Having guests to stay focuses the mind wonderfully on getting the house in order. Unfortunately, to do that, I have to move what feels like heaven and earth.
All of the furniture which ended up in the guest bedroom during the house move was put in the wrong place and then hemmed in with heavy boxes and trunks (including a box marked 'fragile' which was put on the bottom of a stack and now contains broken glass). I still don't have my bedroom sorted out to my satisfaction (it contains furniture which should be in the guest bedroom, but which they couldn't find space for, as some of the boxes in there belonged elsewhere), and the dining room is a mass of packed boxes and various chairs. The lounge is a mess of craft stash. There are even packed boxes and a worktop full of bits in the utility.
Add into the chaos finding that the shed has been leaking and the decorating kit boxes contained a few inches of water and a strange compost of slug/snail droppings and wet fluff from some rags which have been gnawed by a mouse hoping for a comfy bed. Then one of the cats threw up on my duvet, so not just the cover but the duvet itself needed cleaning. And the dishwasher stopped working.
And then the new mattresses arrived about 4 working days earlier than expected. (I've just seen a mail telling me the mattresses are on their way. Nope, they arrived two days ago! And another mail telling me that the old mattresses will be picked up next Wednesday, with a request to confirm the pick-up via a link which doesn't work.) I now cannot move for large, heavy boxes. There's no way I can get my double mattress up the stairs on my own, I'm going to have to plead for help from one of my neighbours.
It was a bit like this when I first moved, too. Like one of those sliding squares puzzles where you don't so much have an empty square as an empty half-square, and you have to be careful how you use it so as not to hem yourself in. Over time, the stacks in the lounge and kitchen disappeared, and some of the boxes in the dining room. I should have taken photos, some of the stacks were about 4 feet/1.2 metres high.
Just like the sliding squares puzzle, I have to accept that some of the pieces will have to move more than once before they're able to move into their final positions. Unlike the sliding squares puzzle, some pieces are rather larger than others, and so many smaller pieces will need to move to enable, for example, the single beds to go where they were originally intended.
And of course everything needs cleaning and I have a mountain of laundry too. The patio and garden are also a complete mess, as I haven't been out to sort out the growhouse and swingseat, damaged by the first storms of the season, let alone pick up scattered pots or any more digging and clearing. That's very low on the priority list at the moment!
Faced with this knotty problem, I've had to revert to project management planning to try to find the ends to pull, which squares to slide first. The task list is still very long and I have less than a week to go.
It will be great to have made a significant dent in the unpacking, cleaning and sorting, though I wonder if I shall ever attain my goal of having a clean and tidy house with a place for everything and everything in its place.
A reflective journal of my Dancing, Gardening, Arts and Crafts, Working, Domesticated and Wild Life.
Saturday, 25 November 2017
Thursday, 9 November 2017
Time Lapse
My blogging has lapsed somewhat, largely replaced by doing. While the weather was good, I spent spare time out in the garden, (currently) marked by my last published post in August, although there are (quite) a few draft posts which get looked at and tweaked from time to time.
When at my desk, I'm invariably working, still editing the magnum opus which came my way at the start of the year. It's a fascinating book set in 1949 Ethiopia, but irritatingly wordy, with dialogue in five languages and occasional words in a further two. The typescript was an incredible mess of typographical, spelling and grammatical errors, which are gradually falling away under my relentless nit-picking. I keep reminding myself not to over-correct or change the writer's style, that it's not my job to fact check - but inevitably, I've picked up on some anachronisms which needed further research and discussion. It's still very long, the equivalent of five average-sized novels, so it's undecided yet whether this will be one novel or perhaps a series of three or more. I'm really enjoying the work (although the amount of work I'm doing is disproportionate to what I'll eventually be paid!) and loving the way my relationship with the author is developing. I am learning so much about language and editing, and more than I ever imagined I wanted to know about Ethiopia!
I have also received a PhD thesis to proof-read, started earlier this year and now in its final stages. I've also quoted for another. Both have been affected by the supervisors' requests for rewrites. I've previously seen this 'you get it ready to publish, then I'll make suggestions for changes', which has the potential to become a soul-destroying, endless loop of draft versions and self-questioning - am I/is my work good enough yet? The answer, at least in my opinion for the thesis I'm working on, is 'this is awesome and you are utterly amazing!', but I guess the rarefied heights of academia have a more jaded and demanding attitude.
A combination of changeable weather and the conflict of what else I 'should' be doing has largely kept me out of the garden. The days flicker by and only time will reveal the cumulative effects of barely perceptible daily changes, like the comparison of first and last drafts, or the start and end of a time-lapse film.
When at my desk, I'm invariably working, still editing the magnum opus which came my way at the start of the year. It's a fascinating book set in 1949 Ethiopia, but irritatingly wordy, with dialogue in five languages and occasional words in a further two. The typescript was an incredible mess of typographical, spelling and grammatical errors, which are gradually falling away under my relentless nit-picking. I keep reminding myself not to over-correct or change the writer's style, that it's not my job to fact check - but inevitably, I've picked up on some anachronisms which needed further research and discussion. It's still very long, the equivalent of five average-sized novels, so it's undecided yet whether this will be one novel or perhaps a series of three or more. I'm really enjoying the work (although the amount of work I'm doing is disproportionate to what I'll eventually be paid!) and loving the way my relationship with the author is developing. I am learning so much about language and editing, and more than I ever imagined I wanted to know about Ethiopia!
I have also received a PhD thesis to proof-read, started earlier this year and now in its final stages. I've also quoted for another. Both have been affected by the supervisors' requests for rewrites. I've previously seen this 'you get it ready to publish, then I'll make suggestions for changes', which has the potential to become a soul-destroying, endless loop of draft versions and self-questioning - am I/is my work good enough yet? The answer, at least in my opinion for the thesis I'm working on, is 'this is awesome and you are utterly amazing!', but I guess the rarefied heights of academia have a more jaded and demanding attitude.
A combination of changeable weather and the conflict of what else I 'should' be doing has largely kept me out of the garden. The days flicker by and only time will reveal the cumulative effects of barely perceptible daily changes, like the comparison of first and last drafts, or the start and end of a time-lapse film.
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