Home to Roost

In my study, but once again, Microsoft decided it needed to reconfigure my version of Office, so I had to wait. I spent the time picking some more books to go downstairs on the new shelves, and looking for more yarn to match the cardigan (or maybe it will be a blanket) I started crocheting two days ago, when I realised the fair isle jumper was going to be too tight, so I gave up on it till I decide whether I’m going to pull it back to the armpits and do it again, or leave it unfinished like so many other things I’ve started in my life.


Then I felt the urge to listen to Joni Mitchell’s ‘Judgement of the Moon and Stars’, which I’ve been listening to on cassette in the kitchen, and I thought I must have uploaded onto the PC when I was doing that a few months ago. I couldn’t find it, but I did find the files for her album ‘Hejira’, and played ‘Amelia’, which got me into a sad and thoughtful mood, which wasn’t necessarily where I wanted to go.


By that time, Office was reconfigured and Word was open. I suspect it’s now reconfiguring every time I restart the PC (which should be every day, but I must admit sometimes I forget to switch it off properly and it stays in hibernation till the next morning). I don’t use the PC much in the daytime after I’ve finished blogging, now that I’ve got the laptop downstairs, where the wifi’s better and it’s warmer – I don’t have the radiator switched on in here because it’s under the window, behind the desk and printer. Ironic to think that I bought the laptop at the end of 2019 so I could take it out and sit in cafes to write – one of many small ironies of the last twelve months.


Maybe what I’m doing here is reconfiguring my mind every morning. It’s a thought.


In telling the story of the Madwoman in the Attic, I flitted around quite a bit chronologically, and I think I may have missed out completely the time in Prague. I started going through the blogs from that time about three years ago, after I finished the first draft of ‘The Long Way Back’, but I gave up on it quite quickly. Maybe that should be a task for this year – or would be, if I was setting myself tasks, which I’m not.


The gist, I suppose, of the Madwoman idea, was that through those limbo years until I moved into this house in October 2016, the Stuff was always hanging around in the dusty corners of my mind, along with the knowledge that at some time the house would be sold, and it would come home to roost, but also I would be in a position to buy a permanent home for it (and me). And yet, although I’m here, and it is too, the chaos remains unresolved.

Amelia, Joni Mitchell