Things thrown out and things kept

Our grand Lenten clear-out is going well. Boxes of books have been heaved out of the door, articles of furniture, clothes and kitchen implements – all sorts of things we once thought we couldn’t possibly live without.

Today, I have been tackling a category I never find easy. Back in the days before i-tunes really got going and we all began to keep our music in our phones, when CDs were all the thing, my daughters and I often made each other music compilation CDs for birthday and Christmas gifts. Nowadays we neither make CDs nor give birthday or Christmas gifts, but there is a certain legacy. These things made for me by people I love are among my few treasures.

The CDs were important. My family made them at a time when we were breathtakingly poor, when our family home had gone and we were muddling along in an assortment of made-do dwellings, keeping cheerful by whatever means we could, loving and helping each other along. For a long time I had no car. But when I got one, and work began to pick up, my days were spent tearing around the lanes of Sussex from house to house and church to church, working on funerals and ceremonies of blessing and generally shepherding outlying flocks of the faithful. Sometimes I got so tired I was just reeling. During the time I was married to Bernard and living out at Beckley in his little cottage in Bixley Lane on the verge of Flatropers Wood, I drove miles and miles every day keeping home and family and marriage and work stitched together. Late at night, driving home through the trees under the wild moon, playing music in the car formed the rhythms my tired mind needed just to make it back.

Later, when Bernard had died and I’d married the Badger and moved off to Aylesbury, drifting and lonely away from my family, hemmed in by new hostilities and proliferating difficulties, they sent me CDs of the happiest songs. As I painted the walls and cleaned and cooked, far away from them, their music lifted my spirits and kept me alive. It should have been such a wonderful time, in a new marriage and all – but there were so many difficulties. Even with the Badger, dear and true, those were not easy days.

And today, I got out my little packet of CDs and began the job of sorting them out, uploading and categorizing and labeling them in my i-tunes library. After that, I discarded the actual CDs – put them aside for anyone else in the family to upload who wants to.

But I wanted to show you this one. A Christmas CD Hebe made me in 2008. That was such a low year – the year I finally caved in under all the awful stuff going down and left the Methodist ministry, because I couldn’t work, could hardly hold together.

And Hebe made me this lovely thing – a compilation CD inside a little booklet, called “Before I Sleep”.

I thought you’d like to see the little booklet: 

Before I Sleep

Because it all came together as one thing, even though I’ve uploaded the music into my i-tunes library, I’ll still keep the CD with the leaflet.

It is my ambition to own almost nothing – and one of the beauties of that is the way these few treasures I do own emerge and shine; this is what I value; this is what I have loved. To look at them and handle them and let them take centre stage is one of many surprising gifts of minimalism.

An error of judgement

Oh, for heaven’s sake – why did I do that? Why? How could I have been so myopically, surpassingly stupid? Why haven’t I got an Inner Mother like other people do, to murmur in my internal ear – before I press Send – “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Let me explain. The computer creates firebreaks for me between the various compartments of bewilderment composing my strange personal world.  I wake up in the morning, generally before dawn, and lie stunned for a while, processing my unlikely dreams and redesigning the house, mentally reviewing my possessions and wondering what I can get rid of. After that, before emerging to tangle with whatever life washed up on the shore of this day, I generally vanish into my computer for a while. Before losing a few games of Spider Solitaire, I check my emails.

That particular day last winter, a publicity questionnaire had appeared in my inbox.  They wanted the usual bio, for the Bible Reading Foundation and Woman Alive conference coming up in June – what I’d written, what I planned to speak on, if I wanted a flipchart and whatnot – and, of course, they wanted a photograph.

“Oh, right, no problems,” thought I, struggling to a relative sitting position, pushing my glasses up my nose and composing my features into my best early morning approximation of a smile. Handily, you see, a Mac does a nifty job at taking photos – you just press the little button in the photo booth, fix your determined leer while it counts to three, and there you are. So that’s what I did. Filled in the form, attached the pic, sent it all off and thought no more about it.

Until today. When Woman Alive thudded onto the mat, and I idly flicked through. There, somewhere in the middle, was the page advertising their conference on Women of Peace and introducing the speakers.  Who all had the sense to get out of bed, comb their hair, put some make-up on and swap their dressing gowns for regular day clothes before they took their photographs. Except me. I bet they even washed and cleaned their teeth first as well.

Transfixed with horror I gazed at the photo I’d sent in – which of course I’d completely forgotten about in the meantime. On the bright side, it does look like the kind of woman who would fit right in as a character in the novels I write; an indigent wayfaring down-and-out who lost her way sometime in the 1980s and never made it back to mainstream society, offering rough-hewn sarcastic wisdom about the nature of life and faith.

This is the whole trouble with a writer’s mind. What seems reasonable, what comes naturally – what indeed constitutes real life and daily normality – bears no resemblance to the suave and professional face a shrewd publicist would present to the outer world. Because that’s the thing; I don’t really have an ‘outer world’; just an inner one, all dressing gowns and no makeup. So, if you’re coming to that conference, I’m sorry about that.  I promise to comb my hair and clean my teeth on the day.

I thought, for your amusement, I’d share with you the photo I sent in – in case you don’t read Woman Alive. Although . . . you do, don’t you? It’s an excellent magazine! So I went across to the conference web page to have a look at the speakers, and lo! Some dear, sensitive, shrewd and compassionate soul has swapped out the raddled-hag snap I sent in for an altogether more dignified and refined portrait I sent them in 2008 when I first started writing for Woman Alive. Phew. What a relief. Mind you, if you come to the conference (you are coming, aren’t you? It's on the 17th of June) you won’t recognise me from either mugshot, because I had my hair cut this spring. I look like this now. Well, at least – on a good day.

New Daylight

I’m so sorry – it does really embarrass me to spam you, but I faithfully promised the good folk at BRF that I’d put out some publicity for the next Bible study notes to which I’d contributed.

Which is this one just coming up – out in May (I've linkified the pic for you).  The studies I’ve written are for a fortnight in August; you get a nice range of contributors in each edition.

Here’s a page about all the different contributors for this particular one.

If you decide to follow these studies (or if you already subscribe to them), come back and let me know how you get on.

Japanese creativity with small spaces

 Oh my goodness!

Finally!

Nagisa Tatsumi’s book The Art of Discarding has come out in an English translation!  This is the book that inspired Marie Kondo (KonMari). I’ve searched and searched for it in translation – but at last it’s here (Hodder and Stoughton).

I’m enjoying it so much.

And – talking of the Japanese art of small space living – this video is an absolute joy.

Storage

A few days ago I gave you a peep into one or two of the personal living spaces of the individuals in our minimalist burrow. This was Hebe’s room, her bed laid out ready for night time.

Living as we do, with few possessions and sleeping on the floor, the question naturally arises – what happens to the bedding in daytime hours?

One of the delights of floor sleeping is that the entire bed can be thoroughly aired – outside or inside – and washed regularly. Everyone knows about microscopic bed creatures and the allergies they cause, so this is an obvious plus.

A while ago, Hebe turned over in her mind how best to store her bedding during the day. She thought of having a rail put up to hang it on. She considered getting a second set of shelves to hang it over. Then she thought – wait on! Why not just hang my bedding on the shelves I already have?

So that’s what she does. It protects her clothes from sunlight fading, allows the quilt to air, and gives a pleasing tapestry-like effect as a backdrop to everyday life.

The banisters also offer an excellent place to air bedding and towels (and dry clothes).

Meanwhile, Alice reserves shelf space for her bedding during the day.

Shelves are useful for storing all kinds of things.

While we’re on storage, I thought you’d like to see the wonderful set of shelves the Badger has designed and made to store his belongings in our attic. He still has a few shelf-loads of books to bring up from the communal space downstairs – then the space he created will be a perfect sufficiency. This is what we had before. 

And this is what we have now – lovely. I think they make our home look very elegant – almost ‘on purpose’!

And in the garden, our greengage tree is in blossom and all the spring flowers have their party dresses on.