Efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right things.

You can see what sort of a Monday this is going to be when I start quoting American business maxims from books about How To Be Successful And Achieve World Domination In Less Than Three Days.

Remember, my daemon is a hare. Now remember Aesop's fable - The Hare and the Tortoise...

So today I'm going to try to be a little more tortoise-like.

But I still love hares.

Ooops...

 That's better.

SEE! I shouldn't have rushed things.

Smashing fun at the bottle bank

 More spring cleaning - resulting in a happy time at the recycling centre.


It's so SATISFYING smashing bottles, while at the same time feeling that you're doing something GOOD (while at the same time feeling slightly guilty that you've accumulated so many in such a short space of time without even the excuse of hosting a party for at least sixty seven people)



 Wendy Cope is one of my favourite poets. Here's what this morning brought to mind:

A Green Song
to sing at the bottle bank

(from Serious Concerns)

One green bottle,
Drop it in the bank
Ten green bottles,
What a lot we drank
Heaps of bottles
And yesterday's a blank
But we'll save the planet,
tinkle, tinkle, clank!

We've got bottles -
Nice, percussive trash
Bags of bottles
Cleaned us out of cash
Empty bottles,
We love to hear them smash
And we'll save the planet
tinkle, tinkle, crash!

Spring has sprung?

...the grass is ris.
I wonders where them birdies is?
They say the bird is on the wing.
Ain't that absurd?
The wing is on the bird.

That rhyme reminds me of my mother because, without fail every spring, she used to repeat it in her best Brooklyn accent.


Well, spring has sprung TODAY. Spring has sprung HERE. But there's snow in Scotland...




I've been busy doing spring-like activities...cleaning, sweeping, tidying, flinging open windows so that all the dust I just chucked out of the front door can come back into the house more easily.

I've found a new incentive for uber-cleanliness. I have put forward my house, yes, the very same filthy, dusty, HOMELY house in which I slob about in jodphurs and sometimes boots if I forget to take them off...I have put forward THIS house to be a film location.


The company fear it may be too far out of London for filming but are very interested in using it for photo shoots. They want more photographs of The Interior and wonder if our garden is Overgrown because they have a prospective client....

SEE, I always told Peter there was a REASON that I don't help much with the gardening.

Permission to write

Yesterday was a STORMING day for me, creatively. It was wonderful.

I gave myself permission to spend the whole day writing. Writing MY stuff, I mean, not corporate stuff for other people. Sounds simple, eh? Not simple for someone with the Dreaded Puritan Work Ethic.

I've had a frustrating and stressful week so far. I feel churlish even mentioning it because there's stress and there's stress and on a global scale, my stress is derisory. However much I castigate myself for this it's no good, it can sometimes do my head in. Here I was on Wednesday:

(Excluding the cigarettes which I just noticed) It was madness. I was getting ill with it all.

Common sense prevailed on Thursday.

I abandoned all my paid, career-enhancing projects and JUST WROTE.

I finished my screenplay. I wrote another two chapters of the novel. It was quite extraordinary. I'm now re-thinking my strategy of spending part of the day on Work Work and part of the day on Me Stuff. It really isn't successful. I'm going to try allotting whole days to one or the other.

The question I ask myself is 'Can you do it?' My answer:

Eat a live toad the first thing in the morning and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day

Now THAT'S a good maxim. But I won't, if it's all the same to you.

(Perhaps that's a frog? I don't know)

Since I seem to be morphing between childhood storybook characters at the moment - how about Toad of Toad Hall as the role model of today?

This bit of his personality:  "Oh, what dust clouds I shall make! What cars I shall fling into the ditch!"

Not this bit: (from prison cell) "Ohhh - Oh no, that's the end of everything. Or at least the end of my career, which is the same thing. I should have listened to my friends."

(That was yesterday)

Most of all, this bit:

"As soon as the door had closed behind him, Toad hurried to the writing-table. A fine idea had occurred to him while he was talking."

 


 A fine idea has occurred to me - well, several, if you must know, so... if you would just close the door on your way out?

Sigh Defects

Doctor, doctor, ever since you put me on these tablets, I've been unable to release a long, deep audible breath.

Don't worry,  they have been known to cause sigh defects.

(It's the way I tell 'em!)

However, a sigh defect isn't something I can lay claim to.

Yesterday, I seemed to spend most of my day sighing. That and saying 'Never mind' and 'It doesn't matter.' Is that something that's peculiarly BRITISH? Is that something that's particularly FEMALE? Is that something that's peculiarly British AND particularly female?

I complete a tedious piece of work as instructed which takes forever and just when I've finished I'm told it wasn't necessary. So what do I say? I say, never mind.

A promise from someone to guest-blog on Quirkyworks hasn't happened and nor is it likely to. No apology. No explanation. What do I tell myself? It doesn't matter.

I give constructive feedback to a colleague because I care about the company and its standing in the world. I get no response at all. Never mind.

(Don't worry, I'll stop before everyone completely glazes over)

Well, folks. Here is some news for you.

I DO mind.

It DOES matter.

"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily...

 "If it is a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.

"Why, what's the matter?"

"Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."

"Can't all what?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose.

"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush."

 Yesterday I was Tigger. Today I'm Eeyore. I won't bother you with the details...work-related.

It's made me grumpy. Too grumpy, by the end of yesterday, to finish the screenplay. Which made me even grumpier. Oh, it's SO good to have something to blame apart from myself.

Don't worry, I took some Arnica and Aconite remedy so I'm not going to commit murder.

Probably...