Thursday 5 May 2011

Shedheap Challenge – Or How Not to Move Your Shed

I have decided to move the shed. Mostly because it is spoiling my view of the mountain. The mountain is much prettier than the shed and it doesn’t leak like the shed does. There are a number of problems involved. It isn’t a little shed, measuring about 3m x 10m, it is in fact a large shed. It was built sometime in pre-history of a solid wooden construction. It has been re-roofed in the not so distant past in an insubstantial plastic sort of way.

This isn’t the big problem. The big problem is all the stuff in the shed. What do I do with all the precious junk I have accumulated in the last 20 years? Items like surf boards, doors, desks, chairs, a fitted kitchen, thousands of tins of paint, another thousand tiles of no matching genre, plant pots, garden tools, a large assortment of bits of wood, sixty double glazing units that got mis-ordered when the house was re-glazed, and a number of wasps’ nests.

I’m a big fan of Scrapheap Challenge so I’m going to do Shedheap Challenge. The challenge is to make a new shed using only the items stored in the old shed in order that I might empty the old shed to make a new shed to store all the items in the shed.

Sunday 1 May 2011

How Not to Become a Recluse

I’ve been training to be a recluse. Which may be why no one has heard from me in such a long time. Or it could be the weather.

Being a recluse is considerably more difficult than I’d anticipated. Hence the training. The actual word recluse is derived from the Latin ‘recludere, which means "shut up"’. I read this on Wikipedia. The first problem becomes fairly obvious. This shutting up lark, although fine as far as it goes in terms of blogs, is quite tricky when it comes to shopping, asking neighbours to feed cats and answering difficult questions posed by cats. I’m hoping that talking to oneself, inanimate objects or foodstuff doesn’t count.

Having failed to find a proper school for potential recluses (or is that recluii?) or even a decent online resource I have been left with having to invent the training for myself.

I understand that a good recluse will try and stay away from people.

On Wednesday I had to go to work so I encountered a number of people. I was suitably grumpy and refused offers of coffee, chats about unpaid invoices and any further unpaid invoices. Funny how no one ever wants to chat about the invoices you’ve actually paid, which, at any given time must considerably outnumber the unpaid ones. I put this down to an unhealthy interest in current affairs.

On Thursday I managed to speak only to 2 cats, 6 plants, a hummus sandwich (only to mention how gorgeous it was), and my boyfriend. I’d like to point out here, that Dave, the boyfriend (we like to call the over 55s boys these days in order to appear younger and more girlish oneself) is also a recluse or at least a potential recluse with some outstanding exceptions we won’t go into. This was my best day this week.

On Friday I was all set to talk only to 2 cats, an undefined number of plants and probably a bowl of pasta when someone rang. I answered the phone, essentially breaking the first rule of reclusive-in-training but not having got over the first rule of motherhood and assuming that if the phone rings it’s a daughter with some very important crisis. It was neither. That was the earlier call that I’m not mentioning because it’s not relevant. It was bestest friend from school. Telling me that an old chum from school days was now Paul McCartney and there was a gig on in a park in Bath. I encountered over 2000 people. This has put my training back by approximately 743 years. But one of them was Paul McCartney and I always fancied him. However since he’s well out of my league training starts in earnest again tomorrow: 2 cats, an undefined number of plants and an intimate tête-à-tête with a particularly nutty muesli.