Cranking up the volume

I’m not going to suggest you blast your neighbours – although there is a formula for that where needed, involving a large amp and ‘Mars’ from the Planet Suite, but I’ll save that story for another time.

Today’s item for my box of delights is playing something that little bit louder than usual on the iPod/stereo/musical system of your choice. Going beyond the usual accepted volume for music when not living in a detached house, and just enjoying that extra pulse of sound.

What to pick? Today’s was a golden oldie – something I remember hearing for the first time almost 20 years ago. I’d been playing the odd track or two of the album, off and on over the last few days. I had another go – reached for the volume – and heard the whole album straight off.

Part of the fun was the set of memories associated with the album, including times of singing along to the songs, flats I’d lived in where it had been played, people who’d been there too. The extra notch or two on the speakers immersed me in the memories and the music together, the brightness of the sound, the sweetness of my life at that stage.

Not that life is lacking in sweetness now – I was baking at the same time as listening, singing, so sugar levels were guaranteed. But on a particularly cold wet afternoon, light levels low, it was just the pick-me-up I needed.

Sometimes we just want to feel plugged in to where life is at. We want the music to lift us, as it has before. We want to feel like the soundtrack of our lives is clear to all, making sense of all the tiny pieces of the day. Moving us from life where we only see separate tasks to get through, to life as a narrative, a smooth skein of silk to pick up and run your fingers over.

Box of Delights: being the first to open things

I’m in the pattern of writing, but I’ve completed those 31 days. Time for a new theme.

In a month where it’s dark earlier and earlier, where it can be a rather grim-faced downhill-til-Christmas-and-don’t-spend-any-extra-money, I thought it might be nice to celebrate the small things that bring a smile, but don’t break the bank.

It’s not a frugality post, as such, though I can do them. Half-Scots, half-Yorkshire, it’s a recipe for being a miser, really. I might come back to that at some point.

But various posts I’ve been reading are around slowing down, and noticing what’s around us. Or being in the moment in our days, noticing the little things.

So, here’s to a set of posts on small delights: a box of delights, if you will. Which takes us nicely through to the start of Advent, and a whole new set of stories, perhaps.

First item in the box of delights:

1. Being the first to open things.

Went to work. Opened jar of coffee. Seal still on jar of coffee. Broke seal on coffee jar…feeling better already. It’s not just the smell of coffee wafting through, it’s the satisfying tearing noise on the top of a coffee jar. Or the crinkly sound, if it’s a metallic top, and you’re trying to tear it off in one go.

Lest this seem to exclude the under-caffeinated, the same can be done with many other containers. First to open a jar of jam? Nice slightly metallic clunk there.

First to open a jar of set honey? You get the white scrapings on the top, before revealing the darker colour underneath. (This may say more about a childhood where honey was Gales’ honey, and that was that. Still enjoyable though.)

First to open a bottle of sherry? Ahh. In fact, you can spend a couple of minutes just tilting the bottle back and forth, listening to that wonderfully musical glug. Then common sense sets in, and you fetch a glass. Or a pan…if you’re cooking, of course.

There is something great about opening everyday things for the first time. Maybe it’s an ‘everyday’ kind of Christmas present. Maybe it’s the greediness in getting first go. Maybe it’s the sense of treasures in store, all ready for us, and we’re the first to choose.

And maybe it’s just part of that set of little everyday sounds that promises comfort, in some form or other. In chilly weather, that seems ever more attractive. But as part of the soundtrack to our lives, small happy sounds of opening jars are going in my box of delights.

End of the line?

Today is day 31. I’ve made it! A post every day for a month. So is it the end of the line? Yes and no.

I’ve talked about a few more writing ideas, and I’ve made a start on the cook book. It’s proving an interesting exercise to capture what you cook every day, where you’ve fiddled with cookbook recipes, where you’ve invented your own. Trying to set it down in language that will make it easy to use, whatever the age of the chef.

More blogging? I think so. Maybe not straight away. Or maybe… yes. The cunning thing about the 31 days is that it is pretty much the length of time it’s meant to take to break a habit – or form a new one. Now being used to writing every day, it may just prove easier to keep going.

This time, I’d like to do a little planning on content. Maybe not uploading posts every day, but maybe still writing every day, if I can manage it, and being more selective in what gets posted up. I quite like the notion of the Monday/Wednesday/Friday school of blogging, and hopefully it doesn’t besiege the faithful reader (yes Dr G, that’s you) quite as often. So – watch this space.

Has it been worth it? For me, yes. And maybe the biggest thing to take away is the importance of the writer enjoying the process. Trying on ideas for size. Spinning a set of images, and seeing which way up they fall.

So here’s one more. I love a description of drawing that I came across: taking a line for a walk. It speaks of being playful, being prepared to submit to the process, following an idea as it makes its way in the world. It even makes me feel that I could try it, sometime.

Can I do the same with words? Hopefully, yes.

Timing is everything

Hanging up the washing last night, I remembered a few more writing ideas I had at the start of the month, ones I could add in if I were running short on ideas. Today? No idea. They have escaped, or perhaps gone back into the door seal of the washing machine where socks go when they want to stay in the water a bit longer.

Too many people have written on trying to find inspiration. Others have debated: inspiration or perspiration? I’m not here to add to those words. I do think many of us hope for ideas to steal up on us. We don’t just want to conjour things up by ourselves, or reason them out entirely, although fun can be had in doing that.

The point is that a proper story captures you, stays with you. Whether you are the reader, or the writer. And yes, we can gain inspiration from our own lives, others’ lives, research, and so on. But we know the real deal when it comes. So we look out for it, searching like the woman who sweeps and sweeps her house in search of the lost coin.

Another part of me is aware of our brains operating a bit like one of those fabled ‘just in time’ despatch centres. Sometimes the ideas do come – and then they go and hide until the time is right. I am thinking back to the post I wrote a few days back on The Lying Tiger. The point was that the words had to come at the right time, as well as being the right words, in the right order.

The processes of writing and editing will give us the right words, in the right order, if we work at it. The right time is also the right time for the reader, of course. Which in the days of blog posts can mean immediately – reading posts of people battening down for the huge storms in the US – or at the time when it seems to mean the most.

So many blog posts where people comment are where the availability of the words, and the reading of the words, combined at the right time for the reader. And if you are sick in body, or heart, or looking for a shoulder to cry on, words can help there too. Words are a great deal about not being alone – in ourselves, in our experiences.

Right now, I’m out of time to write. There’s other things to be getting on with. But that’s OK. I know where the well is when I’m feeing thirsty. And I realise more and more that I need to drink before I can look to pour out water, whether for myself or for others.

Home straight

Gosh, nearly there on the 31 days of writing. It must be the home straight. Now to see if I get a second wind and my writing becomes equally fleet of foot.

Being a bit under the weather at the moment, just getting through the day is more of a marathon at the moment. I am being much more deliberate about resting, about questioning whether or not I need to do something in a given day. My writing is firmly relegated to the evenings again – like most parents’, I suspect – although it is still there.

To be honest, it feels like a welcome change, doing less. Have started reading through my earlier blog posts – partly to work out what I’ve already said in the way of things like travel and book reviews – and notice the activity levels, which seem sky high in comparison to just now. Admittedly I was travelling for work at that time, which makes a difference.

But then, I also had weekends with lie-ins. I mean, ones that are longer than half an hour more than on week days. I took turns with Dan on the cooking. Holidays were more genuinely holidays than they are these days. Yet I know I was tired then too, from reading posts about staying awake long enough to watch QI on a Friday night.

I read about having written a CV for myself, to see what I’d been doing, having been in a job for several years, and been tired just reading it…And in between all the activity, from time to time, I’d muse about having time to write. There were inklings of themes I wanted to cover, and some attempt at doing so, more on the travel writing but sometimes on book reviews.

The end of my 30s is looming closer now. I am not relying on health and strength in the fairly unthinking way I did in the past. That doesn’t mean I’m giving up on things, but it brings two key questions to mind:

a) what am I doing that I don’t need to do?
b) why am I not doing what I love, whether or not it’s a ‘needed’ thing?

I’m starting to tackle b by writing. Being deliberate about it. Carving out time for it regularly, even if it’s 15 mins here and there.

A is much harder, when you suspect you have been more of a human doing than a human being. But it might just be possible. And it might even mean there’s space for b – and head space to decide what to write about too.