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Catie has finished the latest draft of her new book and I have nothing to do til February (almost) so today we made an attempt to get the new house into some kind of order. She worked on the play room and I tidied up the new attic room and my office.
We have created a great space at the top of the house with lots of storage space and room for exercise equipment (not quite enough ceiling height for self-playing snooker). We've been here for two months and I have put the rowing machine together. But so far no actual exercise has taken place, but at least we've got the exercise bike out of our bedroom, so I am going to have to find somewhere else to hang my cloths.
It's a good place for me to dump all my old work folders and juvenilia, probably never to be looked at again by me and then thrown away in 5, 10, 20 or at a push 30 years when I die. I am hoping I never have to move again, so this is the final resting place for a box full of my schoolwork (of no use to anyone, even me), a box of sheet music from my singing and trumpet playing days, old AIOTM costumes, diaries, photo albums and stamp albums. My O level certificates are in there somewhere, plus love letters from girlfriends from my teens and early twenties (either people stopped writing letters or I stopped keeping letters or no one loved me after that).
I kept everything as a teenager, partly in the belief that one day a museum somewhere would like to display it. So far no museum has come calling (though the Comedy Archive at Canterbury University would probably be happy to take the many box files full of first drafts and other rubbish from most of my projects (again leaning heavily into 90s and early noughties stuff when things were still done on paper. The On The Hour stuff would be the most exciting, but beyond a page of oblique notes I took at our first meeting with Armando, I don't think there's much surviving from that show.
I also squirrelled away two crates of DVDS (and we actually got rid of the vast majority of our collection in the last move) and stuff that I really questioned whether it was worth keeping. Are 3 CD Roms of my 2006 itunes back-up files worth keeping? Clearly not, but might they be of historic interest? Clearly not.
I took them out of their boxes at least and put them in a case with other redundant computer tech. They will be thrown away when I die. But perhaps some future grandchild will marvel over how obsolete and clunky things were back in the Noughties, or use them as a drink coaster.
I resisted the temptation to open up boxes of letters or photos, knowing how that would send me spiralling back in a bitter sweet nostalgic haze. That kind of stuff is in theory nice to look at, but any happiness is tainted by the loss of innocence and time and suppleness. I am troubled enough by the mistakes and foolishness of the present day, without taking on the even more ridiculous problems and ideas and errors of the me from the 1980s. It's good to have a full record of my lifetime of idiocy though. And to have learned nothing. I am worse now if anything.
I got the attic looking good and reckon I know where everything is in the unlikely event that I need it again. My office needs a good deal more work, but I am enjoying using the kitchen cupboards in my little annexe to store merch and other office stuff. Will I finally get an office space where everything is neat and tidy and I know where every last thing is?
Clearly not.
If my boxes of junk are a testament to anything, it is to the fact that nothing ever changes. Come away death.
As I was sorting out my office I found a RHLSTP Guest mug that had been printed upside down. I know many of you have expressed the desire to own a guest mug (and two or three have been auctioned or given away by guests) but, unless there's another one in the half a box I have left, this is a unique item. So I've put it and my Taskmaster Champion of Champions RHLSTP notebook (another one off as I have written Champion of Champions on it myself and is full of show notes for most of the podcasts from 2024) up on ebay. All proceeds will go towards making more podcasts.
Bid here.And we're also in the process of putting some pieces of the old snooker board up for auction - a chance to own a beautiful piece of sporting history. More info on that next week.
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I put up this old short story today. And another unproduced TV script will be going up next week (already three or four of those available to paid subs). I will hopefully start doing the video versions of the blog again now things are a bit quieter.
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