Not a great deal to report, but here's an update anyway.

Life for the past few days has definitely been in the slow lane, which is not actually a bad thing. There's been plenty of time for things like Proms listening – I especially recommend using "listen again" for Sunday's "Indian Voices Day" -

- lots of book reading, including The Tao Of Pooh And Te Of Piglet, Edward Luce's In Spite Of The Gods, and most gratifyingly, Jeanette Winterson's The Passion, which I didn't notice until a couple of days ago contained this lovely little thumbnail sketch of the author as a bookmark -

- [nice one, Rem!] -

- and quite a bit of time wandering byways and highways. I can especially recommend Clare Country Park;

- a dismantled railway, a ruined castle and priory, and at the weekend somewhere I spent quite a few hours under some trees watching the universe go by and practising my wu wei.

Unlike meditation, which requires an effort of will, doing nothing does not seek a particular outcome, although "recharging the batteries" may be a good side-effect. I've learnt over the decades that a certain amount of space is needed in my life; so much of what I do is intellectual or, in my work, long-term-practical that to turn it off is not only beneficial, but essential. When I didn't have it is when I was at my most non-achieving.

As usual, my use of the Taoist term does not mean I take on board the full philosophical ramifications of the system, nor do I claim any wisdom that I'm doing it properly. It just seems to me a handy term for the practise of doing nothing much at all. In Western culture "doing nothing" isn't a respected action, whereas if you express the concept in a different language – wu wei – suddenly all the negative connotations of "slack" are gone.

So, this entry may not amount to very much, but I could bang on for hours with ancient Chinese justifications about why it doesn't amount to very much. Cut me some slack.

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Today's Big Question: Tell me about your favourite place to do nothing. [For this question's purposes, we'll exclude the answer "bed".]

I've a week with little work, so my motivation is officially described as "medium-low" at the moment.

There are exceptions: I popped into Knorwich this morning to do a couple of errands for myself and others, including preparation for a birthday pic for a friend on Friday. The trouble is that where I park in the city is right near the geeky things shop. I couldn't resist:

…

With that and the first Test, not much else is happening round here…

So instead here's a lovely octopus:

Today's Big Question: What marine creature would you like to be?

It's been good to have a little time to myself now that Cleaning Week is well and truly out of the way until September¹; last night I was in "recovery" mode with a warm duvet and some of my favourite things², and today I've just hung around town drinking too much coffee and gossiping with G., R. and F. on the market.

The only thing that remains undone for the minute is that there's four parcels to post out; I avoided this today because the end of the month is Car Tax day at the post office, their busiest day of each month. However, I doubt that any of you who will be recipients will suffer because your free books are taking a couple of days longer to arrive.

Think of it as an exercise in antici…..

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The other achievement from yesterday is that there is a newcomer to Custard Surgery: a net-friend of mine from across the pond is moving her blogging into a subdirectory of this domain.

I would give you the link to go and welcome her, but she's not quite there yet; the WP installation is, though – and setting it up properly is a lot easier than it used to be thanks to inline updating.

If anyone else fancies their own little place – controllable, customizable and not subject to the crappy-technical or anti-cultural whims of [insert name of generic sites] – there's plenty of room here between Zo and I for others; we ask only for small contributions [and at least one of us accepts some things other than money ].³

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So I've another 24 hours until I'm back to working, and it's highly unlikely that anything seriously major will happen, or indeed anything outside of my duvet.

Although I've learnt to expect the unexpected.

After all, on this day nineteen years ago I thought I'd just spend a nice quiet Saturday afternoon wandering around London with Ruth and I ended up at the back of….

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…pation.

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 shoenotes:
1 Not that I want to give the impression that all cleaning is suspended until then. I am hygienic, even if I'm not tidy.
2 Some of the details of which are in this Rogers and Hammerstein parody I did years ago [warning: possible TMI]
3 Offer only open to people I like [which includes all the regular readers here, but definitely excludes Ann Widdecombe or anyone who agrees with her]. T&Cs apply. Not suitable for very explicit adult content [you can go to wordpress.com for that, like my favourite one here [NSFW!!]]

soundtracktotodaysentryiswatermelonineasterhay

Today is one of those non-achieving days.

You know the sort, the kind where you wake up at 7:30 even though there's nothing to get up for that early, and you just know that however hard you push at anything today it'll all go tits-up.

This is why there is a] no further progress on Priscilla's VVT bug, b] no further progress on anything else actually, c] unless you count further progress through Reading 'Lolita' In Tehran, d] or further progress through The Pirate Planet, e] neither of which really count as any achievements at all, but f] what the frog.

Achievement g] was going to be a review of last night's documentary regarding the 50th anniversary of the Windscale nuclear plant fire and how it almost wiped out the whole of northwest England, but I guess 99.999% of you already know my views on all that dodgy business [for those that don't, it can be summed up in the word "twatmeisters"].

Later on achievement h] will be walking up the hill to get takeout foo yung.

Achievement i] is posting a picture and hitting "submit".

i], Yellowbelly Slider Turtle, Trachemys scripta scripta, yesterday.

soundtracktotodaysentryisprettylikedrugs

I should be going into Ipswich tonight to see I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue Live.

But since when did I ever take any notice of should?

First Max pulled out for her own entirely valid reasons. So I offered my spare ticket to N., who's also a fan, but then he pulled out for his own somewhat vaguer reasons. Finally I asked Butterfly to accompany me – but now she's down with this cold/fever I had last week¹.

I would go on my own, but today I'm just feeling utterly knackered.

Sometimes you just get the feeling the universe is sending you a message – "hey, buddy, time to stay indoors and watch the telly instead". For once, I'm listening.

With a combination of yesterday's start of the Sarah Jane Adventures which I taped, that East German movie I've not yet had the brainspace to sit down and watch, the new series of Charlie Brooker's Screen Wipes on BBC4 later, alongside some autumnal weather, a large spicy pizza and the usual overarching pile of good books, it just seems like the thing to do.

It's a shame, but that's life. The best laid plans of mice and men…²

Oh, and in answer to a comment left on yesterday's entry;

Silver Says: September 25th, 2007 at 2:40
Also, awww…man, you might like…marry this woman…O_O

No froggin' way.

And that's her words, not mine.

But then, the best laid plans….

footfetishnotes:
1 And also lack of sleep, but that's another story entirely….
2 "So what are these mice plans, then?" [Eddie Izzard]

soundtracktotodaysentryisstupidnoises

Today's List Of Stuff To Do: Buy food, pay newspaper bill, obtain medicine, do very important official form, pick up partner from work, celebrate two month anniversary in our own particular style. With whatever equipment is to hand.

Today's Things I've Actually Done So Far: Drink coffee, do crossword in newspaper. Oh, and delete all the photos of Sunday's zoo trip because they were all out of focus. Which leads us up to….

Today's Unashamed Begging: If anyone would like to contribute to the Buy Fish A Decent Camera So That He Can Actually Put Up Some Cool Photos For Once And Not Just That One Of Janet Fielding Again Fund, donation details can be obtained from….

Today's Required Reading: Concerned by all these stories about shootings, gangs and social disorder? Rolling eyes at politicians' usual stupid responses [Cameron's call to clean up TV and video games is a particularly knee-jerked, arse-headed piece of frogwittery]? One answer. One word. See here.

It wouldn't be a perfect answer, but how much worse could it get?

Today's Pin-Up Hero: Artur Boruc. No, don't go "who?" like that, he's actually rather rather good.

Well, good at saving penalties, if not at having haircuts.

Today's Requested Section: Anna wants to know "six weird things about me". Only six?

• I'm a relatively untidy person generally, but I'll wake up screaming at night if my Doctor Who DVDs aren't in strict chronological order on the shelf.
• I'd rather chew my legs off than wear shorts. Being forced to at primary school even in sub-zero temperatures may have something to do with this.
• Both Butterfly and my mother have to hide the gravy granules in their kitchens, or sooner or later I'll start eating them. With a spoon, straight from the packet. [This unfortunately applies to both veg- and non-veg- versions.]
• I have ten times more female shoes than male shoes.
• Motorhead helps me sleep. I can't drift off in silence, so I have the zen player on. Even when there's some ultra-heavy metal on, it relaxes me enough to slip under.
• All the plastic/inflatable animals in my car are called George.

"There's nothing so odd about that: Kemal Ataturk had an entire menagerie called Abdul!"