Media storage

Something odd happened an hour or two ago. I'd gone to the basement of the building to put stuff in the recycling skip and then stow my trolley in my storage cage. I came back up in the lift and got out at my floor, and for a brief, completely confusing moment, the building seemed to have been reconfigured while I was downstairs because there was a blank wall facing me where the long hallway should have been. I'd turned left instead of right. So I'd somehow become disoriented in the lift. It was just a moment, but it was a moment of total bewilderment. 

I turned and walked down the hallway, reassuringly still there, and noticed it, which I don't usually; it felt airy and bright and when I rounded the corner I glimpsed the big pin oak tree in view of the window in full fresh leaf. I might live here for a long while yet, I thought. That would not be bad. 

I felt weighed down with lassitude for most of today. I've got a bit of a problem at work, emphatically not one of my making, but still, I'm going to have to do the clearing up and it's a particularly draining kind of clearing up that I'm going to have to do. But I think I feel like a wet bread roll because I overdid myself on Sunday. The morning began mildly enough but I felt like I might fritter my weekend day away without noticing, and my word I loathe that feeling, so I tackled my list of tasks. I ordered a small selection of modular shelving units from Ikea and booked the first available collection time the system showed me - some days away - but about an hour later I got a text saying it was all ready so after Lenny came we went there and picked it all up. At nearly ten years old he still enjoys playing house in the showroom just as much as he did when he was four. He fell asleep on the way home, but revived and rallied enough to urgently request that we set up and decorate the Christmas tree after dinner. So that's what we did. 

After he finally went to sleep I couldn't help myself and I started putting together the furniture. I was tired and I felt I might've made a poor choice of thing, but even setting those factors aside I don't believe I've ever had a worse ikea assembly experience. It was just so difficult to get it right - like, lots of strength in the hands needed, the necessity to crane your neck on odd angles to insert fragile plastic fastening pins. I was corkscrewing away trying to get the legs on the thing and thinking, Why did I acquire so many records, like that Jon Hassell record, for instance, I'll probably play that four times a year tops, and now I have to push these stoppers into that black thing, and it is HURTING my FINGIES, because I ran out of shelf space. At about ten p.m. I realised I needed to stop, so I watched some TV, foolishly proud of myself for sensibly stopping before the whole situation degenerated further. But I was late to bed and slept fitfully, so today wasn't as pleasant as Mondays can often be.

The TV is an object of unusual interest to me at the moment. I do not think I will ever be desperate enough to watch The Crown, but I have so enjoyed reading in the leftist press about the various bleatings emitted by a cavalcade of tory fuckwits who think it's a good use of high office to write to Netflix and order them to insert a 'health warning' at the start of the show to tell viewers it's fiction (in between not incidentally writing to collecting institutions ordering them not to return stolen artefacts and ordering the BBC to not stop playing Rule Britannia at some fart of a thing they play it at). The A plague on both your houses effect kicks in pretty quickly, of course, because the only more unanswerable question than 'why not "caricatur[e] the royal family in the worst possible light"' is 'why are you making a show about the royal family at all'. But still, it is so nice to open my news apps and see so many ignorant, entitled, privately educated freebooters snivelling to Mother while people who deal with storytelling and the past all the time are just standing there, a small cruel smile playing about the corners of their mouths, saying I told you so.

What I did watch on Netflix and do recommend: The Trial of the Chicago 7, and The Queen's Gambit. God, I have to go to bed. I'll write about them tomorrow. I also recommend Jon Hassell's Vernal Equinox: it's perfect for listening to as I am doing now, alone in a quiet room, late at night in early summer.