STUFF and nonsense

Part Fifteen

Back in Blighty and back to reality (existential question… which one is reality, and come to that, what is reality anyway??). As soon as I left Ireland it seems the rain swept in to fill the gap. I have been receiving regular updates from my mate, whose husband is having some building work done. Builders crack features heavily in the photos.

This is NOT 'Himself'... he insisted I say this....

I suppose once the weather closes in there isn’t much to look at?

 Several people have expressed an interest in staying at the cottage, but so far none have actually made it there. This is a slight problem as it needs to earn it’s keep. The Irish government is perpetually devising new and interesting ways to screw money from anyone foolish enough to enter it’s realm. One of the more recent schemes is to introduce a compulsory charge for the TV licence, whether or not you possess the means to watch said TV (I don’t). Apparently the minister Pat Rabbite (yes, really!) pronounced that there were no cavemen in Ireland (a caveman, or presumably woman is one who does not have the means by which to view the delights of the national TV stations). Personally I cannot think of a reason why one might want to, as a state owned institution it is possibly just a mouthpiece for the government, who are all mouthpiece as it is!

http://www.irishtimes.com/culture/media/ireland-free-of-cavemen-rabbitte-assures-us-1.1507106

Anyway, I returned fuelled with determination to finally finish my painting. As with all the best laid schemes, it went slightly awry. Before I could re commence the battle with the decorating, I had a very important birthday party to attend, that of my one year old grand daughter. It’s all a bit of a blur now, but that could be due to all those balloons I had to inflate…

So many balloons.... No wonder I was hyperventilating (we had to save on the helium in case we ran out, so about half these are blown up)

 Of course this meant that I had to leave the dog ooop North with Himself. After about a week (in which he had failed to appear and assist with the painting) I capitulated and drove up to fetch her. The intention was to stay for a night or two (with any luck he might remember my birthday and take me out for a romantic meal….there might even be such frivolities as champagne, flowers and chocolate….). No such luck! I got a card. Then I assisted with clearing out a flat. This made me sneeze a great deal. I believe I may have left small portions of my brain distributed in crumpled up hankies. It also amazed me that so much stuff can be contained in a relatively small space. I mean why do we need so much extraneous matter? I know I’m guilty too, clearing the house was an object lesson in why so much stuff is pointless. You don’t need it, and it drags you down, but still you accumulate it. Somehow, as a species, we have bought into the idea that the more crap we accumulate, the better our lives will be. The reverse seems to be true, and it’s not doing the planet any good either!

Although he will vehemently deny it, Himself is a menace for this. His house is littered with a collection of tools and assorted gadgets that were a) a bargain and b) essential. Many of them remain in their original packaging and make it almost impossible to find the thing you really DO need. In the space of a week we lost two sets of keys and a bag of some vital electronic bits which I wouldn’t recognise if they landed on me from a great height.

Many a happy hour spent playing 'hunt the key'.....

In the course of clearing the flat he regularly became distracted by the hundreds of photographs in bags and albums. I made a resolution there and then (no, not a resolution to smother him at the first opportunity, although the thought crossed my mind) to leave my children nothing more onerous than a small collection of flashdrives, which will probably be unreadable and may be safely recycled. I’m sure our ancestors never managed to accumulate so much STUFF. A few faded photos of people you don’t recognise and three quarters of a china teaset maybe? Everything else was pretty much organic and rotted away eventually. When Himself threatened to shuffle off his mortal coil ahead of schedule a few years ago, one of the foremost fears in many minds was ‘what the hell are we supposed to do with all that STUFF???’ There isn’t a skip big enough in the whole world, added to which is the constant fear that you might be discarding something obscure but incredibly important/valuable.

When I first bought the cottage I had high ideals about clean living, that is to say, I didn’t wish to surround myself with unnecessary crap. Guess what happened????

Stuff....

Yet more stuff...

Even more stuff...

So much bloody stuff!!!!

Just to make matters worse, I am toying with the idea of making more pointless objects in the hope of selling them to people who don’t need them. The good news is they will be made from recycled materials… mostly.

Spot the lizard? Would YOU buy this?

I have attempted to keep up with the photography, both oop North and down south, but it’s been a bit disappointing. There’s something missing. Ireland perhaps?

Can you spot which photos were taken where?......

For the moment I have retired to my mattress (my only remaining item of furniture) as I have a mysterious lurgy which I have been nursing for several months now. Having extracted about a gallon of blood for testing, the doctor claims there is nothing wrong with me. This fails to explain why I am developing a neck like a bullfrog, I am almost certain this cannot be psychosomatic. 

And a bit more stuff to finish off....