Tidying

I’m knackered. Much earlier than usual.

I’ve been shifting things around in the flat and trying to reduce clutter. It’s a very big job. There are many oubliettes. It can be quite satisfying to sort things, but it can be tiring as well. Is this your jumper? Once things are a bit better organised I might shinto the fuck out of it with Marie “definitely something fundamentally wrong with that human being” Kondo.

Sometimes I hit on a huge pile of papers that can pretty much entirely go in the bin. I salvage the one single item that I don’t need to throw away, and chuck the rest. That can be satisfying if I don’t spend too long wondering why I didn’t do it years ago. Other times I find things that are memories in one way or another. Cards or letters or trinkets or what-have-you. Sometimes I can be ruthless with these – I can hold them for a moment and think of the happy time long gone, and then I can put them gently into the bin. Other times they carry too much. They go into the “for later” pile… There are some items that have survived several such purges over decades and will likely continue to defy me until some poor fucker has to come and work out what the hell I’ve left lying around once I finally kark it. Then they’ll go in the bin, so its worth remembering that that’s their eventual destination. It occasionally helps with the need to be ruthless. My uncle Peter left me with the job of sorting through boxes and boxes of his filthy papers and rennies. Occasionally I would find a little gold cufflink. I didn’t even keep the best of what I found. It took me most of a week to sort all his junk and it felt like closure. I remember thinking at the time that I wouldn’t wish that job on anybody. Hopefully it’ll be a decade or five yet before somebody has to do that with my stuff and ideally it’ll make a lot more sense by then than it does now.

I’m in bed. This Covid has not helped my energy levels. I’m so tired. I’ve been used to fighting a pathogen with all of my immune system. And I am punchdrunk. I’m not used to doing much at all recently. Thankfully I was fit as a fiddle after a month of Carol when it kicked off so it’s just a tidal slide. I’ll be back to fitness in no time. I’ll have to be. Because the world is gonna wake up and I’m gonna run with it when it does…

Meantime I’m guiltlessly going to have both an early bed and a lie in.