My, my, she's getting all philosophical!

According to Zeno’s Paradox of the Arrow, you might never have to get out of bed. Two thousand, six hundred years ago, Zeno of Elea pointed out a few problems with the common notion of time and space. He argued that a moving arrow will never get to its target. We see that it does. That’s the paradox part. The theory goes something like this: the arrow must travel half the distance to its target, and then half of that again, and so on. So in his theory, the arrow never gets to its target, and you never get out of bed.

I read somewhere that authors who write biographies either fall in love with their subject or grow to hate them.

The latter is happening to me. But I must resist because I'm sure he was a good chap really. But his writing was terrible and he put very small pieces of paper inside the boxes of his tapes, which I have to label.

Please write anythign historically important in large round clear handwriting on acid-free paper.

Oh yes, they're back, and they're moving wardrobes again!

Mr Fix It All Up and his Incompetent Assistant have been living in their house (that's Gibbering Heights, Eastmede Rd, Isengard), for nearly a year.

You may remember that the last chronicle of their fun-filled crazy lives told the exciting story of the new wardrobe. Adorning their elegant bedroom are two dark wooden wardrobes, one large enough to hold Incompetent's ever-expanding heap of clothes, now she is a fashion victim...

But the dark forces of furniture removal have poisoned the mind of Fix It All Up. He has decided that the smaller double bedroom in the middle of the house would be better to sleep in because it is 1) quieter 2) darker and 3) has a nicer view of sky, trees, and gardens. Incompetent agrees, smug in the knowledge that she has always thought this and that good things come to those who wait...

Only one critical question remains: will all the furniture fit? FIAU, armed with measuring tape, uses the awesome power of centimetres to decide that it will.

The fundamental difference in temperament between our heroes now emerges. Incompetent naturally proposes putting it off or doing it very slowly in stages, an approach that, while successful in the world of cataloguing archives, is not appropriate to every situaiton encountered in life. In contrast, FIAU proposes doing it straight away all in one go so it isn't hanging over him and having decided that he will, immediately spends the next day moving all the furniture between the two rooms. He also enlists the help of the God of Common Sense to move the wardrobes. Fortunately, said God is not working at the moment and fancies a trip out to Gibbering Heights because he is a bit bored at home.

Incompetent returns to find FIAU and GoCS, wardrobe in hand. They manoeuvre it across the bedroom, through the door, and negotiate part of the step before FIAU remembers that it unscrews into two equal halves of the same size (hello Dad!).

Incompetent has often observed that successful communication rests less in the meaning of the words than in the tone in which they are said. So when the GoCS enquires "Shouldn't you have thought of this before you moved the wardrobe?", in a tone of the utmost mildness mixed with kind amusement, Incompetent wonders how they managed before he came along. (Jerome, one of the other deities in our pantheon, would have used the expressions 'dippy' or 'idiot' and dined out on the tale for years.)

In contrast to my esteemed compatriot, GoCS leans cheerfully against the wardrobe to support it while FIAU undoes the screws, and punctuated by the odd crash, bang, and exclamation of distress from FIAU, explains his plans to become a paid blogger and photographer.

Eventually the two halves of the wardrobe part company and are pushed, dragged, and lifted into the room.

The God is not impressed. He thinks the wardrobe looks monolithic, is unnecessary, and the solution is to have very few clothes so you can keep them in a drawer and have more room for books.

Incompetent hmms because the only two responses to this she can think of are: 1) he is not a girl and 2) Lucy got to Narnia through a wardrobe so they must be all right. The Eastmede Road debating society will have to look for other members.

Our trusty trio then repairs to the kitchen for pizza. A pleasant evening's chat is had, and the God of Common Sense departs with the words, "If you want to move it back again, just give me a ring."

A day passes. FiAU leaves no drawer unmoved and Incompetent returns from Friday out with her New Friend to find a large, beautiful, and perfectly proportioned study and a peaceful and orderly bedroom containing a wardrobe, which, although it has moved to the adjoining wall, is still in the same room and now contains her collection of stylish and up to the minute fashion, lovingly arranged.

I got a lot of blogging out of that little incident, didnt' I?

Sometimes I think my life is rather dull

What I did today, a la Bridget Jones

8.30 Wake up. Try to go back to sleep.

9.30 Read book about Henry VIII.

10.00 James gets up and works on the computer. He is colouring his comic, which is very boring and is making him rather cross. Go back to sleep for a bit.

10.00-11.00 Read Gemma Bovery, current book obsession. I'm reading it over and over again.

11.00 James comes in and says hello. Gibber at each other. Conversation involves asking pointless questions and giving even more pointless answers, such as: 'What colour is a tree?' 'Green'. 'No, yellow, it's autumn.' (question to self - is this too honest?)

11.15 Get up. (Another triumph.) Depilate, in case I feel like going swimming. Clean bathroom. Read blog. Attempt to write somethign and fail/write previous post.

11.30 Eat breakfast, muesli and full fat milk. Read paper. Feel depressed.

12.00 Phone mother to arrange visiting and Christmas.

12.30 Play guitar. Wonder how I can improve. Have reached a plateau.

1.00 Wash up.

1.30 Play guitar again.

2.00 Do a load of washing. Consider going out to the park.

3.00 Get ready to go out. James decides to come too. Colour a bush in his comic in photoshop using paintcan tool. Go over the lines. Agree that it is indeed very dull. Speculate on nature of my creativity and compare it to squeezing toothpaste out of a tube. Eat kim chee and rice. Rather hot.

3.20 Go out and walk round Queen's Moor Park. Very pleasant. People playing football, walking around. Trees beautiful gold.

3.40 Posh cafe is closed. French cafe is closed. Smiths is closed. Go to video shop and choose video after much deliberation.

4.15 Come back home. Watch video while knitting. It's called Imagine and it's about a woman who gets married then falls in love with another woman who is a florist. It is a comedy in the style of Four Weddings. Not particularly good but all the girls are wearign very nice knitwear.

6.00 Listen to Seth Lakeman's latest album which is very fine. Knit more. Finish first sleeve. Edge of sleeve and edge of body are the same size. Hurray!

7.00 Watch a couple of episodes of Tetsujin 28 with James.

8.00 Eat pizza.

8.30 Watch Madonna's interview with Kirsty Wark. James retreats upstairs.

9.00 Listen to lovely Seth again and knit some more. Mum rings to give Christmas arrangements update.

10.00 Catch a bit of The Two Towers on TV and am dismayed to realise that I know parts of it off by heart (not the Elvish, I'm not that sad).

11.00 Pick at guitar again, in feeble attempt to work out one of Seth's songs. Discover it begins with the chord of C. Work out picking pattern, an unexpected success which inspires me to give up.

11.20 Blog.

It's official. I have blogger's block.

I have been writing this blog for 3 years. Blogging has always come easily to me, and it's worth it because occasionally I write something really funny, like my post about Elvis songs at school. There's a lot of drivel in between the somethings really funny but I keep going in the hope that the muse will strike again.

But I've got terrible blogger's block at the moment. I sit down at the computer, switch it on, and nothing comes. I can't even write drivel.

I have been thinking about retirement, but I'm not going to because I have always vowed to stop blogging with a whimper not a bang. And if I did retire, it's likely that lots of bloggable things would happen and I would be forced to announce that reports of my death had been exaggerated.

So there's only one other thing to do.

Deep breath....

HELP!!

Blog plus joke

A blog about archives.

I haven't read it yet, but it might be interesting.

It might also be unbelievably dull, in the style of 'A Manual of Archival Description', usually shortened to MAD, or the works of Sir Hilary Jenkinson.

Respect the fonds, kids.

That is an archives joke. I don't think anyone who reads this blog is an archivist, but if you were, you would be rolling around the floor clutching your sides with tears of laughter pouring down your cheeks.

Some dull news

I came home and found James Lee Pig watching Gordon Ramsay on the television. I was rather concerned. James Lee doesn't watch television. He said he was tired because he worked too hard today.

Oh guess what? James Lee and I watched Tetsuji 28 (a cartoon about a large robot created by a scientist) together and I liked it. James was very surprised. It had an exciting story. When James was a little boy, he used to spend all his time watching it.

I didn't go to choir. I won't be singing in the concert. Again. It's Handel's Messiah (setting by Mozart) on Sunday 26th November in the Adrian Boult Hall. I'll be in the audience.

Three years!

Gremlins Online is three years old today.

I suppose this means that I am able to run around and talk in simple sentences.

I must apologise for the low standard of blogging recently. I haven't been feeling very inspired.