Category: The Mundane
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Sharing the notes . . .
It’s intriguing, it is, how a shared set of thoughts becomes something else altogether when someone else thinks along with you. My notes on our walk a couple days ago raised a comment, and in the ensuing email conversation the concept of ‘poetic process’ came to light. I had to confess that I couldn’t see,…
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The subtlety of a job well done
The repair job seems to be holding up well, so perhaps I can be quietly satisfied with my fixing strategy. In the melamine-coated chipboard, the fixing screws top and bottom of the fridge door were coming adrift. With the sag, the top cabinet door was increasingly binding on the lower door concealing the freezer half.…
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The got goat . . .
There are a few things that, as we say, ‘really get my goat.’ Our late father had such quirks, of which one in particular was doors left ajar. He had a morbid fear of squirrels which could create great havoc in attic spaces. In our old home, we devised a variety of strategies to keep…
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Continuing joys of clearance
Sometimes, with the best will in the world, it’s too challenging to recycle, and yet things must be cleared. The little Fiat Panda is chock-full of stuff for the recycling centre, and the cardboard still left over from its store under the big bakery oven felt overwhelming. Another little bonfire was the only realistic solution.…
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A completed list
I do make lists, but it’s rare to have a completed set of ticks by the end of the day. For one reason or another, with the perseverance I aspired to yesterday, I did manage to tick every task off the list! That’s enough joy to carry my weary muscles, joints and sinews through into…
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Perseverance, because . . . what else?
Sometimes setbacks feel so very daunting that it’s hard to see how or whether one’s pursuit of any particular project is worthwhile. In writing, in particular, this feeling must be so pervasive as to drive so very many authors to despair. I’ve had this sense of banging into a wall for several days now, amplified…
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The joys of flexibility
This morning I’m exulting in multiple uses for the same thing. A few years ago we decided to tidy an awkward wedge of space behind our house. The idea was to store wood for the bakery oven, so it would be conveniently accessible, and dry. The first incarnation of the roof was not felicitous; too…
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Washing-up service . . .
The joys of humble service have been a part of my life ever since my first detail attending to the outside pit toilets at summer camp. Talk about mundanity, but at the other end of the food cycle, I quite enjoy a spot of washing-up, or doing the dishes as folks might say on the…
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Clearances . . .
I’ve spent the past afternoon and again this morning clearing up my laptop’s desktop. Not only does the struggling machine, uncluttered, work much faster now that all the accumulated images are whisked away, but the space is neat, tidy, and restful for my busy mind. The extended display is open for new material, while a…
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Measurement, a never-ending joy
I made a little investment, a year or so ago, in a small measuring wheel. Its first use was, finally, to measure within a meter or so how long our track is from the road. Turns out to be 495 meters, half a kilometer in other words, which makes us quite happily isolated from any…
Roads to Joy 