Caped Gooseberry – Page 15 – Deborah Makarios

November 6, 2015

My Preciousss……

I love my books. I don’t think that will come as a surprise to anyone who a) knows me, b) has read more than a post or two of this blog, or c) has ever seen inside my house. I have even given careful consideration to the question of whether I am actually addicted to reading. I have not yet got to the point of piling them all in a heap and sleeping on my hoard like Smaug, but this is largely because books are not comfy to sleep on, and I’m bound to be seized by an uncontrollable desire to read one hiding at the bottom of the pile.

But I do not wish to be controlled by this love of books. While the dream-houses I drew plans for as a child were largely bed/bath/kitchen attached to a large library, I do not want my life to be swallowed up in service to the books. This necessitates a control on the volume of bookage, and since I have no wish to Never Acquire A Book Again (sits down with head between knees until shaking passes) that means that some books need to go, to make room for the new ones.

I’m not going overboard, mind you. I am not the kind of person who gets rid of all but ten of their books, or (shudders violently) tears out the bits they like and throws the rest of the book away. The man who inadvertently started the 100 Thing Challenge movement (aim: reduce number of personal possessions to 100 or less) did not count his books individually; in fact, I’m not sure he counted them at all.

I do find myself looking at the shelves reflectively, and considering which books would make the cut if I found myself relocating to somewhere with less book-space. There’s the books I absolutely couldn’t do without – the ones I’d pause to grab if the house was on fire; the books I re-read so often it would be folly to dispose of them; the books I’d really quite like to keep if at all possible; and the books I’m not quite so sure about. Featuring largely in the latter group: books I keep meaning to read, but haven’t yet.

Since I am unlikely to live in this house for the rest of my life (not unless I die soon, and please God I won’t), I am getting a head-start on the inevitable and starting to downsize now.

In October, I pruned out sixteen books (with the assistance of the Caped Gooseberry).

There were:
three books about English history – a mix of fiction and fact;
two dictionaries (one Spanish/English and one English/English), along with a book of etymology;
four assorted books on learning Latin (including the classic “Caecilius et Metella in horto stant”);
three books of quotations (I used to collect them, but now I tend to rely on the internet instead)
and a couple of random non-fiction books.

(There was also one ring, which I’d had for so long I can’t remember where it originated, but never wore, it being neither the right size nor to my taste. )

There are now two half-empty niches on the wall of shelves in the study, out of a total of twenty. Okay, 24, but the top four aren’t used for books (too high to reach without a stool). To give you an idea of how big the niches are: one contains a 12-volume Everyman’s Encyclopaedia and both volumes of the Shorter Oxford Dictionary.
It’s a start.

If you’re doing some decluttering too, please do leave a comment on what you’re up to below. It’s always nice to have company, besides the company of books!

October 9, 2015

My Cat is a Fibre Snob

Let us be honest: cats are weird. There are cats who like to sit on people’s heads; cats who are obsessed with toothbrushes; there are even the famous cats who like to hide in boxes.

My cat (hereinafter “the Cat”) is a fibre snob. Like most cats, she likes to sleep on our bed (or, as she thinks of it, her bed), but she is very particular about what exactly she sleeps on. It was some time before I noticed the trend behind her choice of sleeping location: she prefers wool.

She is particularly pleased when there is a wooly dressing-gown available with the capacity to accommodate her furry middle-aged spread, but if there is no wool in evidence but that of a solitary bed-sock which has wandered off from the herd, she will carefully settle herself on that – even if she overflows it on all sides.

I suppose I should be grateful that she hasn’t shown any interest in occupying said socks during construction – unlike her son (hereinafter “the Kitten”).

But I am quite certain that should I ever be fool enough to take her to a yarn shop, she would within seconds be ensconced in the most expensive yarn present, with a self-satisfied purr emerging from her smug little face. Qiviut, perhaps, or vicuña.

Of course, it could be argued that I am to blame for this snobbish attitude on the part of the Cat. I don’t think I’ve knit anything acrylic since long before she joined the family, nearly six years ago now. And while it is nice to know that she approves of my fibre choices, it is a little annoying that everything I knit ends up as a mixed-fibre piece: lambswool and domestic short-hair; merino/possum/tabby blend…

That’s the downside of tortoiseshell/calico cats: they have hairs to stand out on everything. Knitting something dark? The cat sheds white. Knitting something light? The cat sheds black. And if you think to outwit them by knitting something with flecks, well, they’ve always got the orange to fall back on.

So there she sits, on my dressing-gown or my jersey or the Caped Gooseberry’s bed-socks, shedding madly, legs primly tucked under her in the classic “cat of paradise” position (i.e. no legs).

Incidentally, have you ever wondered what’s actually going on under all that smoothly arranged fur? They look so sleek, so well-arranged, so put-together. Like a swan cruising serenely through the waters.
Well, wonder no more: the internet hath provided.

The secret is out.

September 4, 2015

The Thing Itself

It’s one of the great mysteries of the universe: has anyone, ever, managed to get a rubber ducky to float the right way up? Apart from Florentijn Hofman, obviously, and even he’s had trouble, what with deflations, explosions, and midnight vandals. (Another of the great mysteries of the universe: what kind of person stabs a giant rubber ducky forty-two times?)

I can’t even remember the last time my rubber ducky floated the right way up. Obviously, it must be a specialist Diving Duck.

It’s got a recess at the bottom into which, the ancestral wisdom informed me, one could glue a fifty-cent coin and thus ballasted, the ducky would float the right way up. I have been carting a fifty-cent coin around lo these many years – long after the coins were changed to smaller editions – but correctly floating ducky there has been none.

The glue was too weak, or the coin wasn’t heavy enough, or the glue gave way in the bath – or, more unnervingly, when the duck was just sitting on the shelf. You’d hear this “clonk” and put your head into the bathroom to find no one there, just a ducky staring blankly at you out of it’s rat-chewed face. (Rats have remarkably experimental tastes, considering their inability to vomit.)

But it was my ducky. Even though I seldom had baths, and even when I did they’d only be graced by the ducky for about as long as it took for it to keel over on its face and start taking on water: i.e. about two seconds, and then I’d fish it out with a sigh, put it to drain on the side of the bath, and replace it on the windowsill until the next time came to dust it off.

I don’t need to do this any more. It suddenly came to me one day. I don’t need the duck. The duck doesn’t need me. And even without it I wouldn’t be leading a duck-free life, as the Caped Gooseberry still has five ducks (which we also don’t use as there isn’t really room in the bath).

I decided to let the duck go, along with the religiously transported 50c coin (once I find it). While I was decluttering the bathroom, I decided to get rid of an old white comb while I was at it. The comb used to live at my grandmother’s house, along with several matching ones in different colours for her assorted granddaughters.

I picked it up, and I could suddenly see the ceramic bowl on the dressing table that they used to sit in; and turning in my mind’s eye, I looked out the window into my grandmother’s back yard, past the washing-line and the swing set to the fence that marked off her resplendent kitchen garden (now, alas, underneath a new house). I remembered the sights, the scents, the voices.

But I’m still getting rid of the comb. Because I don’t actually need the comb to recall those memories. For one thing, imagining the comb is sufficient, and for another I already have a ‘madeleine’ for remembering my grandmother’s house: a bar of the coal-tar soap she always had in the bathroom.

Ah, the memories.

My purging list for August isn’t very impressive:
one rubber duck (with munted face, therefore unsuitable for donation)
one old fifty-cent coin (probably no longer legal tender)
and one plastic comb.

These things tend to be cyclical, mind you, and I’m hoping September will prove more fruitful on the purging front. How was your August purge-wise?