Lyrics: “Undeveloped Film” ~ Frank Turner, 2013
Another day, another post? Don’t get used to it. It’s a weekend and I stayed home and recharged, so I had plenty of time.
House Clearance | We’re not in any hurry to clear out the house we inherited from my mum. One of my brothers already lives on parts of the upper floor, so it’s not unoccupied. It still is the plan that I move in on the ground floor in a few months (next year?). Refurbishments / modernizations have to happen on both floors and to get on with that we need to clear out the rooms that have been my dad’s office 35+ years ago. The rooms have also been a free of charge storage facility for all of us children who have moved out of the family home in the past almost three decades. It’s been such a luxury to be able to just drop the stuff there and not think about if I want / need to keep those items.
Today I was tasked with starting to clear out tons of stuff from my time at uni, 20+ years ago. I do NOT need to hold on to that. Not the few papers I wrote as undergrad and neither all all those folders with lecture notes. Folders with so much paper of copied textbooks and other research material for said papers or tests. Students nowadays can just download digital copies of laws and regulations they need to cite or refer to, but in the late 90s we had to copy it all to have it at our disposal. I could have thrown those out years ago, but we had the space to just store it.
I skimmed some of the few papers I had stored there as well. I remembered one very well from the sociology class of my degree: “Spatial perception in blind and visual impaired people”, which was a fascinating topic. Oh to be young and studious again.
There are a few things my brothers, who have done most of the clearing out over the last few weeks so far, haven’t put in the bin yet. We will in the end, but right now it’s all a bit of a sentimental trip down memory lane. Whereas I keep my lists of books on Goodreads and if I were a scholar would do it in any kind of bibliographical software, that’s how my dad did it 40 years ago…
Other items we will NOT throw out ever. I think. I will find a good commemorative place for this on my shelves, once I move in.
I mean…. it’s a 2nd edition (1963) of the “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary” (Used to be “Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary of Current English” till 1974). Not Quite the OED, but for this German, who used the OALD in school and loved how it contained this vast knowledge of the English language, cool enough.
Not so much “chemical action [….] on a specially prepared glas plate or film” these days, is it?
London | Before I headed over to start with clearing out today, I spent a leisurely morning at my kitchen table, refining my plans for my trip to London. I’m staying a bit outside so I usually wouldn’t go back to the hotel all day, but carry a big bag pack around with drink and food and camera and stuff. On some days I have plans in the afternoon / evening , where I can only bring a smallish bag, so this takes some planning. I think I have fine-tuned my plans so far, that I only need to store the bag pack in a storage facility once. I don’t plan to do much of the typical tourist-y things anyway, as I’ve done most of them over the years. I also do not want to head into any of the big museums when I expect them to be crowded with visitors over Easter. There is enough to do off the beaten track.
I looked into photo walks / recommendations this morning as well. I wasn’t looking for a proper tour to book a place on, but what can I say. I found one, that looked interesting and informative and wasn’t too expensive. Not cheap, but hey, it’s a vacation and getting some instructions and tips about photography are worth it, right? So I found a space in my schedule and booked it. There will be 4 people max, so I will definitely get my money’s worth, I think. Three more weeks to go.
