The noise!

 

 

I am beginning to suspect that the lengthy and noisy ‘reformation’ of the house next door is being done solely to drive us to distraction and out!

     Houses here have tile floors throughout; the bathrooms are tiled and so are the stairs – this means that if a new occupier wants to renovate there is a quantity of loud banging to replace the coverings.  As we live in a conjoined house, and as those houses have a framework of concrete, all thwacks against one part of the structure is seamlessly transmitted to the adjoining houses giving a reproduction of the attacks that cannot be bettered by a Bose loudspeaker.  We have been living through a positive battlefield of noise for months!

     Today, apart from a few desultory hammer knocks almost for ‘old time’s sake’ the noise is now emanating from the front approach to the house where a walkway is being extended to cover the whole of the front ‘garden’.  Nothing really grows in our front gardens because of the overshadowing pine trees where lack of sunshine and a covering of pine needles ensures that the ground is vegetation free – apart from the needles.  The laying of footpath slabs is not in itself noisy, but the radio turned up full to accompany the labours of the workmen is.  I have retreated to the opposite side of the house and am typing in relative tranquillity.

     I am very well aware that typing such stuff is an open invitation to the Gods of Perversity to fill the silence with the hammering-by-proxy that has become so much an irritating part of our lives.  And, even as I type the low timpani roll of hammer thuds rings out from next door!

     There is always something to keep me grumbling!

The first responses to the pre-publication copies of The eloquence of broken things have started to trickle in and they are positive and encouraging.  What I need to do is think more about marketing and publicity, which I am sure can be just as intellectually satisfying when done properly as producing the writing in the first place!  But I am constantly beset by the signal disadvantages of writing in a foreign language in Catalonia and writing poetry too!  Niche in a niche!

     I will have to reach out more to the cultured ex-pats who might actually read what I’ve written!

Put it down to experience!

An underwhelming evening at the opera

I am constantly aware of how niche going to the opera is, especially sitting as I do in one of the more expensive seats in the Liceu, surrounded by the good and the great of the cultural scene in Barcelona.  I do my bit for egalitarianism by wearing sandals and jeans, but it doesn’t alter the fact that I am (generally speaking) surrounded by the white, the elderly and the middle class.  Count the number of balding men exiting a performance at the opera and you will begin to fear for the survival of this art form after another generation or two!

            It doesn’t have to be like this of course.  In some parts of the world going to the opera is a normal and relatively inexpensive experience.  But there is no way of producing good opera cheaply.  Think about it: there is an opera house, seats, a stage, sets, lighting, soloists, costumes, a chorus, technicians, an orchestra and so on and so on.  Opera is an expensive business and it is only ‘affordable’ with subsidy.  That subsidy is either via ticket prices or via public finance.  I am well aware that, expensive as my ticket might be, it would be a damn sight more expensive without government help!

            It all comes down to whether you think that opera as an art form is worth subsidising to make it more available to a greater range of punters.  As far as I am concerned, opera at its best successfully combines so many different art forms that the resultant melange is exhilarating.

            And sometimes it isn’t.

            And the performance of La Clemenza di Tito by Mozart in the Liceu last night was one of those underwhelming evenings that makes you question the expense.

            La Clemenza is an opera seria: a serious opera, historical and heavy with moral worth and interminable continuo.

            The legendary ‘mercy’ of the Emperor Titus was chosen as a subject matter to flatter Leopold II as part of the celebrations for his coronation as king of Bohemia.  Opera seria was the preserve of the nobility and played to their predilections, but it doesn’t necessarily play to ours.

            Even though the opera includes love, fidelity, betrayal, rebellion, arson, confusion and moral dilemma it is a fairly static piece with most of the real action being the inner turmoil of the individual characters expressed in recitative or decorated aria.

            At the end of the first act I understood why this opera had had a century and a half of obscurity before its modern rediscovery.

            The opening of the opera gave an opportunity for the Orquestra Simfònica conducted by Phillipe Auguin to show its ability in the playing of the overture and in this, as throughout the opera the playing was nuanced and authoritative.  While the orchestral playing was excellent the stage picture of the opening of the opera was less convincing.  The scenery was drab and literally clunky and the sombre, black uniformed figures of the praetorian guard formed a circle around a shrouded figure and did nothing else for minutes until, towards the end of the opening music they pushed the plinthed figure into an alcove up stage and allowed Roman architecture on wheels to form a frame for the opening numbers.

            Myrtò Papatanasiu as Vitellia had a good stage presence but I felt her voice sometimes lacked conviction.  She certainly rose to the occasion in her final aria, but I remained unconvinced.  Stéphanie d’Oustrac as Sesto moved around the stage well and had a dramatic presence, with a tendency to melodrama and a voice that was more than competent.  Annio, sung by Lidia Vinyes-Curtis, was always a lively presence and, although I found her voice a trifle too nasal for my liking, she played her part well.

            The eponymous role of Tito Vespasiano was taken by Paolo Fanale whose lightish tenor voice was pleasant within the middle range but became harsh at the top end of his register.  He lacked the commanding quality that would have made his presence on stage striking.

            For me, the stand-out voice of the evening was that of Anne-Catherine Gillet singing the role of Servilia, a voice that was thrillingly immediate.

            The chorus were their usual characterful selves, and it would have been good to have had more of their work enlivening this drawn-out entertainment.

            The end of the opera had a moment that I wished had informed more of the preceding couple of hours.  As the tediously magnanimous emperor walked upstage after forgiving everyone for everything, his praetorian guard suddenly turned on him and the last stage picture was of a suggestion of another rebellion.  This ‘false note’ runs counter to the thrust of the original intent of the piece but it did add a (tragically too late) indication of how the staging could have been more interesting.

            If this review seems unduly negative, then that’s how I feel.  There were good things in this piece, and some of the ensemble music was captivating – but recitative leaves me cold and I left the opera with a feeling of shaking the dust off my sandals and hoping that this is a production that will not see a revival over the next decade or so.

And I was ripped-off for the Indian meal that I had before the start of the performance.  But let it pass.  Let it pass.

The next opera is Lohengrin which I am ashamed to admit I have never seen in a full performance!

Back again!

 

Old habits die hard.  Or at least they have a way of rising zombie-like from time lost in laziness or indifference.

This writing is a case in point.  I am using, not my newish laptop bought after extensive trawling through reviews and at least one expensive mistake, but my old trusted MacBook Air.  Although I have abjured the buying of new Apple machines after the shameless pricing of the latest iteration of the Apple Watch, I am ever drawn to my MacBook Air.  It is the only piece of computer technology which, even after the decade (or ‘century’ in computer age years) of use that it has given, it still looks the business and its svelte metallic appearance still makes it a little object of desire. 

I understand (horror of horrors!) that the Apple logo does not light up on the latest versions of the machine – that surely is a travesty!  I speak as someone who bought an entire music system (there are three words that you don’t often see together nowadays) because it met two of my basic requirements: it had to have lots of flashing lights and the cassette eject system had to open in slow motion.  The user may not see the illuminated logo, but other people do and they either feel a fellowship with the user that they can see, or they know themselves cast into the other darkness of lost souls with dead logos.  It may not add to the operating system but the light from the logo paradoxically puts others in the shadow.

Little things are important.  And they are not ‘little’ either.  The last time that an Apple Dealer saw my MacBook Air when I was trying to update the system, he described it as ‘Vintage’, as all machines over five years old are described!  That lustrum is the age of a Secondary School generation as it progresses from Year 7 to Year 11, and I suppose that kids in Year 11 looking back to their younger selves in Year 7 would wholeheartedly agree that anything that they liked and admired when fresh-faced first formers (forgive my own regression to out-dated nomenclature there) playing ancient games on their outmoded mobile phones in those far-off times!

But the look and the feel of the MacBook Air from 2010 still looks good, still makes other machines look clunky and somehow stodgy.  So, in spite of the fact that my (expensive, compact and powerful) Dell is within a hand’s reach, I am typing on the Mac.

And typing a blog entry.  I have been very remiss over keeping up my blog and it has become very much an Occasional Feast for me instead of the Daily Duty that it was at one time.  My self-protestations that I will produce a piece of writing every day, have been empty, and each day without writing makes it easier to add a further day to the dilatory approach.  But today, today I feel inspired to put finger to key and get back into the habit.

Why, you might ask.  The sad reason is that I have left my mobile phone upstairs and I am too lazy to go up and get it.  My morning schedule includes going the quick crossword in the Guardian and I usually complete that on my phone.  I can do the crossword on my iPad, but I have allowed the battery to run down and I have had to put it on charge.  I could, of course, use the very computer that I am typing on now to do the crossword, but doing the crossword on the computer smacks of slight perversity – so, it was either sitting down sipping tea and trying to look demure; going up stairs to get the phone, or setting-to and writing.

Today I had a lie-in and didn’t go for my usual early morning swim, so the opportunity to write in my notebook after my swim had been taken away.  Yes, I know that I can write in my notebook at any time, but I do it after my swim, so I hope that you begin to see that ‘circumstances’ have conspired to get me writing another entry for my long ignored blog, because ‘historically’ most of the entries for my blog have been written on the machine that I am using now, my Mac.

So, from the dark days of wordlessness, I lurch towards the light of articulacy and prose.

As someone who find the style of ‘Tristram Shandy’ eminently natural in its predilection for digression, I do not find it at all surprising that I have taken the best part of a couple of typed pages to say, “I’m writing a blog entry.”  And I now feel that I can get on with what might be appreciated as actual subject matter.

Since Christmas, indeed since a little before Christmas, we have been beset by noise.  Now, Catalonia is not a quiet place (although, paradoxically it is only the lingering sounds of the tail end of Toni’s cough that echo through the house at the moment) but we have had the cacophonous horror of the house next door being completely renovated.  As far as we can appreciate, this involves hitting all wall, floor and ceiling surfaces an infinite number of times with hammers.  As we live in a group of five conjoined houses, structural sound in one is seamlessly transferred to the others – and even more so if you live next door.  As far as I can tell, the workmen must have hit every square inch of the surface and each of those blows we feel.

One Sunday (sic) the noise was so intense that I couldn’t hear the radio in our living room.  I complained, but if the work needs to be done, what can I reasonably expect?  This is what you get when the skeleton of our houses is concrete; hit one part of the frame and it is shared with all!

This evening, Opera, Mozart’s last, La Clemenza di Tito – and not one that I know particularly well, but I am open to being enthused by the production, and of course the music!

When I go to the opera I take the opportunity in the interval to go to the Café de l’Opera in the Ramblas and scribble a few notes about the production with a view to writing a review in the blog.  I have again been rather remiss here too and my notes have remained notes.  Today, however, I will assume that tomorrow I write and post the review!

Talking of writing.   The production of my latest book, The eloquence of broken things[1], has been beset by problems.  The pdf of the book was used for the print but, for reasons that have not been discovered, a double series of printing errors made their way to the finished books.  The printer has not been able to explain how a good pdf copy produced faulty final product.  A reprint was necessary and I am more than pleased with the results.  But.  In reading through and admiring my and the printer’s handiwork, I noticed a typo in one of the first poems!  This could not be put down to the faulty printing; this was a proof reading error.  By the time I noticed it, it was too late to change anything.

I decided to make the best of a bad job and therefore wrote an insert ‘celebrating’ and explaining the error in a poetic mea culpa, tucked inside the front cover – each copy individually initialled to make it more official!

The poem is included here as part of the lead up to the publication of the collection.

 

Erratum

p.14,  l.2,  w.6
for hr read her

Within a Turkish rug’s

expensive symmetry

is woven an intentional false note –

because perfection’s the preserve of god,

and not of stumbling, imperfect Man.

But, isn’t there an arrogance

in saying, “Yes, of course there’s that –

but all the rest . . . !”  As if

parading of a self-made fault

limits additional faux pas?

It’s Baldrick’s bullet[2]. 

Logic?  False!

Yet it’s a way of life we all adopt

because we live inelegant reality,

not textbook-sharp, black-outlined clarity.

Mistakes and errors?  That’s who we are!

Come with the territory.

Flaws are the marbling of life.

We have to say.

Because it’s inescapable.

I’d read and read again

the poem that contains the fault,

and yet not seen the missing ‘e’

until the final print was done

and it was then too late to change.

The sticking-plaster-sized

erratum slip is grudgingly applied

accepting and bewailing

my falling short.

But, what are vowels in the scheme of things?

Thngs tht cn b thghtlssly gnrd –

and still the consonantal frame

allows a certain fluency. 

If there had only been a gap

the reader could have,

would have, filled it in

without a thought.

But these are cavils

trying hard to justify

imperfect sight.

I should regard the ‘humbling by slip’         

as something more akin to public sacrifice:

(expiation, celebration,

for inexact humanity)

than hoping that,

in spite of all the odds,

the misprint, all alone,

is by itslf.

---

[1] Rees, SM. (2020) The eloquence of broken things, Barcelona, Praetorius Books.

[2] Private S. Baldrick, Captain Blackadder’s idiot batman is caught inscribing his name on a bullet when in the trenches in 1917, his explanation is, “I thought if I owned the bullet with my name on it, I’d never get hit by it.”  Blackadder Goes Forth Series 4, Episode 1.  First broadcast 28^th September 1989, 9.30 pm on BBC1, written by Richard Curtis and Ben Elton.

All Brexit Eve

Loping towards the burning fires fuelled with the broken hopes of gullible voters, the knuckle dragging denizens of comfortable wealth look towards their warm future with undisguised relish as they realize that, once again, the people who could have made a difference have, once again, voted against their own interests and allowed the arrogant, the privileged, the entitled and the callous to do what they do best: gloat.

As with virtually all aspects of Brexit, the idea that today is the eve of something tangible is actually as diaphanous as the reality that the Liars’ Liar paraded during the election campaign.  There will be no real Brexit tomorrow.  Things will go on going on and little will actually be settled.  The only actualite will be the issuing of a “celebratory” 50p piece (without the Oxford comma) which at least gives we Remainers something concrete to spurn!

Meanwhile, whatever the tousled-haired tosser says, the interminably sad saga of Brexit goes on.  And on.  And on.  He might be able to ban the word itself from the discourse of government, but Brexit is yet to be achieved.

Amazingly (or not, if you have been following the tortuous and torturing progress of the Conservative Party throwing the country under the bus [the one with 350m quid on its side] to persevere its existence) we still do not actually know what has really been decided and we still have no confidence that we will depart with a comprehensive deal.

At least in Spain we Brits think that we have some sort of deal which allows us to sleep at night, with pension and healthcare taken care of – unless things fall apart, and we do eventually crash out finally and catastrophically.  For we people, Brits living in Europe (or rather The Rest of Europe as Britain has decided that it is not part of the continent on whose shelf it is perched) we have another eleven months of uncertainty as we see our futures in the hands of the third-rate chancers that now govern us, being used as bargaining chips in what will surely turn out to be a depressingly one sided negotiation.

I don’t want this to turn into yet another Moan from somebody who has still not come to terms with the result – though it is difficult (if not impossible) to get the sense of unreality out of one’s mind.  The British electorate have done what they have done, for whatever reasons and we have to accept that the system by which we are governed allows this travesty to happen.

It would be easy to roam around Cassandra-like bemoaning the horrible reality, but one has to try and fine something positive to take from the debacle.

I once asked my mother whether she had considered that Britain could have lost when she was living through World War Two and she replied that she never, for one moment, ever considered the prospect of defeat.  I pointed out that there were times when the situation of Britain looked dire and the German military machine looked unstoppable.  She accepted that there had been bad times, but, as she put it, “I always knew that we would muddle through!  Eventually.”

You could, of course look at that sort of attitude as one of self-delusion – but she was right.

I have often thought about my mother’s attitude during the bleaker times of the on-going process of Brexit and thought that the British do seem to have a sort of ability to “muddle through” and “make the best of it” no matter how negative things look.

I do not wish my country ill.  I want the country to prosper.  I want a decent NHS and education and transport.  I want full employment and so on.  I have absolutely no desire to see my country come to harm just so that I can point towards the architects of the chaos and say, “I told you so!”  That petty triumph will mean the defeat of so many who are less able to defend themselves than the comfortable hypocrites of the Conservative Party as they carefully move their wealth off-shore or to EU states so that they can buttress themselves against the storm that the self-inflicted harm of Brexit could bring.

We might have made things more difficult for ourselves, but those are the obstacles that we have to surmount.  And I am sure that we will.  We will find a way to play our part in the continent of which we are, self-evidently, a crucial part.  But, just like Universal Credit, a reasonable idea badly administered will have casualties.  People will die, as they have done as a result of IDS’s botched fiasco.  But the casualties need to be limited.

I feel resentment and anger about what is going to be done in my name.  But resentment and anger are negative and the division that has and will rip the country apart must, somehow be overcome if we all are to prosper.

I will be nauseated by any celebration of the dark day that Brexit signifies, but more important than my disgust is my willingness to work to mitigate the effects of the policy and to remember that a country is composed of more than Guardian readers. And listeners to Radio 4. 

And that is something that I will have to accept.  All societies are plural and diverse.  Let us hope that the obvious talent and enterprise of our country can show a way to bring us together.

I wait to be convinced.

Unshaven and un-swum

 

It takes time to realize that some things that you usually do, do not necessarily have to be done.

I won’t list the little things that we do that only have the power of frequency or habit to recommend them, but if you think about your day there will be all sorts of actions and ‘rituals’ that you do that could be scrapped at a moment’s notice and your life would be better.  Or at least different.

These thoughts (if they can be dignified with that appellation) have been prompted by the fact that we came back from Terrassa after a family celebration quite late.  As we get up at 6 am (sic) any lateness to bed is penalized by the rapidly approaching morning!  So we were both tired today and the ride to work was more than usually taciturn.  But, we got there in time, indeed with enough time to spare for Toni to have an early morning coffee to give him the necessary caffeine fix to get through to the breakfast break.

As I stuttered by way past the series of red lights in Cornella on my way home, a thought struck me.  I didn’t have to go to work.  And (traitorous thought) I didn’t have to have my swim.  Now, not swimming (in spite of the fact that I enjoy the activity) is something that I constantly had to deal with on my way back from school at the end of the day when I was working.  I had an (expensive) membership of the David Lloyd Centre and that august institution had not only a fair sized indoor pool, but also a far more bracing outdoor one. 

But, at the end of the day I was tired and disinclined to swim.  I would spend the distance from school to home debating with myself about whether I really wanted to go for a swim, because, after all, I had had a swim in the morning, or would I rather have a proper cup of tea at home.  This debate would go on until I found myself (somehow) in the car park of the David Lloyd Centre.  And I would go and have a swim.

Now that I am retired, I find that I am made of sterner stuff.  The dictum, “You are tired, go to bed” seemed to me to have the authority of sacred law.  So, in spite of the fact that the swimming pool is directly on my return route, I veered away from the entrance and came home and went back to bed.  And I feel better for it!

I will not laze around too much, after all I have the liquid accusation of a communal swimming pool just outside the back garden gate to urge me to take my accustomed exercise, even if it is a little later than usual.

And then there is the indulgence of being unshaven.  In the (early) morning I just have a cursory wash and brush my teeth (not so cursorily) because I have a shower and a shave after my swim.  Which in my case I have not had.  So it is now a question of which comes first?  The cup of tea, the swim, or ablutions.

What obviously came first was this piece of writing which is something that characterises my approach to life: if in doubt, write.  So having written, I think I will have a swim, then a shower and shave and then a lingering cup of tea on the terrace on the third floor - and an introduction to the rest of the day!

Music as balm?

For the first time, asking Alexa to “Play Classical Music!” I have been provided with something other than blatantly recognizable Bach.  Though I have to admit that what I am listening to, although being played on a modern piano, would benefit by being plucked on a harpsichord.  The more I listen to it, the more it sounds like a modern pastiche of the style of something much older.  The great thing, of course, is that I will not find out what the actual piece of music is and so I am safe in what I have written.

As an experiment, I have just asked Alexa what piece of music had just been played.  She answered in a single gnomic word that I didn’t understand, so I asked, “Alexa explain more.”  And I got a neat little explanation of the grammatical uses of the word and a little historical note about Sir Thomas Moore.  Perhaps I should just allow ignorance to lie low!

As the Alexa terminal is hidden behind the computer I usually forget that she is lurking there, unless someone demands something from one of the other terminals scattered around the house and my Alexa jumps to vocalization.  And incidentally, while I have been typing this we have gone from Carmine Burana to Beethoven - it puts me in mind of the worst excesses of Classic FM!

I once listened to whole a day’s worth of Classic FM when I was in a friend’s caravan in Devon where I had sequestered myself because I had to get a piece of written work finished and I needed to be far away from domestic distractions.

The great thing about Classic FM is that it makes all the music it plays sound like sonic wallpaper.  No matter how great the actual music is, the smooth and slightly condescending delivery of the announcers and the sometimes-shocking juxtapositioning of the individual snatches of music means that it all flows together in an unbroken stream of comforting soundliness!

If that sounds dismissive, it isn’t meant to be, as I got the work done and the music obviously did what I wanted it to!

I must admit that I do not listen to as much music as I once did.  Yes, I play (religiously) through the box sets of CDs that I (still) buy for use in the car.  Though my purchases are obviously atavistic: our local computer and electrical store no longer holds CD book-holders, which just emphasises how out of touch I am in still continuing to buy CDs rather than give in and subscribe to Spotify!

I only listen to Radio 3 once in a blue moon, I even forgot to listen to the first night of the Proms and that had a performance of The Glagolitic Mass, I first heard that on an old Supraphon recording that I had in college.  And no, that is not going to be an opportunity taken to vaunt the superiority of the audio on disc rather than the rather more cramped CD.

I find that I am reading more than I am listening to music.  And the reading I am doing is mostly connected to current events, especially in the UK, and specifically political events.  You see how far I am prepared to go before I have to mention the dreaded “B” word.

And I have made an executive decision that I will never refer to the congenital liar who appears to be making his inexorable way to Number 10 Downing Street by his first name (which is of course Alex, and not the one that he has chosen to be referred to as) as I feel not an iota of familiarity or fellow feeling for the odious person that he obviously is.

Next week, I will start the process of applying for Spanish citizenship, as I have no desire to be associated with a country that can allow a character, described by the Guardian’s John Crace as “Priapic Mr Blobby”, to be its Prime Minister. 

Though, there again, will The Country actually allow this lying chancer to take the post?  The Conservatives have a working majority of 3, with the August by-election in Brecon that might well be down to 2 - so all it would take is one principled Conservative (sic!) to change sides for the majority to be wiped out, to say nothing of the machinations of the Neanderthals in the DUP whose bought loyalty to the Conservatives is problematic.

So, can May (you remember, she used to be that vicious Home Secretary and useless Prime Minister) in all conscience (I used the word lightly in terms of the ethics of the present day Conservatives) recommend the kipper-waving liar to Brenda, the unelected (so they will have something in common) nonagenarian Germanic dwarf?

I can hardly wait for the next exciting episode of the tediously unimaginative soap opera that political life has become nowadays.

Meanwhile I continue with my writing and preparing books for publication, which in the circumstances has more in common with Madame Defarge’s knitting than any cultural activity!  

Though, alas, without the end result of execution!

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'Tidy!' - the visual accusation!

“No reason at all!” is the best reason in the world to take up the keys and start typing out a continuation of this blog.  It has been far too long since I have availed myself of the therapeutic exercise of indulging my proclivity to prolixity!

The real reason for my writing today is because of tidying.

I am not, it has to be admitted, a congenitally tidy person.  I know (as every messy liver will aver) where things are in ‘a general sort of way’ even if I find it difficult to be anything more than vague about absolute location.

But there comes a point in any Clutter-Man’s life when simple entrance and egress is made difficult by the sheer weight and substantiality of stuff.  To put it simply, I was finding the way to my desk on the third floor more and more of an obstacle course.  And painful too.  The third floor interior area is the equivalent of the attic and, while it is open to the stairs (and has its own terrace) it does have a sharply sloping roof/ceiling on one side and, if you are trying to navigate your way through a selection of boxes, furniture and other sundry impedimenta one is apt to forget headroom and until the head in question makes its presence felt by a sharp blow by the ceiling.

In self-defence, therefore, tidying had to be done.  But it is very difficult to tidy when there is no spare space for those things that need tidying to be tidied into.   

The whole process then becomes like a three dimensional slide-a-slate puzzle where you have to push the bits next to the space in an increasingly frustrating sequence before you get what you want where you want it.

So I emptied things out on to the terrace.  This gives the illusion of space, or its reality if you have the strength of will to ignore the rubble just the other side of the glass doors.  There is also the nagging horror of what to do with the stuff that you have merely displaced rather than dealt with.

My solution, as is so often the case, was to go shopping.

Lidl have, this week, a special offer of rather fetching plastic storage boxes.  I also possess a library book trolley that is far too large for the ‘library’ that it was bought for.  So, in a masterly utilization of uselessness I have bedecked the trolley with the new boxes and have attempted to winnow the floor based confusion of papers and cables and things into opaque boxed order.  Since the trolley has wheels, I am also able to move the loaded machine to gain access to bookcases that have long been denied me.  And it has only taken me all week.

And that time has not only been spent on the third floor, but also in the library itself where one part is actually my wardrobe.  Because of the difficult of access (cf. large trolley above) clean clothes tended to amass rather than be put away.  So, before I could get to the trolley I had to tidy away all the flotsam clothes that formed a barrier to exploration of the inner recesses of the bibliophile sanctum wherein the trolley resided.

So, given the amount of stuff that had to be ‘tidied’ (I have put the term in inverted commas because I know that my version of that word gets nowhere near Toni’s definition where he tidies in detail and in depth; my approach is superficial to say the least) I feel proud that it has only taken the best part of a working week to get from chaos to mere unruly clutter.

All of which allows, nay, encourages me to type and write. 

Cui bono?  I leave for you to judge!