(no subject)
If I claim the only reason I haven't posted for a while is because I was moving, will you believe me? Well, given I almost never get round to posting anything, probably not. (I made a New Year Resolution to post more often! And it's only May, so I'm obviously fulfilling it admirably!)
The new flat - rented, for once, rather than owned - is very nice, and more or less set up as I want it, barring various pieces of furniture that are on order. There are many floor to ceiling windows, and on each is a roller blind, of the sort that, in a wonder of modern engineering, rolls up effortlessly at a twitch of the cord. ............. Have I inserted a long enough pause for you to stop laughing and pick yourself up of the floor? So, in a more accurate description, there are many windows, and on each is a roller blind, of the sort that likes to stick determinedly part way up. The manufacturer's website has many pretty videos of blinds going up and down, and no mention that these videos are works of speculative fiction. 1 Luckily my favourite walking stick comes in very handy for teasing them up the last little bit when they jam too high for me to reach. 2
The floors are white stone of the type locally referred to as marble (though I think it's actually granite) in the living and dining areas, and wood elsewhere. I bring the expanse of white flooring especially to your attention, as necessary scene setting for the Affair of the Red Slippers. It began innocently enough, when I found an old pair of red slippers that had accidentally been put into store. Remembering that I used to like them, I put them on and went heedlessly about my business. I thought nothing more of them until the afternoon, when I was struck down by a migraine. ('Struck down' in this context means I manfully ignored the many warning symptoms, instead of sensibly taking the medication I had to hand for just such purpose, until I reached the blinding agony stage, which was both impossible to ignore and too late for the pills to do much good.) Shedding my clothes and kicking off my shoes as I went, I headed for bed. Just as I was about to get in, I noticed my feet, which were an unaccustomed shade of crimson. In the interests of my new bedlinen, I thought it wise to check that the dye, having transferred itself from the shoes to my feet, would not further transfer itself to the bed, so I staggered into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath to rinse my feet. After a while I was satisfied that the remaining dye, having failed to come off even with vigorous scrubbing, was unlikely to come off on anything else. It was at this point - and here you must make allowances for my being in too much pain to think clearly - that I noticed large red marks everywhere my feet had touched the bathtub. I rubbed one with my thumb to clean it off ... nothing happened ... I rubbed it harder ... I tried soap ... I thought oh shit. At which point, I decided to put on a pair of socks, go to bed and worry about it later.
Subsequently, I had the fun of trying to clean not just the bathtub but also all that expanse of white stone floor. It wasn't just my footprints: the interior of the slippers had started to disintegrate, and a myriad little flecks of shoe were hiding everywhere, each ready to turn into a blood-red smear if stepped on. The floor, luckily, did come clean with detergent and effort (the bath came clean with repeated overnight applications of a special porcelain cleanser), but I was left with a new sympathy for murderers: just think of all those crime shows, where the villain has put all that time and effort into cleaning the crime scene carefully, and then along come the heartless and demanding investigators (rather like landlords... ) to glance around with their special fancy tools and say it wasn't good enough and they can still spot some blood lurking in an out of the way corner. In future, my sympathy on such shows will be entirely with the murderer.
I have also finished unpacking all my things (except the books, since the bookcases have yet to arrive), with particular reference to everything I misguidedly put in store 5 years ago: why, oh why do I own so many things? Box upon box, never reaching the end ... I fantasised repeatedly about abandoning them all and becoming a wandering ascetic. Just me and a begging bowl, and no boxes ever again... Except, of course, I don't really want to get rid of my possessions; what I wanted was for someone else to unpack them for me and put them neatly away. (I have always been very happy with my obvious role in life as someone to be waited on hand and foot, and I eagerly await the day I meet the people a benevolent Providence has surely designed for that purpose.) Unfortunately, while I can think of a number of religions that permit believers to sever worldly ties and escape the trap of material property, I can't think of any offering believers the immediate option of several servants. In time, perhaps, after many years of study, holiness or politics, but that won't help with unpacking boxes now.
Not that it's not quite true I want all my possessions: it could be that 7 bottles of sesame oil constitute a superfluity. (Yes, 7. Really. No, I don't know what possessed me either.) It might well be that I have more coathangers than I need. And is it possible for one person to have too many pairs of scissors? I'm certain I have too many fishknives, in that any non-zero number would be too many.
Then there are the unwanted gifts, which I should probably get rid of. Though they do at least offer the fun of figuring out what thought process could have led to them. All the unwanted photo frames I've been given, for example: I can only presume the various gifters, recollecting visits to my home and the complete lack of framed photographs there displayed, leapt to the happy conclusion that I just lacked appropriate frames. I might have supposed the contrary notion, that I don't want to put up photos, would have occurred to them, but on the evidence to date, it never does. I cannot say whether the general assumption is that I am ignorant of the very existence of frames, or just that I'm baffled as to where they are sold, but in either case, at least twelve people apparently found my likely pleasure in such a gift obvious. (The one question, though, that I cannot answer at all, is why are the entire lot of them so hideous? Do frames only come in two styles these days: the cheap metal with random punchouts and bits of plastic unconvincingly masquerading as crystals, and the unwisely coloured glass monstrosity? Surely no one can be under the impression that either of those correspond to my taste?)
Then there are the truly mysterious items. For example: one box of coasters, each bearing an unattractive and out-of-focus photograph of a different house in Surrey. How did I come by such a thing? I cannot conceive of the circumstances in which I might have bought it, and yet it seems almost equally inconceivable anyone would give it to me as a gift. Also, why on Earth did I keep it?
1 I am not sure whether they should properly be categorised as SF, set in some future technological paradise, Utopian fiction, or perhaps an Alternate History, in which the company concerned designed something that actually worked before bringing it to the market. Or perhaps they are best understood as Fantasy, and the blinds are depicted operating by magic.
2 I bought the stick years ago at Sant Pere de Roda, mostly because I'd had such a pleasant day wandering around there I thought I should buy something from them beyond the rather good lunch. (If you ever happen to be there, I recommend the Gazpacho.) Since then I've used it not just for its intended purpose - presuming that to be hiking and not pilgrimaging, for which I obviously haven't used it at all - but also propped across the bath to hang my BC after rinsing my dive gear, and now for the blinds, so I've been amply rewarded for buying it. I still haven't used the little compass set in the top though, not because of my awesome sense of direction, but because I'm generally so hopelessly lost even a compass is not much use.
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comments. Please comment there using OpenID.
The new flat - rented, for once, rather than owned - is very nice, and more or less set up as I want it, barring various pieces of furniture that are on order. There are many floor to ceiling windows, and on each is a roller blind, of the sort that, in a wonder of modern engineering, rolls up effortlessly at a twitch of the cord. ............. Have I inserted a long enough pause for you to stop laughing and pick yourself up of the floor? So, in a more accurate description, there are many windows, and on each is a roller blind, of the sort that likes to stick determinedly part way up. The manufacturer's website has many pretty videos of blinds going up and down, and no mention that these videos are works of speculative fiction. 1 Luckily my favourite walking stick comes in very handy for teasing them up the last little bit when they jam too high for me to reach. 2
The floors are white stone of the type locally referred to as marble (though I think it's actually granite) in the living and dining areas, and wood elsewhere. I bring the expanse of white flooring especially to your attention, as necessary scene setting for the Affair of the Red Slippers. It began innocently enough, when I found an old pair of red slippers that had accidentally been put into store. Remembering that I used to like them, I put them on and went heedlessly about my business. I thought nothing more of them until the afternoon, when I was struck down by a migraine. ('Struck down' in this context means I manfully ignored the many warning symptoms, instead of sensibly taking the medication I had to hand for just such purpose, until I reached the blinding agony stage, which was both impossible to ignore and too late for the pills to do much good.) Shedding my clothes and kicking off my shoes as I went, I headed for bed. Just as I was about to get in, I noticed my feet, which were an unaccustomed shade of crimson. In the interests of my new bedlinen, I thought it wise to check that the dye, having transferred itself from the shoes to my feet, would not further transfer itself to the bed, so I staggered into the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath to rinse my feet. After a while I was satisfied that the remaining dye, having failed to come off even with vigorous scrubbing, was unlikely to come off on anything else. It was at this point - and here you must make allowances for my being in too much pain to think clearly - that I noticed large red marks everywhere my feet had touched the bathtub. I rubbed one with my thumb to clean it off ... nothing happened ... I rubbed it harder ... I tried soap ... I thought oh shit. At which point, I decided to put on a pair of socks, go to bed and worry about it later.
Subsequently, I had the fun of trying to clean not just the bathtub but also all that expanse of white stone floor. It wasn't just my footprints: the interior of the slippers had started to disintegrate, and a myriad little flecks of shoe were hiding everywhere, each ready to turn into a blood-red smear if stepped on. The floor, luckily, did come clean with detergent and effort (the bath came clean with repeated overnight applications of a special porcelain cleanser), but I was left with a new sympathy for murderers: just think of all those crime shows, where the villain has put all that time and effort into cleaning the crime scene carefully, and then along come the heartless and demanding investigators (rather like landlords... ) to glance around with their special fancy tools and say it wasn't good enough and they can still spot some blood lurking in an out of the way corner. In future, my sympathy on such shows will be entirely with the murderer.
I have also finished unpacking all my things (except the books, since the bookcases have yet to arrive), with particular reference to everything I misguidedly put in store 5 years ago: why, oh why do I own so many things? Box upon box, never reaching the end ... I fantasised repeatedly about abandoning them all and becoming a wandering ascetic. Just me and a begging bowl, and no boxes ever again... Except, of course, I don't really want to get rid of my possessions; what I wanted was for someone else to unpack them for me and put them neatly away. (I have always been very happy with my obvious role in life as someone to be waited on hand and foot, and I eagerly await the day I meet the people a benevolent Providence has surely designed for that purpose.) Unfortunately, while I can think of a number of religions that permit believers to sever worldly ties and escape the trap of material property, I can't think of any offering believers the immediate option of several servants. In time, perhaps, after many years of study, holiness or politics, but that won't help with unpacking boxes now.
Not that it's not quite true I want all my possessions: it could be that 7 bottles of sesame oil constitute a superfluity. (Yes, 7. Really. No, I don't know what possessed me either.) It might well be that I have more coathangers than I need. And is it possible for one person to have too many pairs of scissors? I'm certain I have too many fishknives, in that any non-zero number would be too many.
Then there are the unwanted gifts, which I should probably get rid of. Though they do at least offer the fun of figuring out what thought process could have led to them. All the unwanted photo frames I've been given, for example: I can only presume the various gifters, recollecting visits to my home and the complete lack of framed photographs there displayed, leapt to the happy conclusion that I just lacked appropriate frames. I might have supposed the contrary notion, that I don't want to put up photos, would have occurred to them, but on the evidence to date, it never does. I cannot say whether the general assumption is that I am ignorant of the very existence of frames, or just that I'm baffled as to where they are sold, but in either case, at least twelve people apparently found my likely pleasure in such a gift obvious. (The one question, though, that I cannot answer at all, is why are the entire lot of them so hideous? Do frames only come in two styles these days: the cheap metal with random punchouts and bits of plastic unconvincingly masquerading as crystals, and the unwisely coloured glass monstrosity? Surely no one can be under the impression that either of those correspond to my taste?)
Then there are the truly mysterious items. For example: one box of coasters, each bearing an unattractive and out-of-focus photograph of a different house in Surrey. How did I come by such a thing? I cannot conceive of the circumstances in which I might have bought it, and yet it seems almost equally inconceivable anyone would give it to me as a gift. Also, why on Earth did I keep it?
1 I am not sure whether they should properly be categorised as SF, set in some future technological paradise, Utopian fiction, or perhaps an Alternate History, in which the company concerned designed something that actually worked before bringing it to the market. Or perhaps they are best understood as Fantasy, and the blinds are depicted operating by magic.
2 I bought the stick years ago at Sant Pere de Roda, mostly because I'd had such a pleasant day wandering around there I thought I should buy something from them beyond the rather good lunch. (If you ever happen to be there, I recommend the Gazpacho.) Since then I've used it not just for its intended purpose - presuming that to be hiking and not pilgrimaging, for which I obviously haven't used it at all - but also propped across the bath to hang my BC after rinsing my dive gear, and now for the blinds, so I've been amply rewarded for buying it. I still haven't used the little compass set in the top though, not because of my awesome sense of direction, but because I'm generally so hopelessly lost even a compass is not much use.
This entry was originally posted on Dreamwidth. There are currently
comments. Please comment there using OpenID.