Sunday 18 April 2010

Who am I?

My rough old paws stink of Dettol and sun block. Meant to clear up the house today but ended up clearing out the barn thing instead. Mr GPants started it. He was supposed to be clearing up the garden. We have had a life-lightening experience tho' - even tho' now I also have more stuff IN the house to go through. But we do have a fine-looking bonfire pile. And a frightening-looking dump pile. How come we accumulate so much STUFF?

We found creative things we had done in a previous life - wonderful tools, such an array of art materials, portfolios of drawings, newspaper bundles of forgotten ceramics, scrapbooks chronicling a couple of years' worth of the history of the world, tapes of songs, notebooks, scripts, proposals, designs, paintings, photographs, old address books full of long-since drifted partners in crime, tickets to gigs and shows and half a dozen guitar cases. All disintegrating. Covered in bird poo, mouse poo ....'the countryside'...... Stuff.

Daunting stuff.

I remarked that we would be so much happier if we were totally unproductive and just sat and watched telly all night instead.

'We do'

'Oh yeah. We do now'

10 comments:

  1. otoh to my simple ears your barn thing sounds like nirvana, filled with interesting and inspiring treasures.

    and your work is done already there: you can time capsule it a with great big padlock on the front, then in 100 years the national trust will be crawling all over it and declaring it heritage. creative anarchy always ends up adopted by mainstream culture. ooer.

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  2. yeah, pour in some liquid perspex, then take the outer barn shell off. Voila - art! You can invite all sorts of strange and up-themselves people around to look at your nick-knacks preserved for ever in a plastic cuboid.

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  3. Hhhmmmmmmnnnnn..................... Until I ACTUALLY unearth this stuff, and ACTUALLY look at this stuff, I can still believe that I was once creative - even dare I say - had budding talent. But I have to go and spoil it all by pulling it out and turning pages and unwrapping newspaper and ....LOOKING. Then I am simply depressed for ever - I was always crap. I need another avenue to explore. I need to find something I am ACTUALLY good at! I can't even say that my creativity has been channelled into child production. I don't feel very creative about it - I feel like a maid, a chauffuer, a referee and a punch bag. I need to find mah thang! For tooo loong been a Jill of many crafts and mistress of nuffink.

    Moan moan moan............

    I am quite good at buying postcards tho'. Found lots of those. Going to blindly slap them into (yet) another scrapbook with no particular thought for design and just see the random result. Then I can dig this out in another 10 years and go through this all over again ....... 'god I can't even choose nice postcards........'

    I might save the liquid perspex and National Trust tours for the contents of my kitchen drawers - my next job. God 'elp me.......

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  4. Blimey! Kitchen drawers?! You are a glutton for punishment.

    If it's any consolation, children are known creativity leeches. My eldest is 11 now and I'm only just starting to get my creative blood back. Not sure what blood type I am though... knitter... writer...streaker...annoying git.

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  5. You are pouring all your creative energies into home schooling - you are creative EVERY DAY. It must be bloody exhausting. I have to lie down after a blog post.
    As for shed melancholia, reminds me of when I unearthed some of the essays I did for my English degree. What a callow, pretentious arse I was. (I'm still an arse. But hopefully not so pretentious.)

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  6. Dear nwbi - I smile as I read your delightful pep gobbet but alas I am not remotely creative in my home ed life - it's all a sham. The most creative thing I do as regards my soul-sucking little pea-heads is cramming coco pops, honey loops and cornflakes into one bowl in neatish sections. Other than this I ignore them as much as I can until it is time to screech off somewhere to meet up with the other drop-outs, where I pretend we've been making jam or building a suspension bridge out of hand-whittled birch twigs all morning. Oh and I smile then (unlike at home) and ruffle their hair and stuff. Back home I slump back into my insensitive drudge mode and tell them to go and find something ELSE to do - something that DOESN'T involve me at all.

    I wasn't always like this you know ......... I used to have dreams ........ blissful home educating all together around the dining table covered in colourful creative dreams.......

    They BROKE me

    Definitely most successful at Annoying Git me. Thank you BMF for something at which I can truly aspire to improve

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  7. I just wrote a blinking long comment on all this and the freakhead computer just lost it all. It was wonderfully callow and pretentious.

    Anyway - just to knock off the purple prose I now have no energy for I basically said thanks - don't do anything with the little soul-suckers - I just pretend.

    My blood type = definitely Annoying Git.

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  8. Well I spent all day yesterday being creative...making one of those felty sort of boards that teachery people have to stick their laminated thingies onto with velcro. Kids weren't impressed, but I'm going to frame it as evidence of me trying to be a home educator.

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  9. I'm sure you've had dozens of awards/shout-outs/stalkers BUT I've nominated you for an award anyway....do with it as you see fit. Thank you for your blog
    Lou
    x

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  10. I love felt. No machine required. No hem required. No words or numbers required. Just colours, scissors, needle and thread and a lap. Home education is totally wasted on blinkin' children if you ask me - we should just concenrate on ourselves - recreating the childhood we wished we'd had and constantly reminding the spoilt offspring that they don't know they're born until they're begging to go to school just to get away from all the felt, papier mache, home-baked biscuits and fresh air, and immerse themselves in white board migraines, crunchy toilet 'paper' and hair that smells of old plimsolls. Then they'll be flippin' sorry! * sigh * I seem to be always apologising for my unfiltered outbursts.....

    And a big blushing Aww Shucks! for the award thingy - very exciting - but I am totally useless and knowing what to do with this computery stuff - hence the god-awful all-text-and-no-pictures blandness of this blog in the first place! Still - am super-puffed-up flattered!

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