Log 171024

What's up?!

I've barely written anything in the last week, let alone posted stuff here. I completely hit a wall at the end of the conference last Monday. Everytime I opened my mouth, I realised how full-up and worn-out I was, so rather than hanging around any longer than I needed to, I said my goodbyes and walked out into a weird day of warm winds and a dull orange sky. That was a week ago.

I slept most of Tuesday, started to resurface Wednesday, went for a good long walk on Thursday, did Tuttle and met up with folk in the afternoon Friday, the weekend was family-focused, a birthday party and some time clearing my daughter's garden. Then yesterday, Monday I had a regular meeting with some friends in London and had an interesting conversation in the morning (off the back of the conference). It's amazing how easy it is to slip into just doing stuff and not writing about it.

There's a tiny danger signal, because not writing means less talking to people but it also means I may start to think that thinking about things can just go on inside my head. No. Fifteen years of blogging have shown me that my real thinking happens when I open my mind onto the page or through the keyboard. So here I am.

Actually where I am is staying for a couple of days helping out my lovely mum. She's having some decorating done and before that she wanted to see what all these panelled doors in her house really look like underneath. There was a fashion about fifty years ago to make surfaces more minimal, and the main way they did that was to pin large pieces of hardboard over the panelled spaces in the internal doors. I've done this job in every Victorian house I've ever lived in, but I was surprised to see that it had also been done in my mum's house which was build in the 1950s.

I just got the first few off. You can see, it's a very different look. Dark wood, varnished under all that paint and board. The hardest bit is pulling all the pins out of the door after the board has come off. No the hardest bit is stripping the door right down, filling it and painting it, but I'm not going to do that bit, that's the job of they guy who's going to get paid for it.

So yeah, I'm up here in the Midlands, enjoying the quiet, the sing-song voices of the local people and the fact that it gets really dark here in a way that I don't get in Guildford. I'm just here till Thursday afternoon. Then it's back home to get ready for Steemfest2!

Hopefully a little more writing in between :)