I’ve been making a Google ipage. In the spirit of Just Fucking Sort It September. The two events may seem unrelated. It may appear that an ordinary Google homepage is already quite tidy, sorted and generally acceptable. The excitement of occasionally having the bods at Google add a few little festive seasonal thingys might seem sufficient. But this wasn’t the point. The point was my ‘Things To Do’ list.
I have always had an endearing fondness for a ‘Things To Do’ list. This is mostly because I always seem to have a lot of Things To Do but my memory seems incapable of remembering more than three things at a time. Thus, if my ‘Things To Do’ list comprises of:
Wash Kitchen Floor
Write Novel
Start Strange and Obscure New Business Involving Thailand Bhats
and
Pick Lawyer Up From School
things can go seriously awry. In my eargerness to do the things to do on the list I may spend over a year writing a novel and starting a strange and obscure new business involving Thailand bhats and the poor Lawyer waits at the school gates and essentially starves to death.
So, to my great joy I discovered that one can put a ‘Things To Do’ list on a Google ipage. So every time I go on the internet my list appears, there, before my eyes, in front of my face and generally writ large in a comfortingly inescapable manner. Starvation of my loved ones no longer is an issue.
So, I have been making a Google ipage. This is what happened:
I put up a ‘Things To Do’ list. Good. Then I’m offered more. More sounds good. Perhaps with even more than a ‘Things To Do’ list my life will be even more fucking sorted. Hooray. There isn’t just more, there is lots more. How exciting. So I choose –
A fortune cookie – handy for predicting the future and doubles as a starvation prevention.
A clock – useful in case the billion other clocks I’m surrounded by suddenly implode.
A sticky note – in case my ‘Things To Do’ list is not sufficiently yellow or sticky.
A currency converter – you never know when you might need the price of a loaf a bread in Thailand Bhats.
Freebie o’the day – an obvious essential for the impoverished single mother, today I can get free shampoo, a poster of Eminem and 15,000 kitchen-tested recipes. How fine is that?
A water tracker – which I’d hoped was going to tell me about the leaks in the shed roof, or maybe why the upstairs tank was so determined to store its water downstairs. Disappointingly it was to keep track of how many glasses of water I’d drunk today. I already have a gadget for that called a bladder.
A Shakespearian insulter – today’s insult is ‘Thou bootless dizzy-eyed malcontent!’ Have already used that a number of times, mostly to address the leaking shed.
A Google technology newsfeed – mostly because I felt sorry for it because it had less than 1000 useres.
Chat in Chinese – well it could be useful.
A spider – just to keep all the ones in the house company.
A new body – don’t need to tell you what that’s for.
A hunky man – ok, desperation has hit in a serious way.
So, my ipage was looking pretty damn exhilarating. What with insulting translations in Chinese, hunky men playing in Shakespearian with my new body, and sticky notes telling my fortune in Thailand Bhats I discovered that my ‘Things To Do’ list was really quite unimportant. I deleted it with a jolly cry of ‘Hence rotten thing! Or I shall shake thy bones out of thy garments.’
Wednesday, 19 September 2007
Monday, 17 September 2007
How Not to Mend the Shed – Or the French Vine Conspiracy
It rained today. Not much, but enough. Enough to make the shed roof leak. As you may recall I have just put my precious junk into (or rather back into) the shed. For safekeeping. Against the elements. Only the elements are also putting themselves into the shed. Possibly for safekeeping, or maybe for fun, but I suspect a certain amount of malicious intent. Because frankly, the places where the elements have discovered to get in are pretty small and obscure. I feel that the elements have probably gone to a lot of trouble to discover these small cracks and orifices. And if penetrating my shed was just for fun, then why the hours of dedicated research? Ipso facto, malicious intent. A prejudice against soon-to-be impoverished single mothers.
However, in the spirit of Just Fucking Sort It September I was undaunted. Elements pshaw! I declared. I will not let a few malicious elements defeat my cunning plan of making millions out of dismantled, slightly rotten ex-flat-packed cheap furniture. So I set to to mend the shed. This is what happened:
Firstly I assessed the damage by carefully examining puddles and small drippy bits on the floor and sides of the shed. I traced the aforementioned puddles and small drippy bits to their associated holes in the roof and walls. This was most revealing. Because there appeared to be an escaped vineyard attempting to enter the shed along with the elements. Could it be that most of the crops of middle France were also prejudiced against soon-to-be impoverished single mothers? It appeared so. This smacked of a conspiracy.
Undaunted I decided to eliminate the escaped crops of middle France. Hours later, stained with mouldy grape juice and feeling slightly sticky I surveyed my work. A pile the size of your traditional EU wine lake of mouldy grapes, vicious vines and unknowable tendrils adorned not only my precious slightly rotten ex-flat-packed cheap furniture, but the exterior of the shed, the rest of the garden and most of the outskirts of Cardiff.
‘Ha!’ I declared to the French escapee. ‘That showed you!’ The pile grinned knowingly. It had started raining again. The elements had taken on a new vigour. A vigour that only elements can achieve when they discover that not only that they can enter a woman’s shed through previous cracks and orifices, but that now, due to the lack of most of the crops of middle France, the cracks and orifices were larger and more welcoming than they were before I had started welding my trusty loppers.
‘Ha!’ declared the conspiratorial elements. ‘Fucking Sorted.’
However, in the spirit of Just Fucking Sort It September I was undaunted. Elements pshaw! I declared. I will not let a few malicious elements defeat my cunning plan of making millions out of dismantled, slightly rotten ex-flat-packed cheap furniture. So I set to to mend the shed. This is what happened:
Firstly I assessed the damage by carefully examining puddles and small drippy bits on the floor and sides of the shed. I traced the aforementioned puddles and small drippy bits to their associated holes in the roof and walls. This was most revealing. Because there appeared to be an escaped vineyard attempting to enter the shed along with the elements. Could it be that most of the crops of middle France were also prejudiced against soon-to-be impoverished single mothers? It appeared so. This smacked of a conspiracy.
Undaunted I decided to eliminate the escaped crops of middle France. Hours later, stained with mouldy grape juice and feeling slightly sticky I surveyed my work. A pile the size of your traditional EU wine lake of mouldy grapes, vicious vines and unknowable tendrils adorned not only my precious slightly rotten ex-flat-packed cheap furniture, but the exterior of the shed, the rest of the garden and most of the outskirts of Cardiff.
‘Ha!’ I declared to the French escapee. ‘That showed you!’ The pile grinned knowingly. It had started raining again. The elements had taken on a new vigour. A vigour that only elements can achieve when they discover that not only that they can enter a woman’s shed through previous cracks and orifices, but that now, due to the lack of most of the crops of middle France, the cracks and orifices were larger and more welcoming than they were before I had started welding my trusty loppers.
‘Ha!’ declared the conspiratorial elements. ‘Fucking Sorted.’
Friday, 14 September 2007
How Not to Save Oneself from Pecuniary Disadvantage
The ‘Just Fucking Sort It September’ story continues. Because I’m still sorting. Or trying to sort. I’m certainly not, much to my profound disappointment, fucking. And according to various reliable sources (the internet, the small thingy on the bottom of my computer screen, and the feeling in my bones, spleen and unsightly spot on my forehead just below the hairline that luckily I can cover it up) it is still September.
There are some things that are easier to sort than others. For example I have just completed a large and appealingly categorised database of all the authors in the Leaf Anthologies for our spanking new website (not literally spanking obviously, and not up yet so don’t rush to go and look). Should I so desire, at the click of a button I can make the authors all fall into alphabetical order. This is not painful for them and yet strangely pleasing for me. If only all of life were so easy. And obliging. And lacking in pain. And in neat little boxes that line themselves up and can be turned into lots of colours.
But, in the spirit of Just Fucking Sort It September I am obliged to tackle heftier tasks than spreadsheets. So, undaunted, back to the shed I go.
This is what happened:
Before I even managed to enter the shed I was arrested by a thought. The thought in question, was ‘The outside shed is very full.’
I was then arrested by a follow-on thought. ‘What the fuck am I going to do with all this stuff?’
I was then arrested by a follow-on follow-on thought. ‘I might need it.’
This double follow-on thought was of great significance. Because, you see, previously, when the outdoor shed was first invented by the Beloved, and a canny thought it was too, we were rich. And so the contents (is that the right word for a collection of articles that is bounded by no more than fresh air?) was junk.
Now, however I am about to be poor. Life has been cunningly redefined. Thus junk is now redefined. As useful stuff. As valuable goods. As items that could be cleverly dismantled into their constituent parts of mdf, nails, screws, small unknowable metal things and little plastic contraptions to stop doors slamming and sold on ebay for what I hope will be a small fortune. I have unwittingly come across the solution to single motherhood poverty.
I look at the skies. I think it might rain. I heft the contents of the outdoor shed back into the indoor shed to protect my valuable assets from the dangers of corrosion, rust and bird-shit.
Just Fucking Sorted.
Beginning to suspect that this may take more than September. Perhaps October as well. But since ‘Just Fucking Sort It October’ doesn’t have the same ring about it I may have to consider ‘Just Fucking Organise it October’. Still, always nice to have something to look forward to, that’s what I say.
There are some things that are easier to sort than others. For example I have just completed a large and appealingly categorised database of all the authors in the Leaf Anthologies for our spanking new website (not literally spanking obviously, and not up yet so don’t rush to go and look). Should I so desire, at the click of a button I can make the authors all fall into alphabetical order. This is not painful for them and yet strangely pleasing for me. If only all of life were so easy. And obliging. And lacking in pain. And in neat little boxes that line themselves up and can be turned into lots of colours.
But, in the spirit of Just Fucking Sort It September I am obliged to tackle heftier tasks than spreadsheets. So, undaunted, back to the shed I go.
This is what happened:
Before I even managed to enter the shed I was arrested by a thought. The thought in question, was ‘The outside shed is very full.’
I was then arrested by a follow-on thought. ‘What the fuck am I going to do with all this stuff?’
I was then arrested by a follow-on follow-on thought. ‘I might need it.’
This double follow-on thought was of great significance. Because, you see, previously, when the outdoor shed was first invented by the Beloved, and a canny thought it was too, we were rich. And so the contents (is that the right word for a collection of articles that is bounded by no more than fresh air?) was junk.
Now, however I am about to be poor. Life has been cunningly redefined. Thus junk is now redefined. As useful stuff. As valuable goods. As items that could be cleverly dismantled into their constituent parts of mdf, nails, screws, small unknowable metal things and little plastic contraptions to stop doors slamming and sold on ebay for what I hope will be a small fortune. I have unwittingly come across the solution to single motherhood poverty.
I look at the skies. I think it might rain. I heft the contents of the outdoor shed back into the indoor shed to protect my valuable assets from the dangers of corrosion, rust and bird-shit.
Just Fucking Sorted.
Beginning to suspect that this may take more than September. Perhaps October as well. But since ‘Just Fucking Sort It October’ doesn’t have the same ring about it I may have to consider ‘Just Fucking Organise it October’. Still, always nice to have something to look forward to, that’s what I say.
Wednesday, 12 September 2007
How Not to Sort The Shed – or The Tent Trapeze Triumph
I’m having ‘Just Fucking Sort It’ September. This month (or what’s left of it) is when I’m taking control of my life. This is a big task. Especially with my life. Some people have lives that are already sorted. They are the type of people whose CD collections are in alphabetical order, with the right CDs in the right boxes and not being used to prop wobbly tables, place toast upon or cover parts of the roof that are leaking.
They are the type of people who can open cupboards without the entire contents falling on the floor, breaking one’s foot, spilling over the room, sliding out the door, and engulfing the earth and a small asteroid that happens to be passing.
They are the type of people whose garden sheds contain space to swing a cat, do a small hula dance and put a not-broken lawnmower in.
So today I started with the shed. Which conveniently enough had already been mostly emptied into the al fresco shed. This is what happened:
I fought my way past the jungle and the outdoor shed contents and entered the shed. For a shed that had already been emptied it was quite full. Undaunted I examined the contents. What I notice first was that everything was covered in some sort of fabric. Images of Mrs Haversham’s abode crossed my mind. I wondered if perhaps a foresightful person had covered all my precious belongings in order to protect them from fading in the bright light or possibly getting dusty. But as it turned out not. It was the Lawyer’s tent. That she had taken camping a number of weeks, or possibly months, ago, and we had spread in order to allow it to dry and for a great deal of sand to work its way off.
Undaunted I begin to gather the tent. And fold it. Whist enjoying that satisfying scrunch of sand on wooden floor. When I was a child, or at least a person of lesser years than I am now, tents were tent shaped and thus could be folded into appealing rectangle shapes. Not this one. It refused in any way, shape, form or manner to be tidied. In fact it fought back with the vigour only a mysteriously shaped and highly recalcitrant tent could. Think alligators and blond Australians.
Undaunted I stuffed it bodily into a number of bin-bags and wondered how it had ever possibly emerged from the small zipped object that was its real home. ‘Ha!’ I exclaimed. ‘Fucking sorted.’
I then discovered that there was an empty cupboard in the shed. ‘Ha!’ I exclaimed and stuffed the bin bags containing the parts of tent into the cupboard. ‘Ha!’ I exclaimed. ‘Fucking sorted.’
I took a large marker pen and wrote on the cupboard ‘Big Tent’ in broad and significant letters.
There was still some room in the cupboard. I gazed around the three and a half million other objects in the shed to decide what should join the tent in it’s handy hidaway. My eye settled on a metal bar mostly wrapped in rope. The physicist’s trapeze. I stuffed it into the cupboard and wrote ‘Trapeze’ in broad and significant letters.
I gazed lovingly at the cupboard. ‘Ha!’ I exclaimed. ‘Fucking sorted’.
So satisfied was I at this that I decided to sort the rest of the three million other objects as well as the two and a half million exterior objects tomorrow.
Well, frankly, if one can so cunningly store a tent and a trapeze, and even label the tent and trapeze receptacle with broad and significant letters, it puts those CD alphabetisers to shame. Completely.
They are the type of people who can open cupboards without the entire contents falling on the floor, breaking one’s foot, spilling over the room, sliding out the door, and engulfing the earth and a small asteroid that happens to be passing.
They are the type of people whose garden sheds contain space to swing a cat, do a small hula dance and put a not-broken lawnmower in.
So today I started with the shed. Which conveniently enough had already been mostly emptied into the al fresco shed. This is what happened:
I fought my way past the jungle and the outdoor shed contents and entered the shed. For a shed that had already been emptied it was quite full. Undaunted I examined the contents. What I notice first was that everything was covered in some sort of fabric. Images of Mrs Haversham’s abode crossed my mind. I wondered if perhaps a foresightful person had covered all my precious belongings in order to protect them from fading in the bright light or possibly getting dusty. But as it turned out not. It was the Lawyer’s tent. That she had taken camping a number of weeks, or possibly months, ago, and we had spread in order to allow it to dry and for a great deal of sand to work its way off.
Undaunted I begin to gather the tent. And fold it. Whist enjoying that satisfying scrunch of sand on wooden floor. When I was a child, or at least a person of lesser years than I am now, tents were tent shaped and thus could be folded into appealing rectangle shapes. Not this one. It refused in any way, shape, form or manner to be tidied. In fact it fought back with the vigour only a mysteriously shaped and highly recalcitrant tent could. Think alligators and blond Australians.
Undaunted I stuffed it bodily into a number of bin-bags and wondered how it had ever possibly emerged from the small zipped object that was its real home. ‘Ha!’ I exclaimed. ‘Fucking sorted.’
I then discovered that there was an empty cupboard in the shed. ‘Ha!’ I exclaimed and stuffed the bin bags containing the parts of tent into the cupboard. ‘Ha!’ I exclaimed. ‘Fucking sorted.’
I took a large marker pen and wrote on the cupboard ‘Big Tent’ in broad and significant letters.
There was still some room in the cupboard. I gazed around the three and a half million other objects in the shed to decide what should join the tent in it’s handy hidaway. My eye settled on a metal bar mostly wrapped in rope. The physicist’s trapeze. I stuffed it into the cupboard and wrote ‘Trapeze’ in broad and significant letters.
I gazed lovingly at the cupboard. ‘Ha!’ I exclaimed. ‘Fucking sorted’.
So satisfied was I at this that I decided to sort the rest of the three million other objects as well as the two and a half million exterior objects tomorrow.
Well, frankly, if one can so cunningly store a tent and a trapeze, and even label the tent and trapeze receptacle with broad and significant letters, it puts those CD alphabetisers to shame. Completely.
Monday, 10 September 2007
How Not to File
You know filing? That thing we mostly hate that involves having to put bits of unknown and difficult to understand paper into some form of paper-shaped receptacle. Cardboard is often involved. And sometimes paperclips. And always a great deal of mess, piles of paper on the floor and that gesture where one grabs one’s hair and attempts to pull oneself into another dimension by unsuspecting follicles whilst scrunching one’s features like a strange and expensive dog.
Filers deserve respect. It isn’t an easy job. A lot of thinking and reading and categorising is involved. The categorising is the worst part. This is because sometimes things just refuse out of sheer bloody-mindedness to fall into just one category. Take, for example, peanut butter and jam sandwiches. You have a peanut butter and jam sandwich. You have three files – peanut butter, jam, and bread. But what you really want to do is file it under butter. The only thing left to do is eat the sandwich thus obviating the need for any filing at all. It works with food, but after eating one’s fifteenth piece of paper, despite the variety of flavours, such as bank statement, receipt from the unicycle repair shop, gas company final demand (which is quite nice because it’s red) and (my personal favourite) yet another letter from the endowment company telling you that you have fuck all chance of ever paying off your mortgage even if you are stupid enough to pay them more money after they have already spent all your money by investing it in peanut butter companies with shit filing systems, you start to feel quite sick.
Anyway, filing. This is what happened:
I needed to find a piece of paper. And important piece of paper. Which told me just how much money we still owe to mortgage company. Mostly because if we could somehow magic away the mortgage then the Beloved could go live in a swanky flat with bells and whistles and peace and quiet (aside from the whistles) and no Lawyers and Physicists and lunatic blog writers. The thing about magicing things away, I always find, is that you have to know what it is you have to magic away. Thus my search.
The particular paper-shaped receptacle I was searching through was one of those concertina-style filing thingys you buy especially for filing those piles of paper that accumulate with the relentlessness of an oncoming migraine in piles on the kitchen dresser. It (the filing thingy) has handy categories already printed in it. Things like ‘bills’, ‘receipts’ and (oh good, I thought when I saw this one) ‘mortgage’. I looked in the slot entitled ‘mortgage’ in the naive hope of finding my important piece of paper. No. I looked in some more slots. No. Eventually I realised. The papers had not so much been filed as dealt. Playing card-style. After having been shuffled with the expertise of a croupier on crack.
Still, much to my delight I found a peanut butter and jam sandwich handily filed under ‘butter’.
Tomorrow I am looking forward to the Alliance and Leicester helpline. Just praying that their filing system is better than ours.
Filers deserve respect. It isn’t an easy job. A lot of thinking and reading and categorising is involved. The categorising is the worst part. This is because sometimes things just refuse out of sheer bloody-mindedness to fall into just one category. Take, for example, peanut butter and jam sandwiches. You have a peanut butter and jam sandwich. You have three files – peanut butter, jam, and bread. But what you really want to do is file it under butter. The only thing left to do is eat the sandwich thus obviating the need for any filing at all. It works with food, but after eating one’s fifteenth piece of paper, despite the variety of flavours, such as bank statement, receipt from the unicycle repair shop, gas company final demand (which is quite nice because it’s red) and (my personal favourite) yet another letter from the endowment company telling you that you have fuck all chance of ever paying off your mortgage even if you are stupid enough to pay them more money after they have already spent all your money by investing it in peanut butter companies with shit filing systems, you start to feel quite sick.
Anyway, filing. This is what happened:
I needed to find a piece of paper. And important piece of paper. Which told me just how much money we still owe to mortgage company. Mostly because if we could somehow magic away the mortgage then the Beloved could go live in a swanky flat with bells and whistles and peace and quiet (aside from the whistles) and no Lawyers and Physicists and lunatic blog writers. The thing about magicing things away, I always find, is that you have to know what it is you have to magic away. Thus my search.
The particular paper-shaped receptacle I was searching through was one of those concertina-style filing thingys you buy especially for filing those piles of paper that accumulate with the relentlessness of an oncoming migraine in piles on the kitchen dresser. It (the filing thingy) has handy categories already printed in it. Things like ‘bills’, ‘receipts’ and (oh good, I thought when I saw this one) ‘mortgage’. I looked in the slot entitled ‘mortgage’ in the naive hope of finding my important piece of paper. No. I looked in some more slots. No. Eventually I realised. The papers had not so much been filed as dealt. Playing card-style. After having been shuffled with the expertise of a croupier on crack.
Still, much to my delight I found a peanut butter and jam sandwich handily filed under ‘butter’.
Tomorrow I am looking forward to the Alliance and Leicester helpline. Just praying that their filing system is better than ours.
Saturday, 8 September 2007
How Not to Sort Out Your Life
The Beloved has a plan. To sort everything out. Or not.
The thing about plans is that sometimes they are great, think of lunar landings, recipes by Nigella Lawson and inventing chocolate. And oft as not, they are ill-conceived, think Apollo 13, recipes by Dr Crippen, World War I.
On the scale of plans the Beloved’s is somewhere between The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Millennium Dome. Sort of not quite rounded and rather chaotic. This is what happened:
Beloved: I have a plan.
Me: Good, that’s nice dear.
Beloved: Sign this piece of paper
Me: Good, that’s nice dear
Beloved hands me pen. I inspect piece of paper, as my father always told me not to sign anything without reading it first. This can be tricky when it comes to crowds wanting autographs in a hurry but since that situation is yet to arise I decide to read the piece of paper.
It is not so much a piece of paper as a form. Entitled ‘How to remove yourself from your life, home and not-marriage.’
The essence of the form is fairly straightforward. The usual gubbins, boxes, words, nicely shaded areas that indicate you don’t have to do anything in nicely shaded areas and that a designer has been hard at work choosing just that shade of pukey green to put in the nicely shaded areas.
The gist of the form is ‘Please sign away any rights to the last quarter of a century of your life, including any Physicists, Lawyers, decorative but slightly decrepit houses and decorative but slightly decrepit Beloveds.’
I fiddle with the pen. I think. Hard. This is a hard decision on par with very hard decisions one has known. Worse than deciding on what colour to paint the sitting room, what to name the cat or even how many dining room chairs we might need should we ever invite someone to dinner. I think some more. I fiddle with the pen some more. I look across the table at the beloved. He morphs strangely into one of those evil baddies from a 1950s horror movie. I can hear a strange ‘Ha ha ha ha’ in ever descending tones.
‘I’ll get back to you on this one.’ I say handing him the pen.
I think I handled the whole situation quite well. I always was rather good at forms.
The thing about plans is that sometimes they are great, think of lunar landings, recipes by Nigella Lawson and inventing chocolate. And oft as not, they are ill-conceived, think Apollo 13, recipes by Dr Crippen, World War I.
On the scale of plans the Beloved’s is somewhere between The Charge of the Light Brigade and The Millennium Dome. Sort of not quite rounded and rather chaotic. This is what happened:
Beloved: I have a plan.
Me: Good, that’s nice dear.
Beloved: Sign this piece of paper
Me: Good, that’s nice dear
Beloved hands me pen. I inspect piece of paper, as my father always told me not to sign anything without reading it first. This can be tricky when it comes to crowds wanting autographs in a hurry but since that situation is yet to arise I decide to read the piece of paper.
It is not so much a piece of paper as a form. Entitled ‘How to remove yourself from your life, home and not-marriage.’
The essence of the form is fairly straightforward. The usual gubbins, boxes, words, nicely shaded areas that indicate you don’t have to do anything in nicely shaded areas and that a designer has been hard at work choosing just that shade of pukey green to put in the nicely shaded areas.
The gist of the form is ‘Please sign away any rights to the last quarter of a century of your life, including any Physicists, Lawyers, decorative but slightly decrepit houses and decorative but slightly decrepit Beloveds.’
I fiddle with the pen. I think. Hard. This is a hard decision on par with very hard decisions one has known. Worse than deciding on what colour to paint the sitting room, what to name the cat or even how many dining room chairs we might need should we ever invite someone to dinner. I think some more. I fiddle with the pen some more. I look across the table at the beloved. He morphs strangely into one of those evil baddies from a 1950s horror movie. I can hear a strange ‘Ha ha ha ha’ in ever descending tones.
‘I’ll get back to you on this one.’ I say handing him the pen.
I think I handled the whole situation quite well. I always was rather good at forms.
Sunday, 2 September 2007
How to Prepare for Uni
Sorry to all my loyal readers for my absence. I was away. You noticed that. And also I was here working. You may not have noticed that.
So what’s been occurring? The Physicist is preparing to be on her way out. Snotty cat is on his way out. The Beloved is out. The Lawyer has a new blue coat. The aforementioned have been awarded capital letters for their titles.
Re the Physicist, she is off to Uni, to continue her life as a physicist, mostly to do physics. Of all forms I imagine. However, it transpires that even scientists need to eat when they have arrived at their chosen venue of study.
‘Can we go buy stuff I need for Uni?’ came the cry from the kitchen.
‘And a coat?’ came the cry from the sitting room.
Now, having already taken out a second mortgage to pay for the Amazon bill I wondered just what it was that was needed for uni. Surely textbooks the size of small hadron colliders and a new pen was sufficient? It transpires not. So we went shopping. This is what happened:
We went to Tesco Extra Large and Very Difficult to Park. I grabbed a basket. I was informed that a basket was too small. I grabbed a trolley and trollied off after the physicist who was heading in a determined and scientific way into the deepest bowels of Tesco Extra Large and Very Difficult to Park. The Lawyer was hot in pursuit.
It started easily enough-
a hole punch, yes students need those;
a diary, again I could see the reasoning;
some glue, ok yes, even physicists may need to stick things with powers other than gravitational pull or electromagnetic force.
But then things started to get out of control, before I knew it our trolley, now steered by the lawyer (as I was busy holding my hands up in a gesture of incredulity) contained:
A toaster
A kettle
Duvet covers
Pillows
Sharp knives
Mugs
Bowls
Cork screws
And entire canteen of cutlery
Champagne flutes
A fridge
A bicycle (ok, she’s going to Oxford so that’s fair enough)
12 crates of champagne (to fill the flutes I guess)
A tin of baked beans (this I understood).
As we reached the checkout I asked
‘So, can you afford all this on your student loan?’
‘No,’ she said, looking at me as if I were from another planet ‘my loan is for stuff I need for uni’.
‘Ah,’ I said, extracting my credit card from my purse.
‘And don’t forget my coat,’ the lawyer added.
I’m glad that, compared to physics, the law is such a cheap thing to pursue.
So what’s been occurring? The Physicist is preparing to be on her way out. Snotty cat is on his way out. The Beloved is out. The Lawyer has a new blue coat. The aforementioned have been awarded capital letters for their titles.
Re the Physicist, she is off to Uni, to continue her life as a physicist, mostly to do physics. Of all forms I imagine. However, it transpires that even scientists need to eat when they have arrived at their chosen venue of study.
‘Can we go buy stuff I need for Uni?’ came the cry from the kitchen.
‘And a coat?’ came the cry from the sitting room.
Now, having already taken out a second mortgage to pay for the Amazon bill I wondered just what it was that was needed for uni. Surely textbooks the size of small hadron colliders and a new pen was sufficient? It transpires not. So we went shopping. This is what happened:
We went to Tesco Extra Large and Very Difficult to Park. I grabbed a basket. I was informed that a basket was too small. I grabbed a trolley and trollied off after the physicist who was heading in a determined and scientific way into the deepest bowels of Tesco Extra Large and Very Difficult to Park. The Lawyer was hot in pursuit.
It started easily enough-
a hole punch, yes students need those;
a diary, again I could see the reasoning;
some glue, ok yes, even physicists may need to stick things with powers other than gravitational pull or electromagnetic force.
But then things started to get out of control, before I knew it our trolley, now steered by the lawyer (as I was busy holding my hands up in a gesture of incredulity) contained:
A toaster
A kettle
Duvet covers
Pillows
Sharp knives
Mugs
Bowls
Cork screws
And entire canteen of cutlery
Champagne flutes
A fridge
A bicycle (ok, she’s going to Oxford so that’s fair enough)
12 crates of champagne (to fill the flutes I guess)
A tin of baked beans (this I understood).
As we reached the checkout I asked
‘So, can you afford all this on your student loan?’
‘No,’ she said, looking at me as if I were from another planet ‘my loan is for stuff I need for uni’.
‘Ah,’ I said, extracting my credit card from my purse.
‘And don’t forget my coat,’ the lawyer added.
I’m glad that, compared to physics, the law is such a cheap thing to pursue.
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