The urge to organise tidy storage of all our "stuff" - it runs deep in the human psyche of some people, doesn't it, just as in other people's minds "being tidy and organised" doesn't seem to figure at all, which is weird.
Do you remember that memorable episode of the sitcom Big Bang Theory, when the perhaps overly tidy-minded physicist Sheldon has the time of his life organising the room, shelves, closets etc of his untidy physicist house-mate Howard?
Sheldon has so much fun "tidying up" in Howard's room, that when their third house-mate, physicist Leonard calls on Sheldon to say it's time to head out for the day's real business of "breaking new boundaries in physics", Sheldon pleads with him, somewhat petulantly, Lois and I thought, for just "five minutes more". Remember?
It's kind of addictive, isn't it, "organising", once you start. And there was that awfully tragic story in the local Onion News the other day about that poor man that Lois and I call "poor shelf guy" in the lovely Worcestershire village of Bell End - did you see it?
“Oh God, what have I done?” said Beck, realizing far too late that he had set himself upon a dark and perilous path through random power cords, scattered binders, and old CDs from which there was no turning back.
“I never would have done this had I known my fate would be as Pandora opening her box. But now the old order is in ruins. Nothing remains but the mayhem I have fashioned with my own hands and folly!”
Yes it's a bit of a trap, isn't it, this urge to "organise", and to research so-called "storage solutions", and once you've fallen into that trap, it's pretty hard to clamber out.
I recently read, however, that this is actually one of the oldest urges human race has, even if not quite "the oldest". It was only four years ago that archaeologists made the following game-changing discovery of our long journey of "finding somewhere to put stuff".
And it's like a dream come true for us today, here in our new-build home here in Malvern, when the guy we call "Flatpack Jim" arrives to organise some shelving for us in the shiny-new shed we've just acquired for the bottom of our tiny back-garden.
the guy we call "Flatpack Jim" gets down to work
in our tiny back garden, organising some
shelving for our shiny-new shed, with our wonderful
700 million-year-old Malvern Hills as his backdrop
And Jim has promised to leave enough space in the shed for our 10-year-old twin granddaughters Lily and Jessica, to still hold tea-parties in the shed for their favourite stuffed toys - "the main purpose what we bought the shed for in the first place", after all, wasn't it !!!!
flashback to February 24th: our twin granddaughters
hold their inaugural tea-party in our shed; guests included
Bluebell Mouse (left) and Black-and-White-Cat
Awwwwwww !!!!
And Lois and I are in celebratory mood this afternoon as we take a nice shower and hop into bed for "nap time".
Lois and I have plenty of celebrate
during "nap time" today
It's been a really great day today already, you would not BELIEVE !!!
Apart from the shed progress, we have at least two other achievements to celebrate this afternoon: there's the first victory in the long-running battle, over several issues, that we've had with our gas-and-electricity supplier British Gas, a.k.a. "The Great Satan PLC": the company has at last sent a local subcontractor to fix our faulty "not very smart" electricity meter that sits outside our front door - the one that hasn't displayed a reading in all the of 17 months we've been living here.
our stupid "not very smart-meter" from British Gas, that's
only displayed the dumb rolling "Change of Tenancy" message,
all the time since we first moved here in October 2022
flashback to last year: our little "History of English" group,
seen here in happier times, before Lynda (bottom right)
announced her shock resignation
In the last few months, our previous group-leader Lynda, resigned under suspicious circumstances, to "spend more time with my ukulele", as she put it.
Plus there's sadly been some "natural wastage": one member died - well, we are a bunch of old codgers! And the last straw was when one of our widowed women members decided to leave in November, saying she'd "re-discovered men", and she apparently wanted to spend every available hour of every day now, "getting it on" with Nick, her new "squeeze". And I'm assuming that this Nick isn't the same Nick as the one who's just said today, that he wants to join our group.
What a madness old age is, isn't it !!!!!
15:00 Another success story comes later in the day when we find we can now book a place at our NHS doctor's surgery to have our spring booster COVID jab at our NHS doctor's surgery in April, so that's nice too.
21:00 We go to bed on another of Bill Bailey's restful and entertaining series of programmes, "Perfect Pub Walks". Tonight he's walking in the Somerset levels, the area where Bill grew up, which Lois and I didn't realise. And his companion is washed-up 1990's pop star Shaun Ryder of the group "Happy Mondays", a band that Lois and I never really got into, I have to say.
It's Bill's contention that "blokes normally never talk to each other about deep personal issues", except maybe on a twosome stroll or hike through the quiet countryside, and in each programme Bill tries to get to the bottom of his guest-of-the-day's psyche and discover what "makes him tick". And it's often illuminating, to put it mildly.
During their walk today, Bill and his guest "bloke", Shaun Ryder, also make 3 stops at local pubs for "a quick pint". And the pubs are also often quite interesting in their own way.
We see the two men enjoying a pint at the "George and Pilgims Inn" in Glastonbury, which was built in the late 1400's. It's officially the oldest pub in the whole south-west of England.
It's a pub where, incredibly, Henry VIII himself stayed in the 1500's, and more recently, Charlie Chaplin, in the 1920's.
And, more recently still, due to its proximity to the famous annual open-air Glastonbury pop festival, the pub has been graced with the presence of rock star David Bowie and of James Bond-actor Sean Connery, both of whom took rooms at the Inn at different times.
And I wonder if "the disillusionment of the monasteries" is something separate from Henry VIII's arguably more famous "dissolution of the monasteries"?
I wonder..... ! Well, Lois and I will have to do a bit of research when we get into bed and start my Samsung diddling and Lois's Huawei beeping tonight, no question about that !!!
And that "shag" in the 1990's by Shaun Ryder and that "gorgeous-looking girl" surely deserves to be commemorated in another plaque on the wall, doesn't it, landlord?
[Stop being so toffee-nosed and "hoity-toity", Colin and Lois. Not everybody's got a History A-Level from as recent as 1964, you know! - Ed]
And 1990's pop star Sean Ryder believes he himself stayed in "Henry VIII's room", when he himself was playing at the Glastonbury Festival with the Happy Mondays, back in the day.
I wonder..... !!
And do you know, uncouth and poorly educated as Shaun Ryder turns out to be, I feel a peculiar kind of kinship with him, when he reveals that what he liked most about being in the Happy Mondays was the song-writing and the arranging. He tells us, however, that, whenever he was called on to come out on stage and play with the rest of the group in front of a huge audience, he just "crumbled". Unfortunately his solution to his performance hang-ups was drugs, which everybody knows isn't the answer to anything, is it.
flashback to the 1990's: frontman Shaun Ryder,
playing with his band The Happy Mondays.
Shaun obviously didn't learn much at school, but we find out tonight that he has always suffered from ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). He must have been a nightmare to teach.
Fascinating stuff, though, isn't it!!!
[If you say so! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!
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