image via

I find myself really hating keys at the moment.

I am in the disability field and in most of the places I work, every door I pass through needs to be locked behind me. It’s unbelievable how annoying I find this. It’s necessary for a huge variety of safety reasons and it only takes a few seconds to lock or unlock a door, but all those seconds add up.

It sounds like such a small thing to get annoyed about, but venting my frustration on locks and keys means I tend not to focus as much on the things that really bother me about my job some days. The bigger things that I can’t control, that I cannot fix, that break my heart each day.

via designspiration

After a day consisting of a semi sleep in, a thwarted attempt at breakfast at a new cafe in town, a three hour trip to the city, a late lunch, a visit with relatives, some cricket on the telly (four wickets in one over!), catching the first half of Heart vs Glory, a teary sendoff at the airport and a three hour drive back home…

it’s nice to know that a long shower and a hot cup of tea can still provide something vaguely resembling comfort in the absence of your loved one.

We don’t have an art supply shop in my town. We have Maccas and KFC and Bunnings and Big W and Just Jeans and Sportsgirl and Jay Jays. We have two second hand book stores and a couple that sell fabrics and threads and a candle shop and one music store that’s fairly tiny, but employs people who have pretty good taste and so you can usually find what you’re looking for. We also have Target Country, which is pathetically small and I swear the only stock it carries is all the stuff that’s been rejected from proper Target stores in towns with more than 15,000 people.

But yes… no art supply store. I reckon I could get by if we had an Officeworks because this newly discovered hobby of mine can be mostly satisfied with black ink and watercolour pencils but something tells me that these tentative beginnings will soon sprout into a need to try other mediums and I’m afraid that a quick trip to the newsagents between shifts will just not cut it any more.

via

beat this

via

or this

via

or this?

via

And the sounds and smells! The turn of the page and that musty old book smell. The creases and blots on the cover from the last time you read it. The dust jacket with its own personal inscription from a loved one.

Some of my favourite books are second hand copies that my mum bought me when I was a kid. They have rips and tears and notes in the margins from prior owners. Old library stamps and coffee stains and yellowing curling edges.

Well loved and well lived.

I have moved many times in my life and what do I always unpack first? My books. Their sheer physical presence on my shelves brings me comfort, makes me feel calm.

I will never get that from a shiny flat screen.

You can keep your fancy little e-readers, kids.

I will never surrender!

Pray for us, won’t you?

Totally unrelated track that I stumbled across again the other day and thought was worth a repost:

Spaceships – Patchwork

image via

Earlier this year a friend and I started a book club. There are only six of us and we don’t always have everyone present at our get togethers, but we talk books and movies and work and life and we drink wine, always wine, and we eat yummy things.

Last month we read ‘The Picture Of Dorian Grey’ by Oscar Wilde. Except I didn’t finish it. Shhhh. I had a block. I started it while sitting in the car waiting for the clock to tick over before work and when the five pages I read in that time didn’t really grab me, I found it very hard to go back to it. And so I didn’t. And read five other books instead. Oops.

We did get together earlier this week though to watch the 1997 biopic ‘Wilde’, starring Stephen Fry. It was quite lovely and sad and funny. Mr Wilde was just ridiculously insightful and witty and clever and hilarious.

This quote appeared in the movie

Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness

And this afternoon I’ve been enjoying these also

A man can be happy with any woman, as long as he does not love her.

Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same.

I have nothing to declare except my genius.

I can resist everything except temptation.

Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go.

I visited his grave when I was in Paris a couple of years ago. It was covered in lipstick kisses. These are regularly removed from the headstone by maintenance staff I believe… only to be immediately replaced by more. I love this.

UPDATE: Oh no! Glad I visited when I did – no more lipstick kisses!

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow. ~ Mark Twain

This is advice that sadly, I follow to the letter.

Today I’m throwing open windows and putting fresh sheets on the bed.

I am washing clothes and posting letters and taking photos of my breakfast.

I am deleting emails and returning library books and talking on the phone to my sister.

I am procrastinating. My kitchen is an eyesore.

I am houseproud but strangely unwilling to do the work that results in that happy emotion.

Sigh.

Time to crank up the tunes and bloody well just get on with it.

Blackout – Pickwick | myspace | bandcamp | Love this. Best served loud.

Truth – Alexander | website | Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes side project. Strangely eerie.

The Crane Wife 3 – The Decemberists | website | Last night’s shower song. I let the echoey tiles and water spray trick me into thinking I sounded all kinds of wonderful as I sang along. Apologies to my neighbours.

Due to a snafu at the florist’s they were delivered two days early but having just had a fairly blahhhh start to the day, the timing could not have been more perfect.

I am a ridiculously girly girl this week. I am smiling at strangers and helping people work out how the hell the bloody parking meters in our town operate and offering my newspapers to my neighbour to save her a trip to the newsagent. I am grinning at babies and patting passing dogs and not even caring that it’s been raining on and off for two days now. Today, I don’t hate the rain.

Learnalilgivinanlovin – Gotye

I just sat there, mute, frantically trying to piece together the fragments of the evening and hoping that the drunken phone calls I’d made to my boy would be viewed today as endearing rather than psychotic (they were – phew!) but I didn’t have long to ponder as the taxi driver was obviously a morning person and hadn’t spent his Sunday night getting pissed like I had.

He was lovely, actually, and quite the chatty chauffeur. I got into that car feeling all kinds of shite, all miserable and tired and embarrassed and grrrrr but his peppy conversation distracted me and cheered me right up. As I hopped out I wished him a good day and he said ‘oh love, every day is a good day – as long as you’re above ground I reckon you’re doing ok’. It was such a simple comment and on any other day I probably wouldn’t have taken much notice of it, but I all of a sudden I regained my perspective. It was one night. I didn’t hurt anyone (only my liver. and my pride) and given that I’m usually ridiculously sensible, too sensible at times really, I reckon I’m gonna stop being so hard on myself and allow myself this one.

Agathie Christie said

I have sometimes been wildly, despairingly, acutely miserable,
but through it all I still know quite certainly that just to be alive
is a grand thing

And she was right.

Everything passes. Even the embarrassing recollections of drunken stupidity.

I hope.

German police called to a weekend traffic incident found Jedi master Yoda from Star Wars at the wheel, much the worse for wear after Halloween celebrations. The green-costumed driver had his licence confiscated. “In this case, the force was not with him,” police said.

Totally unrelated yet very enjoyable slice of coverage:

Heart It Races (Architecture in Helsinki Cover) – Dr Dog