It’s a mess. No, it’s not. It is a collection of art installations about the year.
March 2020. Items to Panic Buy
One person here JUST CAME BACK FROM ITALY, another one was locked in his room, coughing and hot. Across the country, people rushed out and bought all the cheap thermometers, so the rest of us had to go to John Lewis and spend serious money. Then we Stayed Home, drinking vitamin D and taking our temperatures EVERY DAY for three weeks.
April 2020 Does Wine Breathe?
A time for crying, drinking and no chance of supermarket deliveries. The nice wine company agreed that pandemics make you cry and turned up with useful gifts like this. So caring. The wine did not hang around long enough to breathe.
May 2020 Sheets should Fold
A collective sigh of relief at still being safe, yet out of work. Too much free time and nobody to share it with. The need to Sort Things Out was overwhelming. I took it out on the bedlinen and folded it all senseless. Today there is only one item left, a reminder of how sheets should be.
June 2020 Wrong Cat Litter meets a Hoover
Some shops were open, panic bought cat litter. Cat declared it was the ‘wrong sort’ and refused to go near it. Other people were efficiently clearing houses and giving stuff away. Said ‘yes please’ to a hoover. This was greedy. I already had a hoover.
July 2020 How to Carry Cats
The cats needed vaccines but the vet said, ‘ You can’t come in with your bugs and viruses. Leave the cat outside.’ You could not just walk in, gripping the carrier shut, while the cat dug a hole through your hand to get to the security ribbon. Bought a new carrier, with strong plastic clips, but kept the old one just in case. Of what?
August 2020 Uncontrollable Bedding
Super shielding paranoia continued. Nobody came into the house, but visitors camped! The joy of lazy sunny days and long evenings with lovely people. The bedlinen joined in with the festival and rushed to the garden, dragging the duvets behind them. It all crawled back in a few days later, in a sorry state, and collapsed in a heap on the bed.
September 2020 Attic Toys
More friends came, with children. A new word was born. ‘letsseewhatsintheattic’. All the toys came down and the lego was sorted by age and type. Didn’t really like it when the children played with it because they kept jumbling it up.
October 2020 Every Room needs an Inflatable Bath
On a hot day, a bath of cold water is just the thing for quick, cooling dips. On an autumn day, the same bath will be green and slimy. It took hours to clean, so it made sense not to waste time deflating it. And it made the room look En Suite.
November 2020 Wet Suit in the Warm
We were still allowed to go to the beach but the last swim in early October left me cold and bad-tempered. People who announce in August that they are going to swim all-year-round are liars.
December 2020 Postal Collections
Friends and family in Australia, people who sometimes lived here but can’t get back. It is hard to kill an old address. Stuff turns up, but luckily it has a home in this room.
January 2021 Old Christmas Presents
It was a Christmas of missing people. The presents wait sadly for their owners to turn up. There was no time to find a special place for them. There were tax returns to avoid and the awful news of the second wave was overwhelming.
February 2021 Treasured Toys and Hard Cash
Everybody is running out of money now but ‘letseehwatsintheattic’ day paid off.
Hoarding is good if you hoard something valuable. Ransacked the toys and posted Pokeman cards to the person who remembered they might be there. Turns out they were worth a small fortune. The law that, NOTHING MUST BE THROWN AWAY, EVER is now set in stone.
March 2021 Boxes
You can never have enough cardboard boxes. Especially if you’ve been vaccinated. People will turn up soon, and there is a hell of a mess to sort out first.
After everything that has happened across the world. Being left with nothing more serious than a messy room is like winning the lottery.
“tidy rooms, tidy minds… ” my granny used to say but I think an untidy mind is okay right now
I am saving the tidying up day. It will be useful for getting the mind sorted at the same time x
a diary for the year, just love it and had plenty of chuckles.
so right you can’t have enough cardboard boxes particularly if they are pretty and if you save them tell September they are good to put the apples in. I can’t believe you have sorted out all the lego.
This is wonderful. Your photos, your cat, your point of view. I agree that if one messy room is the aftermath of this pandemic then you did great.
Thank you Ally that’s so nice. Yes feeling pretty lucky one year in.
Tonight when I came back from the garden and hung up my jacket, I said to myself “you really need to get at this closet.” I still do, but I’m feeling so much better now, really!
That’s so nice. Thank you. There is probably room for lots more in that closet so you can keep save time on tidying by just stuffing things in there.