And the worst bits

The week, without the best bits? Gloom. Misery. Despondency. I no longer know who I am, where I am, nor whether I had any purpose when I started out. I lost myself.

I will pin much of this blasted life on the reshelving experience. When I became lost about the letter K. But this is only the start of The Great Endeavour! Dear reader, if you pop over here once a year, be assured that next year you'll still be hearing about it.

In practical terms, I am stripping back one of the three habitable areas of the house in a (five? three? two?)-year plan to rent it out and eke my meagre income before I die, penniless, having spent my last pound on theatre tickets and gin. I imagine I will find my tenant for the attic flat in the manner of a withered and destitute Victorian hag crawling the city streets. Surely somewhere there must be an impoverished artist in need of a garret?

The stripping, by the way, is going very slowly. So far I have emptied two bookshelves and put a Marks and Sparks coat (too small) into a sack where it will help Mrs Oxfam buy a goat.

The children are also lost in gloom. There is much to blame, but let us choose The Great Endeavour.

Basically, I am touching their stuff. This is disturbing, naturally, because you wouldn't like anyone touching your stuff. All I can say is that I am not doing it in the dark. (Although I confess I am doing it while they are not at home.) Also, in consolation, I am touching my own stuff and it's destined to mostly go to the skip. But I must remain balanced. Every cloud has a silver lining. (Not every cloud, obviously. Some only contain lead.)

Positives
I have clear shelves and can move bookcases.
The Help the Aged charity bookshop is doing very nicely.

Negatives
I have reviewed all my life through hoisting these acres of books between rooms, and I have discovered that most of my life was filled with unfinished.
The books on Chaucer alone reveal my ambitions were so low as to be non-existent, and that from the very beginning I have achieved sod all.
Time moves quickly. The book I thought I would read remains where I put it, twenty years ago. I still haven't opened it, and even though I know that no-one gets a second chance after time slips out the door, I know too that I'll never read it now.