I'd just like to say how much AOL sucks

I've never been a great fan of AOL, especially not since they got bought up by Carphone Warehouse and that Charles Dunstone fellow whose oily salesmen attracted my ire a few years back. Now if it isn't the cherry on the cake that they go and announce "Hello everyone, you know your blogs? Well we're deleting them all in 30 days. If you want anything you've written then you'd better back it up - we hear copy and paste is good. Ta-ta."

Needless to say, this means a new home must be found for my important writings. Personally I've always liked Blogger, so in future make sure you check http://antnoise2000.blogspot.com for all your Balloon-Loving adventures.

At the time I write this, there's only going to be this post there, but I'll copy over all my old posts during the next few days. Trust me, it'll be much better, really.

Get Down

Turned out nice again...

Spiffy

My wall is no longer adorned by nasty brown patches. No! For these patches have now been covered up by not-quite-matching but still really quite similar squares of brighter, whiter wallpaper.

I'm not very good at wallpapering, but happily it seems that modern technology allows any fool with a paste brush to slather paste all over the wall, shove some paper in roughly the right place, and achieve a pleasing result. With the result that I am indeed pleased.

Carpet tiles next. Wa ha ha hah. :)

Dirty Ant

Eururrrrgh!!

Well, it's all happening. I decided this afternoon that it was time to get rid of my old bed. It has been providing good service for ten years or so (and wasn't even brand new then!) but just recently it has been lumpy and bumpy, the matress going all weird and poking my bottom with its springs in protest. But today is the end. It is all part of the plan. Old broken-down double bed leaves, lovely carpet tiles go down, new box-fresh freshly assembled single bed is replaced on top. All is well.

At least the first part of that is out of the way. But here's the thing, if you ever get a chance to touch an old bed, don't. It really is very disgusting. I mean, my bed was fine for the purposes of laying down on, but once you start moving and lifting its parts, nothing but filth and grossness is found. Dust, fluff, crumbs, long-lost pairs of socks, newspapers, magazines, pens, floppy discs.. and more dust. And more fluff. And loads and loads of general 'ick'.

Unpleasant, yes indeed. Having moved the bed I notice that my wallpaper has nasty stains on it from where my body (and mostly my greasy head) has been near it. Nasty patches of discolouration and more ick. Gross gross gross gross gross!

I may have to replace the wallpaper before the carpet tiles go down. I had a look through the cupboards and found that the old "never throw anything away" mantra paid off nicely, as I found some offcuts of the wallpaper used for this room some ten years ago. I probably don't have quite enough to remove and re-lay the whole floor-to-ceiling parts, but I've probably got enough square bits that I could kind of paste over the brown bits. I'm sure it won't come through or anything like that.

It seems that I stain everything I go near. This leaves me feeling really rather unclean. Perhaps I should try living in a plastic bubble instead. Although that might make it hard to buy wallpaper paste, which I think I should try doing tomorrow.

Words and Pictures

I am feeling busy and efficient. Witness my astonishing progress:

Parcels.. sent!

Bedroom carpet... planned!

Environment - saved! (The red line is how much electricity I used last year, the towers are how much I used this year - which is less!)

Good lord, I am productive today.

Jazzed

I can't believe I've left it nearly three weeks without writing a blog entry. Well, actually I can, because I've been kinda busy. But in a good way.

While it's not a particularly interesting subject, I feel compelled to chronicle just how jazzed I am feeling about my recent activities. I've sold quite a lot of stuff on eBay, and also found some people to give lots of other stuff to. This week I posted off no less than 29 items which I sold on eBay at the weekend, and as I write there are five very LARGE boxes of tat (mostly video tapes) downstairs by the door, waiting for a courier to take them all to good homes tomorrow.

Upstairs, life is good. I have more floor space than ever. I still have boxes, but at least they're neat, and diminishing by the day. I even have two spares right now which don't immediately have anything to fill them with. Yesterday I threw away a very old TV 'Pong' game, without even trying to see if I could sell it on eBay. (Although I did check later just to make sure it wasn't valuable - and it doesn't look like it is.) So that's good.

I have further tidiness plans for the week, too. On Tuesday, my old double matress with the springs which point outwards and unexpectedly surprise me in the night -- well, it shall be gone. Away down to the dump it is going. Followed shortly by the rest of the double bed. This will be followed by a few days sleeping on the floor, no doubt, until my nice new carpet tiles finally arrive. Once laid, the carpet tiles shall be augmented by having a brand spangly new bed installed on top of them. A single bed, what is more, on account of how it takes up less room. And there will be space underneath to put some plastic storage boxes too, which I am already busily filling.

The moment of victory is approaching. I shall soon be tidy and carpeted. There is still much to do, but I'm getting there. If everything goes well and I can keep up the momentum, I might even be done by Christmas. I guess two years isn't too bad for tidying up 20 years worth of accumulated 'stuff', after all...

Spoiling It For Everybody

Up and down the country, in the supermarkets of this land, are express checkout queues where entrance (and subsequent checkout) is permitted only to those people who have "ten items or less".

This is obviously no good for the interfering nuisances at the Plain English Campaign, who think that this should be stopped.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/7590440.stm

"Ten items or less" is clear, and has no ambiguity. So therefore, it must immediately be changed to something else, like "Up To Ten Items" instead.

[The Change] "is easy to understand and avoids any debate," said a spokesman for the notorious hippies and nogoodniks at The Plain English Campaign.

Avoids any debate? I don't think so. "Up to 10 items.." so does that mean that 10 is OK, or can you only have UP TO but not including 10? So 1 item, 2 items, 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 items, all OK.. but ten items.. Is ten items the maximum allowed, or the minimum disallowed? Room for disagreement there.

If only they could introduce some clearer wording which leaves no room for doubt. How about "Ten items or less" ? And the bespectacled geeks who come out of the woodwork and say "Ah, I think you'll find that actually it should read ten items or FEWER" can go back to their empty lives and their collection of leather-bound dictionaries which are the closest they will ever get to sleeping with an actual woman.

Just so long as I'm not saying anything controversial, right?

Boxes

It has been a day of tidying. A day of boxes. Moving things around, in the eternal jigsaw puzzle that is "the tidying-up project", in order to properly ascertain, in a correct and scientific way, the things which I can live without, and those things that I must continue to keep forever and ever and ever.

Progress has been good on the boxes of old videotapes. Nobody seems to want them on eBay but I have found a few people online who might take them off my hands.

I have, therefore, been studiously going through the tapes. There is method to my madness. Tapes which are not of a regulation length - anything less than E180 - get watched, dubbed (if necessary), and dumped. Progress here is so good that my upstairs bin is overflowing with video tapes. Tapes which are E180 or above get watched (in fast forward), classified appropriately (old and uninteresting, old and interesting, new and interesting, tapes in need of advanced dubbing, tapes to be held for further examination at a later date...) and so on.

The upshot of this madness is that I can, at least, persuade myself to let go of a few hundred bulky tapes which were otherwise taking up space, and what is more, that I can do so in a way which does not trigger huge massive anxiety and feelings of loss and regret. Stop looking at me like that, I am not crazy. This is science. I am dealing with my excess hoarding in a scientific manner. Speaking of which:



See this? These are R-Kive/Fellowes Bankers Box cardboard storage boxes, the very type about which I blogged with such enthusiasm some months ago. I hasten to add that the boxes in the photo above are not mine, but in fact those of noted dead film director Mr Stanley Kubrick. This is his "archive", full of old notes and letters which he wrote or received.

It is comforting to know that I am in good company. Although if I was Mr Stanley I probably wouldn't have got rid of them either - after all, future generations and historians would find them ever so interesting. That said, I disposed of most of my paper storage a long time ago, scanning everything into neat little PDF files on my computer. Mr Kubrick really should have bought a scanner.

But truly it is a triple-play day when it comes to boxes, for today I have also been thinking about "food miles", and the hippy eco-warrior idea that it's not good to buy carrots from Tesco that have been shipped thousands of miles around the world, sometimes on proper aeroplanes and everything. This is very bad for the monkeys and the toucans and the dolphins in the rainforest, who get heated up by the carbon, and such. So, "local food" is the way to go.

I am a man of means, and I like my groceries one way - delivered. Happily it turns out that I can have delivery and save the planet at the same time, thanks to a new idea of "food boxes", whereby local farms and such all club together and deliver boxes of food to people in the local area. Eating food that has been grown right on your doorstep - well, not right on your doorstep, my doorstep is a bit mucky but I don't think you could grow vegetables there - anyway, it's very good for the enviro mint because the carrots only travel a short distance in a van, rather than thousands of miles in first class.

I visited a website, typed in my postcode, and was delighted to discover that they deliver in my area. The driver's name is Dave, and he already passes my door every Thursday. If I order next week, I could have a box filled with organic bananas, potatoes, beetroots, a butternut squash, whatever that is, and more besides.

I am almost beside myself with joy. All round, it has been rather a nice day.

Happy Hippo: Stay or Go?

There comes a time in every busy declutterer's life when the truly hard decisions need to be made. This is one of those times. In nearly 18 months of throwing things away, (or rearranging the things I can't get rid of just yet) I have never faced such a dilemma.

That dilemma is this:


Observe - a blue hippo. I bought this on eBay because it looked lonely and life really is too short to allow hippos to lead an unhappy life. It's a very nice hippo. It is blue, and as the original auction described, it is "made of pottery".

But alas, the hip hippo has remained in its original packaging almost ever since I received it. And we are now at the point where Mr Hippo is, in fact, taking up room that could be better filled by some free space instead.

But is it right to throw it away? It is a happy looking hippo, after all. Surely I should be ruthless and show no mercy, though. And, what is more, it is slightly imperfect. Observe:


Yes, that little pinkish bit is the underlying pottery, of which the hippo has been made.

So... happy hippo - stay or go? You decide, because I can't. Please vote by leaving a comment, won't you?

I Must Blog All Day Long

I can't help but notice that I've not been blogging as much recently. Clearly, with millions and millions of readers hanging on my every word, this will never do. So today I shall attempt to break the writer's block (actually that sounds a bit grand, so let's just call it "block") by live blogging about my fantastically interesting day.

As I speak, men with hammers are downstairs making changes to my window ledge, which used to be very good until an enormous crack appeared and I could see the outside through it. I hear sounds of plaster and mastic being mixed and applied and smoothed all over the place.

I am not observing them in person, for that would probably be annoying and/or awkward. I am content to leave them to their industry.

More live updates as the day progresses!

UPDATE: 12.01pm. Men have left. Windowledge all better, although it needs a plastics expert to come and finish it off. This will happen at a time and date of their choosing. What mystery! Now considering what to have for lunch.

UPDATE: 4.13pm. Had lunch, wrapped up some parcels (sold some things on eBay at the weekend, so the King of Postage was in court once more), received a parcel I'd ordered from America. Starting to think that all this does not necessarily make for interesting blog reading, though.

UPDATE: 10.15pm. Finished work, bummed around for most of the evening. Listened to a motivational audiobook, but not convinced by it, really. Decided to have a bath. For no reason. I'm not even going out tomorrow or anything. Thinking about going to bed.