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| Squalid enough to require a tidy-up? |
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| Problem solved but ashes remain |
I should have used my camera. It was truly impressive, even frightening. But I’m a words-man, I don’t instinctively think in terms of photos. Here’s the story.
Years ago I posted an image of my study on Tone Deaf. Stella – a commenter now departed to Twitter, alas – described what she saw as a mancave. My first encounter with the word; it stuck in my mind.
Over the years my mancave has become progressively more squalid. Worse still, it’s become less efficient. I just can’t find stuff. Time to tidy up, to start discarding the ramparts of rubbish. Tax statements that go back to the early oughties; investment data that’s a decade out of date.
Which means the squalor coefficient has got even worse (see pic). But, then, I must suffer to make myself more comfortable.
But here’s the problem. One cannot merely throw away old tax statements; who knows into whose hands they may fall. They need to be destroyed.
I do have a shredder but the work is painfully slow. Two or three sheets at a time.
I don’t have an incinerator as such but I do have a chimenea, its more civilised sibling. An under-used device. First step: knock on neighbours’ doors and ask their permission to temporarily pollute the local environment. Permission given.
Take a handful of paper, screw into ball, drop ball down chimenea’s chimney, more balls, a drop of methylated spirit, then a lighted match.
And wow! Flames almost a metre high roaring up out of the chimney. I was entranced. And delighted by the speed of destruction; problem solved in less than an hour.
But all I’ve got is the aftermath. No spectacular flames for you all. Just a metal basket full of ashes.
VR says such ashes may benefit the garden. Can anyone confirm?
Lol, anytime men, and fire starter is involved....you do know males are pyromaniacs. Sandi
ReplyDeleteSandi: men are nevertheless in the majority when it comes to putting out fires.
DeleteGoogle "Are ashes okay for the garden" and you'll get your answer. Making that fire sounds like a lot of fun.
ReplyDeleteColette: The answer would be less interesting than a conversation. You never know where chat will lead. Take you , for instance. The good news was I learned about alligators; the bad news being I've forgotten what you said. A passing thought: were your parents influenced by the novels written by a certain French author?
DeleteNo. My mother's family was from Lorraine a few generations back and it is a family name. I am named after my Aunt Colette.
DeleteColette: Ah, c'est damage.
DeleteThat should be "dommage". R
DeleteYour mancave pic. encourages me RR. I thought my equivalent was a mess. I like the idea of burning it all (with care).
ReplyDeleteAs I age and arthritis takes hold I increasingly follow Belloc's admonishment to "Lord Finchley" - although far from "wealthy". I now employ a gardener to keep it tidy. Also a "foot lady" to keep them tidy too. For the last two years of my wife's illness and since her death a year ago I endeavoured to try to keep the house clean too. But since the sucess of my first cataract operation I find that the house is not so spick and span as my wife once had it. So have now started to employ a cleaner.
First occasion was last week. A delightful young woman turned up and worked hard for two hours, . She told me she had come over from Nigeria just over a month ago. Asked what she did in Nigeria she replied, "Oh, I completed my Maths PHD at uni before I came". She was now hoping to get a job in IT and was filling in with house cleaning until something turned up. A Maths graduate who applied the same diligence to the cleanliness of my home.She had my admiration.
Avus: The difference being that we decided to get rid of drudgery long before it became a necessity to do so. Our cleaner, for instance, has been with us for over a decade and there were others before her. When it comes to the worst toil of all - gardening - there isn't enough regular work for anything more than once a month so this is handled in a random series of "blizes" by pros.
DeleteI well remember the Damascene moment very early on when VR joined me in retirement. Weekly I cleaned upstairs and she cleaned downstairs. For two hours there was heavy, resentful silence in the house. After which we we rapidly came to an agreement - this wasn't how we envisaged retirement.
As a result we passed on the work to others (What better way to spend money?). VR joined a series of art groups and routinely broke her record of reading 220 books a year; I ran a blog, wrote four novels, some 40 - 50 short stories (New collection soon to be published), taught myself how to write just-about-adequate verse, swam a mile twice a week, and - in 2018 - took up singing lessons.
In short we did what we wanted to do, not what we had to do. New things too. Oh, and, together, we explored rural Wales, an unexpected side-effect of moving to Hereford. Curiously - because it was entirely unplanned - retirement brought us closer to the rest of our family. Hence our eight-strong holidays
Now both of us, in our mid-eighties, are in the last phase of our lives. the losing battle against illness. But when we talk over lunch we have something new and - most important - CURRENT to talk about, rather than gloomy revelations about different ways of cleaning the bog. On the whole productivity allows us to avoid nostalgia.
"We've been lucky," VR once said. I demurred: "We saw things clearer."
Avus: How could I have forgotten? Weekly French lessons that started in 1972 (time off work decreed by a very benign employer) and which continued into retirement, only coming to an end when Pat, my gentle Quaker teacher, died. I held her hand as she lay dying in the hospice and I offered to sing (quietly) some Schubert I was currently learning. No, she said (she was a very good choral singer), she would not wish that - sensing, I suspect, that it would be, at best, WIP. So I made do with the far less ambitious When I Survey The Wondrous Cross, and she approved of that.
DeleteI realised something, just now. Doing new stuff brought me into contact with new people (even writing did this) and thus I profited from not wasting time Hoovering.
Having been admonished on several occasions by you for me continuing to photograph landscape instead of the gash in my leg, or the passer-by with a funny hat or whatever else other than the boring, I had a little chuckle at your own failings in that direction.
ReplyDeleteI too have one of those chimney things. I only used it once. After finishing laying decking I had a lot of tanalised timber offcuts and enjoyed a merry evening of burning accompanied by daughter Jill. Afterwards I was telling Gimmer, my lifelong friend who has a chemistry degree, and he was appalled. He told me treated timber of that kind contains all sorts of noxious chemicals, from memory, mercury, and possibly arsenic and others. That was over ten years ago and that iron contraption dwells unused, unloved, and rusting away in a remote part of my garden.
Sir Hugh: How, then, do you get rid of out-of-date bumf which nevertheless carries private information that you wouldn't want to fall into other hands. Bank statements, for instance.
ReplyDeleteI have just replaced my shredder of 20 plus years. I''m not sure what the recommended number of say A4 pages are permitted at a time but that shredder performed heroically over those years. I fed it with double or treble the allowed number, it creaked and groaned, and occasionally objected asking me to clear its throat. I am not usually prone to abusing machinery and the like, but this was an exception to satisfy my compulsion to rid myself of all that stuff and I was able to get rid of large amounts fairly quickly. In view of Shredder One's performance for which I awarded it the VC I have replaced it with another OF THE SAME MAKE, by the way the new one now shreds vertical and horizontal at the same time and I am thinking of going into the confetti business.
ReplyDeleteSir Hugh: I was given a shredder as a present about a decade ago. Passing more than, say, five sheets of A4 through it caused it to jam. Declogging it was awkward and took time. So the work was slow and utterly boring. I pondered replacing it but in a quick trawl - and without spending too much money - it seemed as if there were no shredders capable of any significant increase in throughput.
DeleteWhat I faced was getting rid of several hundred A4 sheets. Using the cheminea, this was done and dusted in less than an hour. Under certain circumstances the cheminea issued smoke rather than flame but this was the result of how the paper was loaded and was corrected in minutes. The intensity of the flame seemed to ensure there was no air pollution. Thus my pre-warned neighbour was not discommoded.
I'm puzzled by your attitude to your cheminea. You put the wrong stuff into it and now hold it in contempt. You say your shredder gets rid of stuff "fairly quickly" but you don't say how much stuff.
There is a further (possible) problem about shredding. I have vague memories going back many years that Hereford Council would not accept shredded stuff from domestic sources. In fact over the years I have got rid of small amounts of shreddies via the recycling bin without incurring their wrath. I assume that if this prohibition means anything at all it is only invoked when private users overdo the amounts.
Again your initial premise is faulty. I bitterly regret not recording the cheminea's efficiency. But I was transfixed by the sight and sound of it and my mind was devoted to this spectacle. It blotted out more mundane considerations. I'll record a future conflagration.
And oh the delight of more shelf space in the mancave.
I can't let this go, trivial as it all is. I have just counted accurately 50 sheets of A4 and put them through my shredder timing with a stopwatch. It took exactly 2min.
ReplyDeleteThat equals 1500 A4 sheets per hour. There were no jams. I didn't have to go outside or clear up any mess afterwards. I didn't have to get permission from my neighbours, and I was not bored, more elated at unburdening myself from a pile of rubbish. I have been doing this since specified recycling has been operative, perhaps more than ten years, and have had no objection to my shredding going into the paper bin. Your words "I should have used my camera" clearly indicates that that was the "missed opportunity" you referred to: if not there is an ambiguity.
The fact that you question me for spurning the cheminea leads me to say that I have no wish to be sitting out in the garden whilst the vagaries of the wind blows smoke into my face and insects bite, and wind blows things off the table, and however compliant the neighbours may seem I am feeling that they may not be so amongst themselves, especially if the session is prolonged into the evening as a social event..
Perhaps it's just that I have a crap shredder. Also I I allow the bumf to accumulate.
ReplyDelete