As if I didn't have enough to read at the moment, what with the fab Christmas presents and the library books and the Impulsive Purchases from WH Smith, I now find myself with a pile of magazines dating back to June 2014
(or possibly earlier.)
Here is how it happened. You will remember me telling you how, in an effort to clear various rooms in our house of "stuff", it was my habit to fill carrier bags and empty boxes with
said "stuff" of the basis that out of sight meant out of mind. The power of writing the Daily Blog was such that today I set myself the task of clearing out one carrier bag (a lifetime bag from Tesco's decorated with ladybirds) and one pile of papers lurking,
messily, on a dining room chair.
In carrying out this task, I employed a principle I used when I was a Working Gal, all those many moons ago. Accordingly, everything
was divided into or of three piles: Action, File or Dump. I would recommend it to anyone. I did add a couple of extra categories, one being "leave for Mr B to deal with" and the other "reading." It is the second of these which is presenting me with my greatest
problem.
You see, included among the "stuff" uncovered when I emptied the ladybird bag and sifted through the various papers gathering dust on the dining chair were a rather large number of as yet unread publications.
Had I been a sensible de-clutterer, I would have deposited them all forthwith in the recycling bin. Way to go! I hear you all say. But when it came to it, I couldn't quite bring myself to be so, well, decisive.
I
have decided, therefore proving myself an Ace Procrastinator, to tackle the problem thus. The publications have been divided into piles according to title. (For those who collect examples of inexplicable predictive text, you may like to know that when I tapped
in those words, it came out as "pikes cavorting." Words fail me.)
I now have a pile (or pike) of family history magazines, a pile (or a pike) of Worthing Journals and a third pile (yes, indeed, or pike) of
assorted publications. My Grand Idea is to read through each publication, carefully cutting out any articles which I feel I may want to read again. I haven't quite decided what to do with the cuttings which I will certainly accumulate - maybe a scrapbook?
My scrapbook of cuttings of publicity for the Limelight Group (of which grandkids Jack and Hazel are founder members) is beginning to look seriously impressive.
I have any number of books in which I collect
sayings, jokes, poems, silly stories - you name it, I probably have a note book for it. It is perfectly possible that nobody besides Yours Truly would be the least bit interested in my collections. Now, it seems, I am about to start yet another Collection
of Totally Useless Information. If only I can find the time to scan read all the piles (or even pikes) of magazines and papers.
Sometimes, however organised you may be, things don't work out quite
as planned. Regular readers will remember that Mr B has a post-it note, permanently anchored on a kitchen work surface, which informs him when to wheel the dustbins out to be collected. "Put rubbish out" the post-it note reads. Today, when I surfaced from
a particularly interesting dream and waddled downstairs to put the kettle on for my first cuppa of the day, I noticed the recycling van was across the road. Had he forgotten? I called out to Mr B.
Well,
I tell you, he was almost as fast as Seb Coe winning the 1500 metres at the Moscow Olympics (Mr B and I are reading Seb's book "Running my Life" at the moment, two chapters a day. It's very exciting.) Before you could say "rubbish!" he was out there, chatting
to the refuse collectors while wheeling the bins out for emptying.
"No worries," he reassured me on his return to the kitchen. We now had a completely empty recycling bin with plenty of room for our recyclable
rubbish over the next fortnight. Me? I thought of the three piles of magazines and papers awaiting my attention.
"Great!" I said. Weakly.