A sinister order has now settled on my office.
The full effect of my strenuous construction and selfless folding have resulted in an eerie regimented organization suggesting a far more together person that the actual owner!
The new Billy stand straight and tall with his rough edges now covered in inexpertly cut self adhesive white strips which have been ironed in place. I feel rather proud of myself firstly for actually getting the stuff as I don’t know what it is called in English, so the achievement in conveying what I wanted in Spanish is all the more exhilarating. Secondly I am (justly) satisfied that I knew that an iron was involved in the sticking of the strips. I still loathed all aspects and therefore cannot claim that DIY has replaced book buying as my major hobby.
The books which had been gathering dust on top of the living room Billys are now expansively set out on the commodious shelving of the new office Billy and that structure has even managed to find book space for those volumes that were resting on the tops of books on the shelves elsewhere.
I can only pity those hapless creatures that do not find please of the most intense kind in the expansion of a book collection into new areas allowing a further rearrangement of the library. It is a form of bibliophile colonization where I, like a latter day King Leopold, impose arbitrary separations, conjunctions and continuations based on my personal whims. Dr Johnson’s description (slightly altered) of John Donne’s metaphors could apply to some of the volumes I have placed next to each other on my shelves 'the most heterogeneous books are yoked by violence together' – but it makes sense to me and gives me pleasure! The argument of colonial masters through the ages!
The new found order has even found its way into what was, almost literally, a writhing snake pit of chaos. I refer of course to the ‘wages of sin’ that comes with a love of gadgets: the leads and their power sources!
Every attempt to bring order to this Hydra monster of intertwining coils of multi headed incompatibility results in further chaos. If you keep the leads in the boxes it takes up far too much room. If you keep the leads in a drawer they ‘knot and gender’ like Othello’s toads. If you leave them in different places you invariably forget which lead fits which appliance. Every expedient evinces endless energy. And if you have spare sets of earphones anywhere near power leads then they act like convolvulus and tie everything together more neatly than sellotape.
The answer, as to so much else, lies in IKEA.
There is a subsidiary structure linked to the Billy called a Benko (or is that a Chinese meal?) or something. This is a tall, thin piece of furniture which, when constructed, has twelve squarish sections ostensibly for storing CDs. It is perfect for the power leads, plugs and adaptors. You can even fit in the item like a camera, ipod or Nintendo Lite. Just because I have listed only three items I do not want you think that nine sections are now empty. No, all sections are filled and my mind strays to planting the flag of order on further necessary purchases from the Swedish Saviour.
But they have to be built, so a little respite would not come amiss.
“Human kind,” as T S Eliot almost said, “cannot bear very much tidiness.”
The full effect of my strenuous construction and selfless folding have resulted in an eerie regimented organization suggesting a far more together person that the actual owner!
The new Billy stand straight and tall with his rough edges now covered in inexpertly cut self adhesive white strips which have been ironed in place. I feel rather proud of myself firstly for actually getting the stuff as I don’t know what it is called in English, so the achievement in conveying what I wanted in Spanish is all the more exhilarating. Secondly I am (justly) satisfied that I knew that an iron was involved in the sticking of the strips. I still loathed all aspects and therefore cannot claim that DIY has replaced book buying as my major hobby.
The books which had been gathering dust on top of the living room Billys are now expansively set out on the commodious shelving of the new office Billy and that structure has even managed to find book space for those volumes that were resting on the tops of books on the shelves elsewhere.
I can only pity those hapless creatures that do not find please of the most intense kind in the expansion of a book collection into new areas allowing a further rearrangement of the library. It is a form of bibliophile colonization where I, like a latter day King Leopold, impose arbitrary separations, conjunctions and continuations based on my personal whims. Dr Johnson’s description (slightly altered) of John Donne’s metaphors could apply to some of the volumes I have placed next to each other on my shelves 'the most heterogeneous books are yoked by violence together' – but it makes sense to me and gives me pleasure! The argument of colonial masters through the ages!
The new found order has even found its way into what was, almost literally, a writhing snake pit of chaos. I refer of course to the ‘wages of sin’ that comes with a love of gadgets: the leads and their power sources!
Every attempt to bring order to this Hydra monster of intertwining coils of multi headed incompatibility results in further chaos. If you keep the leads in the boxes it takes up far too much room. If you keep the leads in a drawer they ‘knot and gender’ like Othello’s toads. If you leave them in different places you invariably forget which lead fits which appliance. Every expedient evinces endless energy. And if you have spare sets of earphones anywhere near power leads then they act like convolvulus and tie everything together more neatly than sellotape.
The answer, as to so much else, lies in IKEA.
There is a subsidiary structure linked to the Billy called a Benko (or is that a Chinese meal?) or something. This is a tall, thin piece of furniture which, when constructed, has twelve squarish sections ostensibly for storing CDs. It is perfect for the power leads, plugs and adaptors. You can even fit in the item like a camera, ipod or Nintendo Lite. Just because I have listed only three items I do not want you think that nine sections are now empty. No, all sections are filled and my mind strays to planting the flag of order on further necessary purchases from the Swedish Saviour.
But they have to be built, so a little respite would not come amiss.
“Human kind,” as T S Eliot almost said, “cannot bear very much tidiness.”
How true!
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