and waiting to be put away in a drawer
A plastic fork
A huge heap of old receipts and scraps of paper, none of them necessary for tax purposes
A coin sorter (almost empty)
Several coins
String
Cord (not the same as string)
A book about neolithic cooking
Hazelnuts, foraged and then forgotten about, in the manner of an absent-minded squirrel

I don't think there is a Gentleman's Tidy in existence which is designed to cope with that little lot.

Back to the drawing board.

Also, how do they sort out their laundry on Star Trek, eh?  I've seen evidence of a bar, a barber and beauty parlour, several places to eat, even showers, but never any laundry facilities.  I like to imagine that deep in the bowels of the Starship Enterprise is a dry-cleaners, manned by a grouchy Ferengi.








*Shout down stairs "Can you please come and move all your clothes, it's a pigsty up here."

**Slim pickings, I can tell you.

Showcase

I thought I'd use a blog post or two to share some of my friends' amazing skills and talents with the wider world.

Not the sort of amazing talents that leave everyone else in the room hooting with laughter, or feeling a bit queasy, or calling an ambulance, though.  No, no no.  Although there's probably a few blog posts right there, come to think of it.

These are constructive and marketable talents, as opposed to the sort that get you a recurring slot on Rude Tube or some low-budget reality TV programme.

Part of the reason for this is because yesterday I had an Adventure.  I went to the Art in Action show - all the way to Oxford! - all on my own.  And I managed to get there and back without going via Watford Gap services.  Yay me.

A mate of mine was exhibiting there, so I had a proper reason to visit, but I am really glad I went anyway, there was so much to see.  Anyway, wandering round looking at all the various artists got me thinking about the people I know who make great stuff, and I thought I'd share some of them on here.

So, first up, my mate who I went to see at the show.  He's called Bruce Aitken, and he makes clocks.  Rather amazing ones.  I have taken a few photos of his work, but look at the ones on his website too. 

Gorgeous.

There was a chap there doing some blacksmithing, so I watched him...um...perform for a bit.  I worked out that I know at least four blacksmiths.  Hello Ian, Rick, Sherman and Chris!

Madregal Designs.  If you need any fancy ironwork doing, swing by this place and see what they can do for you. 

Anvil Art.  If you prefer, go here and take a look.

Bowstock.  If you need any leather working doing for you, or indeed, some hard-to-find leatherworking supplies, check out Steve's site here. 

TymeAgain.  If you need some well-made historical toys, go here.  Their toys are just fab.  And they are lovely people to boot. 

Delingpole Studio.  Need some fancy artwork doing?  Go and look at Richard's website here. 

The Full Motley.  Having a party?  Get a band! In fact, get this band! 

I hope, in due course, to add my own little website to the list, but until I work out what I can make, and whether anyone else wants to buy it, it's staying in my head.

Other news:  We continue with the great house clearance task, but it is improving.  Mr WithaY has cleared out the shed this afternoon, moving various boxes hither and thither, and as a result there is far less junk in the kitchen. 

Several of the bookcases have been found new homes, and most rooms no longer look like they belong in Steptoe's house.  Relief all round.

To celebrate the (mostly) back to normal kitchen, I have been domestic goddessing  in it.  I made redcurrant jelly with about one third garden redcurrants, two thirds supermarket redcurrants, and it has turned out very well. 

Today I made grape jelly.  That was less successful, but hey, I had some grapes in the fridge and I was in a jellying frame of mind.  I also made a lemon drizzle cake.

Note to cooks:  When you make a lemon drizzle cake, pour the sticky lemon juice and sugar mixture over the top of the cake AFTER you do the two plates thing to invert it and get it out of the tin. Otherwise, the top of the cake stickes to the plate, leaving a sorry mess.

Gah.

Craft WIN

To take away the shame and chagrin of The Terrible Tie-Dye Incident, I finished making my new notice board today.

Ta- daaa:

It began life as a skanky old cork pinboard.

Ugh.  Please note the faded patches where it's been hanging in my study for SO LONG. 

I used wadding, fabric, ribbons and buttons, cunningly held in place with a combination of terrifyingly sticky spray glue, staples and prolific (and fluent) swearing to create a new thing of beauty from the ashes of the old. 

Aren't we posh?  Fruit on the sideboard and nobody ill. 

I did iron the fabric before I stapled it in place.  This is just to give the general idea. 

If you look closely, you may notice that the diamonds are not all exactly the same size.  If that sort of thing matters to you, sorry.  I measured by eye; next time I make one I shall use a tape measure I think.
The worst part was hand sewing all the buttons on at each intersection of the ribbon.  I think there were about 40 in total, and it took fucking hours.  HOURS.    Next time I might use a staplegun to hold the ribbon in place, and then carefully (and lazily) glue the buttons on to disguise the staples. 

So now I have a rather lovely fabric notice board, on which the Village Fete PRIZE certificate from Belgian Waffle sits in pride of place, among the Sherlock Holmes film cards and foreign receipts. 

The shark postcard is from Mr WithaY's Great White Shark tagging expedition to Mexico a couple of years ago.  He went away for two weeks to poke huge sharks with a stick.  Impressively, he also came back again. 

Now I  feel less artistically inept.  Plus it makes my study feel more organised, which is encouraging. 

Time for a celebratory cup of tea, I think.

Craft FAIL

Remember I was banging on about how unsuccessful that tie-dye experiment was?  And how ghastly the bedding looked after I'd finished dicking about with it?

I wasn't kidding.

You can just about make out the unpleasant bruise-like quality of the colour mix.  Please note the enhancing effect of the sickly yellow circles.

Mmm.  Sweet dreams.  Do the yellow circles look like unfortunate stains to you?  They do to me. 

Is that a patch of paler green in the top right hand corner?  Why yes, I believe it is.  What a delicious colour contrast.

Perhaps the pillowcases will look a bit better.

Or perhaps they won't.

The whole lot was discreetly wrapped in a bag and placed in the village clothing and fabric recycling bin while nobody was about. 

I hope that someone, somewhere gets some use from them, although frankly I can imagine frozen Third World rough-sleeping beggars turning up their noses at the whole sorry mess.

Disjointed

So, long time no see.  To be honest, it's all been a bit too stressful and depressing here, so I haven't felt much like writing anything.

I'm cold. And tired. And grumpy. And a bit sad because Mr WithaY has headed off to live on a boat in the Red Sea for a week, for more shark-tagging high jinks.  He's back at the end of next week and I am really looking forward to it.  The house feels too big.  And the cold I had last week that seemed to fizzle out has fizzled back in, so I am snotty as well.  Nice. 

Anyway.  It occurred to me the other day that the funky visitor counter that I was all excited about is merely recording the number of times this blog is accessed from that particular country. So arse. I might only have 4 readers in the UK, but they check back often.

Thanks to the lovely people who responded to tell me where they at, though. The Canadians, especially. Aren't you all polite?

Today I have mostly been cleaning up, as Kevin the Decorator has finished.  The hall, landing and stairs look lovely.  The walls and celing are pale cream  (yes, alright, magnolia) and the woodwork and doors are all white.  The loft hatch, which has been a grubby stripped wood eyesore for 8 years is now a thing of beauty.  I put the pictures back up yesterday, and that was nice.  Moving them all round a bit means you look at them as you go up and down the stairs, they look different somehow.  Trouble with all the decorating is that everything in the house is dusted with very fine, well, dust. 

And, talk of the devil, he just came to drop off the house key and his invoice.  Money well spent I think.

I'm off to see Father-in-Law WithaY, who will be fretting about shark attacks. It's a rock and roll lifestyle I lead here.

It's getting better

So, how is everyone? Things here have been quiet, as you might expect.

Mr WithaY is remarkably cheerful today, which is a relief. He spent much of yesterday being violently sick, I suspect from the antibiotics he is on. Today, though, much less sicky, and consequently much more cheerful.

I worked at home yesterday as I was anxious about leaving Mr WithaY on his own while he felt so bad, but I will head into London tomorrow as he seems to be doing better. Our lovely neighbours have been calling in now and again to make sure he's ok, which has made us both feel much better too.

I took him to the local hospital to get his dressings changed today, and apparently things are healing up well. It will be interesting to see how his middle finger heals up as the bone wasn't damaged, but a big chunk was lost.

Do fingers regenerate? If there is a molecular biologist in the house, please do let me know.

Other news: Before all the alarms and excursions on Saturday I made a start clearing out my wardrobe, piling things in a heap on the floor. My rules for heap-addage were as follows:

Anything I haven't worn at all in 12 months.

Anything that I do wear but which is horrible and faded and shabby, like half a dozen cotton v-neck t-shirts from Long Tall Sally that are all pale and tired and washed out*.

Anything that I put on and then take off again immediately because I think it makes me look fat**.

Anything that I bought from a catalogue because it was a bargain, and then realised was a stupid mistake. For example, oddly-cut knitted tops from Next that looked interesting in the picture but which display bra straps and/or bellybutton at inopportune moments.

Anything I used to wear "just for the gym" and nowhere else. I don't go to the gym any more and a collection of decrepit saggy t-shirts is not ever going to make me feel good about myself.

Anything that I have worn holes in, even if I still love it.

Anything with unshiftable paint stains from when we decorated the house years ago, that I have kept "just for decorating in".

It made for a very big heap.

About half of it went into the bin, and it really, really hurts to throw away clothes, even when they are worn out and shabby and full of holes. The remainder, some brand new (well, never worn, at least) went into a big bag and got dropped off at the charity shop on the way home from the hospital.

And now I feel much better for it.




*A bit like I am today

**I know I am fat, but I like to pretend I'm not

Summer

Is here. It's official. I did all the washing at the weekend and it was all dry by the end of Sunday evening. Marvellous.

Domestic bliss is a big heap of clean, air-dried towels. Not that I have any option to the traditional green drying approach, not having a tumble dryer.

I like to tell people it's because I disapprove of their impact on the environment but really it's because I can't fit one in the kitchen. I'd far rather be perceived as an idealistic eco-warrior than a whiny middle-aged woman who wants a bigger kitchen*.

On second thoughts, my eco-warrior credentials are rather disastrously impaired by the large 4-by-4 I drive. So bollocks to that, then.

Hey, I use my acoustic guitar sometimes. That must count for something in the grand scheme of energy-saving things.

Other news: I bought a copy of the film "Bullshot" a couple of weeks ago. It came out in the early 1980s, possibly 1983, and went nowhere at the cinema. It's an affectionate spoof of the Bulldog Drummond genre, with an excellent British cast featuring several comedians (Mel Smith and Billy Connolly for example). There were a few films like that around then. Billy Connolly was in "Water" at about the same time I think.

Anyway, we had a copy of it on video, and that video had long since worn out. We looked for it on DVD for years, but no joy. Until....ta-daaaa! Amazon had it in stock. Yay! I ordered a copy, it arrived, we were delighted.

Until we watched it, that is.

In a concession to modernity, they'd changed the format to Widescreen (no idea what the ratio/aspect thingy is, sorry). Rather than stretch the fim sideways to make it fit, they'd lopped the top and bottom off it. This meant that for many scenes, the actors' faces were missing off the top of the screen. Fuckwits.

It was still an enjoyable film, but it was irritating.

I'm no expert but I would think twice about chopping the ends off something to make it fit before checking that it wouldn't ruin whatever it was I was chopping. Gah.

Also. Domestic goddess status creeps ever closer. I borrowed a steam cleaner from my Youngest Sis and had a go at doing the tiles in the shower. Not terribly effective, but that might have been my technique. And it got rust stains off the limestone floor tiles in the bathroom.

However, I would suggest to anyone who is remotely interested that a day when it hits 30 degrees outside is probably not the wisest day to start steam cleaning the house.

Back at work today, catching up after a week out of the office. Nice to see everyone, and even nicer that the weather has stayed fine. Makes the world of difference.

*Note to any readers who've been to my house: Yes, yes, I know I have a feckin' huge kitchen. Sssssh. Don't spoil it for the others.