Category: The Mundane
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Joys of clearance
Our task today, since it’s damp and dreich outside, probably too wet for hedge trimming, will be to clear out the little porch. This porch has been my own domain, for my DIY tools, my writing space, and my LEGO studio, for the past decade anyway. But now we’re more interested in revealing the glorious…
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Relief from pain is a kind of odd joy, but gratefully received!
I seem to be losing teeth at an increasing rate, these days! Soon I shall be like ageing Plough, denizen of the field in front of Elpha Green above Sparty Lea, a grand old man of the equine tribe, who finds it challenging to pull up grass and hay. But he copes, and so do…
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Ambivalent joy of a groaning bookshelf
They’re not sorted yet, but three and a half boxes later, the new bookshelf is reaching a groaning capacity now, and there’s still another four or five long shelves in the big house. To say nothing of the boxes I’ve hidden in the loft! It’s hard to downsize the accumulated reading of a lifetime. On…
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The joy of setting up
Today I get to help out with setting up for a regular weekly function. We’re not really settled in the new village yet, but we’re trying to be quiet helpers. Come winter, when the energy bills will really bite, we’ll probably spend most of our time here in New Galloway, but for now we’re still…
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Is ‘laughing at yourself’ a kind of joy?
So I was doing a decent job on the shower cleaning, and I let the chlorine-based anti-mould application sit for thirty minutes to bleach the black fungus stains off the white grout, as you do. So far so good. I prepared to rinse the product off the tiles. Whoops! Turned the shower tap in the…
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Drudgery is a fact of life . . .
I remember so well, back in the day, thinking about why I loved research. In so many ways it was the physical experience of planning, and then setting the experiment up, so that the waiting could begin. Anticipation and wonder were all very lovely, but it was actually the joy of asking the question that…
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The joy of directed exercise
I’ve always been a kind of get-up-and-go sort of person. Never thinking about stretching exercises, or anything that healthy, but rather just getting on with life, doing activities. Until I couldn’t, after an injury to my left hamstring, which grew progressively worse the more I walked about, the more I tried to ignore it. After…
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Learning how magical realism works
Into each life, some sprinkles of magic faery dust sometimes fall. It’s all part of our story-telling sensibility, I reckon, these magical moments of understanding. I think, as resonant as metaphor, as compelling as an epiphany, these moments are also a big part of what makes us human. I’ve used magical realism with conscious effort…
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Good morning, blue sky
It’s no wonder that the seeresses of old used a crystal ball to peer into the future. The reflection of the blue sky beyond the clouds in our glass conservatory table this morning seems to offer a new perspective to the dawn. New perspectives seem to be an incredible stimulus. I know one writer who…
Roads to Joy 