Here's yet another one I wrote a few days ago and then forgot to take out of draft. And to think I teach people how to use computers for a living.
I've moved into my brother's house, as you know, and I've spent half this last week cleaning my own house for the tenants, who move in next week. I've no desire to be a landlord, but I was caught in the crash in the housing market and couldn't sell the place.
It's been a surprisingly satisfying experience. My usual analysis of undone domestic tasks goes like this. My floor is festooned with crud/a tile has fallen off in the kitchen/there is a weed. How does this affect my enjoyment of Ovid or the match? On observing that it doesn't, I can then simply return to the more interesting activity. Every now and again the chaos builds up to the point when my enjoyment of Ovid or the match is actually threatened, and at that point I get busy, but any resulting sense of achievement is usually undermined by the knowledge that as fast as I sort out one bit of the house another bit goes off.
Now, though, I'm cleaning an empty property, and then leaving it to go and live somewhere else. When I return, everything is exactly as clean as it was. It's as if entropy has been banished from the place. And every time I do a room, the next time that room has to be done it won't be my job.
I still haven't been able to face the garden though. I have a horror of gardening, brought on by a bad experience a few years ago. I was writing something about the similarities between cybernetics and chaos theory, and took a break to go and do some weeding. Half an hour later, I returned to my writing, only to find that I was unable to carry on at my previous level.
Which proves something I should surely have guessed. Gardening makes you stupid. I guess that accounts for Gandhi.
I've also started cycling again, as the journey to work is now long enough to justify it. It turns out that if you don't do any cycling for three years, when you start again it's almost instantly painful. The motions involved in walking and cycling are so dissimilar that it doesn't matter how much of the former you do (I don't drive, so I walk quite a lot), it doesn't prepare you for the latter at all.
The Huns were known for walking bandy legged, because they spent so much time in the saddle they couldn't walk properly. I think I've got the opposite problem.
It sorts itself out after a while. The trick is to get fit enough so you don't reach the pain barrier until after the endorphins have kicked in.
Still, cleaning, cycling, and I've improved my diet. Onwards and upwards, or some such crap.
