the day begins with the sound of sten shifting heavy boxes in search of his tools.
'on sunday we travel to NYC by bus. I read the beginning of nana while george sleeps...'
but this will not be until tomorrow. horsemouth had not noticed the one day break in the fluxtherapy until just now. he will have to improvise.
he's awake and he's having his coffee. he's just gone to the kitchen to freshen it up with some hot water. he paused to repack the fridge.
in many ways sten is a generous and excellent housemate (and horsemouth and sten go back a long way, even back to the days when they didn't like each other, something like 30 years ago).
there's a campaign of non-violent direct action going on where sten wishes to store his meat products on 'horsemouth's' shelf in the fridge (and horsemouth does not wish to have sten's meat products stored on 'his' shelf in the fridge). sten asserts his right to the space (as he does with all space) and parks his meat product there / the vegetarian horsemouth repacks it back on sten's shelf to defend 'his' space.
horsemouth has seen the consequnces of 'sharing' with sten. it is called 'the living room' which has been rendered essentially unuseable by anyone else in the house for years as it is in fact used as a builder's yard/ waste repository for sten's plumbing business.
horsemouth wonders how he will defend 'his' fridge space if he goes away. (part of him contemplates taking out said shelf out and hiding it until his return).
another bone of contention is the front garden which sten wants to use as repository for building waste/ rubble/ tarpaulins etc. but which (seeing as it is directly outside his bedroom window) horsemouth would prefer to see used as a front garden. there again the pattern is similar. sten covers. horsemouth clears.
one day horsemouth found a composter in the front garden. he promptly set it up and began filling it with kitchen waste (thus rendering it difficult and stinky to remove). like a settlement of israelis in palestinian territory it makes a most excellent fact on the ground. using it horsemouth has been able to occupy progressively more terrain. thus horsemouth has got some nasturtiums established. there are two (lime?) trees growing. he has pushed back the use of the front garden as a waste repository until just near the bins.
the back garden is not such a bone of contention. horsemouth cannot see it. ian and daryll have got their zones of interest well established. it has reached a steady state of communal use.
it is important to remember that everybody in the house is a hoarder but that everybody else is pretty good at keeping it confined to their rooms.
er. excepting sten to whom this notion is utterly foreign. he is in fact committed to enacting a tragedy of the commons on a regular basis. look, he goes, look at this shortage of storage... if only we had more storage.
all of this results from one of the positive aspects of sten's character - his enthusiasm - however when the task is done, or half done, or failed and abandoned, sten simply ups and wanders away to the next sunny upland task like the hunter gatherers who start afresh when the land is worked out. the tools/ bits remain in place, the months pass, the dust settles.
(the day begins with the sound of sten shifting heavy boxes in search of his tools.)
there is (of course) a heaven, a mythological happy hunting ground of storage elsewhere (in a garage in west london), the pie in the sky when you die of household storage where all the kipple will go after sten has packed it in the right boxes. because these boxes will eventually leave there is no point in investing in shelving (goes the argument).
this is horsemouth's unimpressed face.
the problem of the house is the like the puzzle game with the 9 spaces and the 8 numbered squares that can only slide up, down or sideways. only one space is free into which anything being moved must be put.
everyone in the house is a hoarder. no one can resist a beer trophy (both daryll and horsemouth indeed actively promote this in the belief that it is ecological). amazon deliver. every day more bargains come.
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phew. that feels better. horsemouth enjoys the comedic potential of it. (and he's not actually bothered by meat)
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