So, the boxes of Stuff that I was keeping in a cabinet at Former Workplace, plus various things that were sitting on top of my work station (or the work station I was wont to use, anyway), arrived yesterday, rather before the time I was anticipating them. (Did not, chiz, include various things in desk-drawers which I would rather have liked to have ( Read more... )

Okay, I am staying out of the Marie Kondo vs books debate because, on the one hand, you will pry the habit of having many, many books from my cold dead hands, and on the other, I am entirely aware that I have too menny and only the fact that they are not in free-standing bookcases prevents there being a nasty Leonard-Bast-in-Howards-End type ( Read more... )

Last week I was somewhat irked to run out of something that I thought I had a replacement supply of.
It turned out I didn't.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it makes me joyful, but it induces a placid contentment when I run out of Thing, but do not need to go out in order to purchase more of Thing, or place an online order and wait for delivery, ( Read more... )

Clearing out some tabs that are not going to generate posts of their own.
Do these two articles on very similar notes indicate that questions of maintaining essential Capitalism excels at innovation but is failing at maintenance, and for most lives it is maintenance that matters more
[D]ecaying infrastructure is all around us
My dearios may recall ( Read more... )

Be prepossessed by the argument Why The Seemingly Messy Ones May Be More Intelligent, for as I think I remarked once when somebody asked me about my research methods:
Larfing liek drayne.
And doing that thing which involves going through piles of Stuff to find a particular thing, and finding, if not that, other pertinent things in the process.
Also ( Read more... )

Partner was doing some decorating while I was away which didn't (as planned) actually get completed before my return, for reasons.
There are therefore piles of displaced STUFF here there and everywhere (but not in its usual place) and a general sense of disorientation.
Also, I knew I was going to have to examine a late-submitted Masters ( Read more... )

Words of wisdom:

Sometimes Guy Browning's 'How To...' columns hit nails right on the head:
There is generally held to be a deceitful and manipulative element to cunning but being considerate requires exactly the same mental processes, only for nicer ends.

Ditto Oliver Burkemann's 'This Column Will Change Your Life':
But there's a slightly less ( Read more... )

(Okay, it didn't suddenly open out into Narnia this morning, sorry to disappoint.)

Normally it surprises me in the not-good way - as in, thing I was intending to wear needs ironing/has critical button missing/oops, how did I miss that stain when putting it away?

But over the last week or so it has revealed to me a couple of waistcoats I'd forgotten ( Read more... )

The thematic bit: several stories about manuscripts, history, evidence:

Ursula Le Guin on a novel inspired by the survival against all odds of the Sarajevo Haggadah:
The Sarajevo Haggadah, pride and glory of the Bosnian collection, was spirited out of the library and hidden in a bank vault when the Serbs began to target the libraries and museums of ( Read more... )

James Fenton, Was Shakespeare, or was his father, a Catholic, or a crypto-Catholic?:
Were they connected to Jesuit missionaries operating undercover in Warwickshire? These questions are asked in an article in the TLS of March 16. The answer to the latter question appears to be a resounding raspberry, which is interesting, since the authors of the ( Read more... )